The Andretti Autosport driver headed into Saturday’s race leading the championship, one point ahead of Nick Cassidy and a further 28 points clear of Evans.
Having avoided a crash for Sam Bird immediately in front which triggered a multi-car collision and lengthy red flag, Dennis resumed the race in fourth and made quick progress up the order.
After getting ahead of Evans into Turn 3 on lap 14, he took the lead from Nissan’s Sacha Fenestraz a lap later at Turn 8 and led for several laps, only dropping into second behind Evans when activating his final Attack Mode.
But the stoppage and an earlier safety car meant two extra laps were added to the race distance for a total of 27 laps, one more than Dennis’ team had planned for.
It meant he eventually lost positions to Evans, Cassidy and Maserati’s Maximilian Guenther before the flag, while he only just held onto fourth from DS Penske’s Jean-Eric Vergne and Abt Cupra’s Nico Muller.
“It was never going to look as good as it could have done with what target we had compared with everyone else, and that’s why we ended up going into the lead thinking I can win this race now with the target I had,” said Dennis, who sits five points behind Cassidy in the standings.
“And then they [the team] were like plus one lap and then my target was super low and no chance we could fight.
“We only lost P3 today, we were never going to beat Mitch and Nick if we got the lap count correct from the start, they would have obviously just beat me on pure pace.
"But Guenther I think we had the measure of, bit of a shame to throw away three points.
"The pace I was dropping back was quite severe and by the time I dropped into Vergne’s clutches I managed to save quite a lot of energy, so my targets were quite a bit higher by the time he caught me, so I was able to hold my own."
While Dennis believes he would not have won today’s race even if had he been driving to the correct energy saving target from the start, the Briton also does not believe he can match the Jaguar and Envision cars on pure pace in tomorrow’s second Rome E-Prix.
Asked if he could beat Evans and Cassidy in a straight fight tomorrow, Dennis said: “Honestly, no.
“Fundamental things need to change inside the car which can’t be changed due to the homologation so we will not beat Mitch and the Jaguars tomorrow if it’s a normal race.
“Anything can happen obviously, my car handles good, it’s just lacking grip compared to theirs due to a number of things.
“It’s going to be a difficult one here and in London [for the final races], those guys are going to be a different level.
“Over these next few races, we just need to try and salvage what we can and pick up decent points.”
