The electric stats from a frenetic, action-packed Sanya E-Prix weekend
- Vyas Ponnuri
- 2 hours ago
- 5 min read
Formula E’s first Sanya E-Prix after seven years threw up several surprises in the air. Most notable among them was the entire leading quartet in the standings failing to score any points, as this paved the way for lesser-noticed faces to take home big scores in Season 12.
While the weekend was led by Jake Dennis and Andretti, who were the class of the field in both qualifying and the race, the likes of Pepe Martí and Felipe Drugovich too reaped the rewards of the chaos in Sanya. There was also redemption in store for Nyck de Vries, who looked down and out for most of the Sanya E-Prix, but a late charge in his second attack mode brought a second podium of the season for the Dutchman.
But what else emerged as the biggest statistics from Sanya? DIVEBOMB picks them out for you in the second instalment of this latest series.
The biggest stats from the 2026 Sanya E-Prix
Qualifying for the Sanya E-Prix brought about Jake Dennis’ first pole of Season 12. It was also his and Andretti’s first pole position since the 2025 Jakarta E-Prix.
Dennis had started from pole position in São Paulo earlier this season, however, that was due to pole-sitter Pascal Wehrlein’s penalty for spinning his wheels in the pit lane.
Teammate Felipe Drugovich notched up his best start of the season with second, matching his best qualifying result since the Miami E-Prix earlier this season.
A total of four drivers had penalties over their heads for the Sanya E-Prix: Lucas di Grassi (40 positions) for changing an MCU and gearbox in Monaco, Taylor Barnard (10 positions), Pepe Martí (five positions) and Maximilian Günther (three positions) for their respective infractions in Round 10 at Monaco.
Dennis became the first driver to convert a pole position into victory after nine races in Season 12. The last instance was the Andretti man himself, back in São Paulo, when Dennis started from the front of the field after qualifying penalties.
The last time a driver went quickest in qualifying before converting his pole into victory was Mitch Evans back in Round 13 at Berlin.
Drugovich finished second on track, marking his best result of the season…. until a post-race penalty dropped him to fifth on the road. This would have been Andretti’s first-ever 1-2 in the championship if the Brazilian stayed in second after the flag had fallen.
Second instead went to Cupra Kiro’s Pepe Martí, who took his second podium of the season, and a best Formula E finish. It also marked the best finishing position for a Spanish driver in the championship.
The last time a rookie took two podiums in successive Formula E weekends was Taylor Barnard back in 2025, when the Briton took podiums in Tokyo and Shanghai respectively. Driving for McLaren back then, Barnard also took two podiums on the same race weekend in Jeddah.
Martí has also emerged as the driver who has made up the most positions during races this season. The Spanish driver has made up 71 positions across 10 races in 2026. He climbed 16 positions in Sanya from his starting position of 18th to finish second.
Nyck de Vries took his second podium of the season and made it two podiums in consecutive race weekends for Mahindra. His score in Sanya also keeps Mahindra’s scoring run intact in 2026, the Indian manufacturer being the only one on the grid to score points at every race weekend.
The trio of drivers finishing on the podium in Sanya were all first-time racers around the Sanya street circuit. António Félix da Costa was the highest finisher among drivers to have raced in Sanya’s Formula E debut in 2019.
DS Penske’s Maximilian Günther finished sixth, scoring his joint-best result for the team in Season 12. The German driver missed the Sanya E-Prix back in 2019, although he raced several rounds in the season.
Günther’s points scoring finish in Sanya also keeps his scoring streak on Chinese soil every year, continuing on from the 2024 and 2025 Shanghai E-Prix weekends where he finished eighth and took victory respectively.
2019 Sanya E-Prix winner Jean-Éric Vergne finished eighth, and alongside former teammate da Costa, was one of only two drivers from the 2019 event to score points this weekend.
Lola’s Lucas di Grassi finished 10th in Sanya, and has now scored points for three races in a row, after going eight races without a point in 2026. The three-round scoring streak is also Lola’s longest in Formula E as a constructor.
In addition, the Brazilian driver’s three-race scoring streak is his longest in the Gen3 era, and his longest since the end of Season 8, when di Grassi scored points in four consecutive races for Venturi.
Porsche’s Pascal Wehrlein finished 14th after his five-second penalty was applied. This marks his third race in a row without points, after an eight-race run in the points in Season 12.
This is also the second-longest non-scoring streak for Wehrlein. The German had gone four races without a point in Season 7, a run that saw DNFs in Valencia and Monaco, while he would be disqualified after winning the Puebla E-Prix that followed.
At the other end of the Cupra Kiro garage, Dan Ticktum has now gone five races without a top 10 finish. The Briton is the recipient of an unlikely statistic: Six duels stage appearances in qualifying have fizzled out into a non-scoring result in Season 12.
Ticktum only has two top-10 finishes in 2026 - fifth in Jeddah and fourth in Madrid, to go with his double pole position in Monaco, which fetched six points.
Nissan’s Oliver Rowland failed to score points in Sanya. This continued his unlikely streak of either scoring a podium finish or not scoring a point at all in 2026. All or nothing - a story of the reigning champion’s 2026 season.
For the first time in Season 12, none of the top four in the standings scored points. Three drivers failed to see the chequered flag at all, with Mitch Evans and Edoardo Mortara experiencing their first DNF since São Paulo, while Rowland would encounter his first non-finish of the season.
However, this isn’t the first time Formula E’s top four at the end of a race weekend haven’t scored any points. The last time such an instance occurred was at the 2021 Valencia E-Prix, when Nyck de Vries, Stoffel Vandoorne, Sam Bird and Robin Frijns all failed to score points in Round 6. Additionally, Mitch Evans, who was fifth in the standings, also failed to score any points.
A total of eight time penalties were handed out to drivers during the course of the Sanya E-Prix, with one of them being a 10-second penalty for di Grassi for not serving the full extent of his 40-place grid drop in qualifying.
Last, but certainly not least, Sanya returned to the Formula E calendar for the first time since March 2019. This marks the longest gap between two races held at a single venue, at 2646 days, or seven years, two months and 28 days.
Comments