Jake Dennis won a wild, red-flagged Sanya E-Prix on Saturday, and for a few minutes Andretti had something it had never managed in Formula E: a one-two finish. Then the stewards intervened, and the perfect day became merely an excellent one.
Dennis controlled the front of a race littered with penalties, contact and a barrier-strewn red flag, reprising the kind of dominant run he produced in Jakarta last season. It was his second win of the campaign, after Sao Paulo, and it arrived from pole — a result he admitted hit him harder than expected.
"Oh, honestly, I'm quite emotional," Dennis said. "It was an incredible race. I didn't think the red flag helped us at the worst possible stage, but we managed to turn it around and we were super efficient on those last 15 laps. My engineers were amazing at keeping me calm and keeping me on the level playing field, and they're the best in the business for that."
Behind him, team-mate Felipe Drugovich crossed the line second to complete the breakthrough Andretti 1-2. Team principal Roger Griffiths singled out the Brazilian's selfless work.
"Felipe was doing a massively good job for Jake," Griffiths told The Race. The celebration, though, was short-lived: a post-race penalty for slight contact with Pascal Wehrlein at Turn 9 dropped Drugovich from second to fourth, costing the team six points and the historic photo. Cupra Kiro's Pepe Marti was promoted to a remarkable second, having dragged a battered car from 12th to the podium after his own team-mate clattered into him during the chaos.
Even with the demotion, Griffiths left Sanya buoyant. "All in all, a pretty decent weekend for us," he said. "It moves up to fourth in the [teams] championship overall, and Jake's back in the title fight as well."
He can afford the optimism, because the four drivers who arrived as the title's main protagonists all left empty-handed. Mitch Evans, Edoardo Mortara, Pascal Wehrlein and Oliver Rowland failed to score, ending their afternoons in the barriers, with damage, or buried by penalties.
Reigning champion Rowland was the most candid about his own role, having buried his Nissan in the Turn 4 Tecpro while trying to pass the already-penalised Wehrlein.
"I needed to keep my cool. And I didn't," Rowland said.
Wehrlein, who had charged from seventh to lead with a sequence of bold overtakes, saw his race unravel after the restart when an ambitious move on Norman Nato earned a five-second penalty.
"Until the red flag, we looked super strong and very good and did the right moves on attack mode timing and so on," Wehrlein said.
The day's other talking point was Dan Ticktum, who threw away a likely podium by smashing into Evans' Jaguar at Turn 9 — the same corner where his own qualifying lap had ended in the run-off hours earlier. He picked up a penalty and a five-place grid drop for the next round in Shanghai, leaving his Cupra Kiro team boss, O'Hagan, to look for the long view.
"It was very difficult for Dan. Obviously, a lot of points could have been possible," O'Hagan said. "But I think it'll just make the result when it does come super sweet, and it will do."
With six races remaining, the carnage tightened the picture rather than settling it. Dennis and Antonio Felix da Costa hauled themselves back into contention, while the gang of four that had looked in command of the championship suddenly has plenty to think about heading to Shanghai.
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*Originally published on [Motorsports Global](https://motorsports.global/article/dennis-wins-chaotic-sanya-e-prix-as-andretti-1-2-slips-away). Visit for full coverage.*