Dennis ends long pole drought in jakarta

Jake Dennis beat Taylor Barnard to pole position for the Jakarta E-Prix, ending a drought stretching back over a year.

The Andretti driver set a time of 1m 06.713s in the final of the Duels stage of qualifying, going 1.002s quicker than NEOM McLaren's Taylor Barnard, who suffered a snap of oversteer at the Turn 13 hairpin after making a mistake on entry, to take his first pole since the second race of last season's Berlin E-Prix.

Dennis started qualifying by finishing second in Group A behind DS Penske driver Jean-Eric Vergne, then defeating Mahindra’s Edoardo Mortara and Nick Cassidy of Jaguar TCS Racing – who defeated Vergne in his first Duel but made a couple of mistakes in his head-to-head with Dennis.

Barnard meanwhile topped Group B, with Mahindra driver Nyck de Vries equalling his lap time down to the thousandth of a second. The pair then faced off in the Duels Semifinals after de Vries saw off Envision Racing’s Sebastien Buemi and Barnard beat Cupra Kiro’s Dan Ticktum in another close contest, edging the Cupra Kiro driver by 0.005s.

Behind the all-British front row of Dennis and Barnard, de Vries will line up third, with Cassidy fourth.

Ticktum will start fifth, ahead of Mortara, with Buemi and Vergne last of those to make it to the Duels. TAG Heuer Porsche driver Antonio Felix da Costa and Jaguar’s Mitch Evans will start ninth and 10th respectively after finishing fifth in their respective groups.

Next up is Sam Bird in the second McLaren and DS Penske’s Maximilian Guenther, Andretti’s Nico Mueller, and Pascal Wehrlein in the other works Porsche whose final Group stage lap didn't deliver him any improvement, leaving him seventh of the 12 drivers in his group.

Stoffel Vandoorne will start 15th on the grid for Maserati MSG Racing, ahead of Curpa Kiro David Beckmann, while championship leader Oliver Rowland will start down in 17th after a messy final Group stage lap in his Nissan which was initially only good for fifth anyway, but he eventually slipped to ninth in the first 12 to go out on track.

Despite topping second practice, Maserati’s Jake Hughes could only muster the 18th spot on the grid after qualifying, with the Lola Yamaha Abts of Zane Maloney and Lucas di Grassi in 19th and 20th. The back row of the grid will be occupied by Norman Nato in the second Nissan and Envision’s Robin Frijns.

RESULTS

Formula E

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Dominik Wilde

Dominik often jokes that he was born in the wrong country – a lover of NASCAR and IndyCar, he covered both in a past life as a junior at Autosport in the UK, but he’s spent most of his career to date covering the sliding and flying antics of the U.S.’ interpretation of rallycross. Rather fitting for a man that says he likes “seeing cars do what they’re not supposed to do”, previously worked for a car stunt show, and once even rolled a rally car with Travis Pastrana. He was also comprehensively beaten in a kart race by Sebastien Loeb once, but who hasn’t been?

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