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Title frontrunners Evans and Dennis claim ABB Engineered to Outrun honours in Tokyo

Analysis 30 Jul 2026 4 Mins

Title protagonists Mitch Evans and Jake Dennis shared ABB Engineered to Outrun honours in Tokyo as their respective charges through the field in Japan could prove crucial to their championship hopes.

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Just two points separate Dennis and Evans at the top of the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship, after a dramatic Tokyo double-header in which they showed their class making up more places than anybody else in Rounds 14 and 15.

Evans saves his weekend

Marooned in the mid-pack for the start of Round 14, Evans and his race engineer Alan Cocks opted to conserve as much energy as reasonably possible without the luxury of not worrying about track position.

Starting right at the back opens up a maximum energy conservation tactic, starting further forward invites a driver to attack early, so Evans inevitably ended up in more of a middle lane.

But he did a great job with it, building roughly a 2% battery advantage compared to the field’s median - in other words, a small but significant advantage putting him among the most energy-rich cars by the middle of the race. Though this was all about teeing up a late charge, Evans was also making progress the old-fashioned way with good pit strategy and on-track bravery.

RESULTS: The 2026 TDK Tokyo E-Prix, Round 14

He gained four places in the PIT BOOST phase by running slightly longer, and his progress before coming into the pits included a gutsy move on then-points leader Pascal Wehrlein into Turn 16 – not for the faint of heart, especially against a driver who had just ruthlessly fought against Evans’ teammate Antonio Felix da Costa, who ended that fight in the wall!

Still, after making his mandatory pitstop, Evans was well outside the top-10. Having already started to spend more energy before his pitstop, his true pace was then unleashed afterwards, particularly across a race-defining phase from lap 23 to 28, in which Evans charged from 17th to 7th.

His extra energy advantage combined with a later-than-most ATTACK MODE deployment allowed Evans to carve his way through - with an 2-3% additional battery state of charge compared to everyone in front of him heading into the last few laps, which meant Evans continued his progress right into the top five.

Even with no ATTACK MODE just a sheer battery edge, Evans continued to push to the very end - pinching fourth from Taylor Barnard on the very last lap.

He described it as “hard to execute, but it was a really flawless race”, one that briefly put Evans to the very top of the points. And though a disappointing non-score in the second part of the double allowed Dennis to jump him in the championship, Evans could easily have joined Wehrlein in non-scoring at all in Japan without his rise in Round 14.

Charging Dennis denied (again)

Dennis felt unjustly denied a victory in the opening race by a loss of power on the very last lap – and was left ruing another potentially lost win in the second race too.

Still, if second place was no consolation on Saturday, then an “unexpected” podium finish on Sunday from 17th on the grid certainly made up for it. Only Jean-Eric Vergne made more competitive on-track overtakes than Dennis’s 13 as the vast majority of the positions the Andretti driver gained on his way from 17th to 3rd were on-track and of his own making.

An asymmetric ATTACK MODE strategy of 2 and 6 minutes, married with energy conservation in the first part of the race and Dennis and race engineer Sean McGill gambling the track would dry with their tyre pressure choice, was crucial to this final result.

Dennis saved energy early on and built an advantage of more than 3% against the median. There was some progress at the same time but Dennis had to play a longer game, so was patiently waiting for the most part.

MEDIA PEN: The drivers speak after Round 15 in Tokyo

He did not the points positions until the last quarter of the E-Prix, but when his charge began, it was almost impossible to stop. Pulling the pin on lap 26, Dennis first used his energy advantage to move all the way up to sixth place - still with his ATTACK MODE in hand. This was activated at the last possible moment, giving him extra power and all-wheel-drive for the remaining laps of the E-Prix.

It teed up a thrilling charge that looked set to take Dennis all the way to the very front, and at the very least give him the chance to go for the win, as he pulled onto the back of second-placed Nick Cassidy with race leader Nyck de Vries just a head.

But a multi-car incident that blocked the track agonisingly caused the race to be red flag with a lap and a half (and two minutes of ATTACK MODE for Dennis) remaining. This meant even with a single racing lap after a rolling restart, Dennis’s two key advantages were neutered, and he remained third.

Though Dennis called the red flag “a shame”, the result still catapulted him into a narrow lead heading to the London finale, an advantage earned the hard way even if more were possible on another night.

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