Dennis 'punished' after 's***' final lap

Jake Dennis openly admitted after the São Paulo E-Prix that he was "punished", in what was a "s***" end to the fourth round of the season for the reigning World Champion.

The Andretti driver endured a frustrating weekend in Brazil, which started with him failing to progress to the duels in qualifying. However, he made up for this quickly in the race and slotted into third in the closing laps.

Unfortunately, he was one of several drivers to suffer from de-rating, which is when a driver is unable to use all of the available power from their car due to an overheating battery.

Dennis was impacted by this on the final lap, and was overtaken by Oliver Rowland and Pascal Wehrlein on the exit of the final corner. The Briton was frustrated afterwards, although recognised that a lot had been learnt from the sport's first experience of overheating batteries.

"Just s***," Dennis told RacingNews365. "I mean we just didn't do a good enough job, and so probably like 12 to 15 laps to go we didn't manage certain things well enough.

"That ultimately punished us and cost us probably the win to be honest, we had more energy than everyone else, or like the same as Pascal but more than the guy which won. We just got punished on the situation.

"Lessons learned from me, from the team, and I think was a big learning curve for everyone. It's the first time anyone's ever seen the battery temperatures get this hot. So a big learning curve for teams."

'Portland was way worse'

The peloton-style of racing returned with a bang in São Paulo, with the race having consisted of a staggering 212 overtakes. Turn 3 in particular was carnage, although Dennis still believes last season's Portland E-Prix was more extreme.

"From my side, Portland was way worse," added the Briton. "At the front is a bit more difficult, like there's a lot of slowing down and stuff. But my side I felt like that was a pretty good Formula E race.

"It was a bit messy at times. But I mean, there's so much overtaking with these cars if we don't have the energy, like advantage. So it's neat."