The spectre of dead track time because of teams electing to save their tyre allocation over the duration of running at EPrixs is “a given” according to 2022-23 champion Jake Dennis.
The Andretti driver told Formula E Notebook in Sao Paulo yesterday that he fears TV commentators will have to fill time as teams elect to stay in the garage at some track.
That is because the softer and racier tyre supplied by Hankook is liable to degradation through different heat cycles after certain amounts of running on specific surfaces.
This season the free practice sessions have been extended by 10 minutes to now a total of 40 minutes for two sessions ahead of the all-important qualifying period which could see drivers completing seven further hot laps if they get to the final duel.
“My understanding is it’s a given,” said Dennis.
“I don’t think it’ll be horrendous, but maybe the first 10 minutes there won’t be much running.
“But it could be 15 minutes, and then, for sure, everyone will be out on track and then the commentators have something to speak about, and but right now, we’ll see.
“I could be completely wrong, but I think it will be a little bit of a stalemate at the first 10 minutes, and then everyone was go out for the usual 30 minutes.”
The FIA were lobbied by some teams to up the allocation which is two complete sets for single events and three sets for double-headers. But the governing body spokesperson said: “It is important to remind that the tyre quota in Formula E is reduced for some reasons, especially for the implications it has on the championship’s carbon footprint to carry more sets of tyres.
“In the past few months, we have proposed solutions and discussed in the Sporting Working Group the possibility to carry over tyres from one event to the following but for different reasons it never had the necessary alignment and agreement of all the stakeholders on the way this carry over should be done.”
Will Mueller be JD’s toughest Andretti Partner?
Dennis will line-up this season for his fifth campaign with Andretti, and in so doing will have a fifth different teammate in the shape of Porsche factory driver Nico Mueller. He started alongside Maximilian Guenther in the 2020-21 season before Oliver Askew, Andre Lotterer and Norman Nato
“They’re all great guys, and then they move on. So maybe they’re leaving me, maybe they don’t like me?” joked Dennis.
“Nico is a really good influence inside of the team. He’s very professional and yeah, I think he’s going to be a hard, hard team-mate to go against.
“I wouldn’t want to say the hardest, because the talent I’ve had as team-mates has been good, but yeah, just it didn’t quite work out for various reasons.
“From my side, I just want to really work together, try and get us better than fifth in the constructors, which was not good enough (last season). I’m not saying we need to go out and win the constructors (teams), but we do really want to try and get top three again.”
