The last time Formula E visited Sao Paulo, Mitch Evans saw a certain win slip away from him in the dying seconds of the race. This time around, with the Brazilian city hosting the Season 11 opener, The Jaguar TCS Racing driver completed what seemed to be an impossible task by winning from last on the grid.
It looked as if it’d be a weekend to forget for Evans, who had his practice running curtailed by a powertrain issue, then failed to set a lap in qualifying after a brake system problem.
“Just a crazy, crazy one today, but lining up on the grid, I was first of all just hoping to see the checkered flag, because we’ve had some issues on track over the last two days, which obviously prevented me from doing qualifying and cutting one of the practice stations short,” he said. “So there was definitely some concern there. But once a race started, you just had to forget about it.”
A crucial element to Evans’ win was the Attack Mode, which, starting this season, gives power to the front wheels in addition to a power boost for a cumulative eight minutes during the race. Like teammate Nick Cassidy, Evans left his final use of Attack Mode late, allowing him to leapfrog cars that already used their allocation.
“Once guys started doing Attack Modes, it was quite eye-opening how much progress people were making, so I just wanted to try and be clever – none of us have got experience of going racing with that type of contrast between the two power levels,” he said. “I just went with my gut a little bit, timed it all right. But was it energy rich? It was all looking pretty good, but still, you just never know what’s gonna happen.”
Nevertheless, with TAG Heuer Porsche’s Antonio Felix da Costa breathing down his neck, the potential of another late heartbreak remained. Evans’ admitted that last season’s Sao Paulo defeat “still really hurts,” and that he didn’t feel he’d won it until he completed the last turn of the last lap.
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“I mean, I guess it makes up for that,” he said. “But this result so unexpected off the back of what happened in qualifying, so I’m happy for that bit. A bit surprised, but I’ll take it.
“I probably thought it was done [at] the last corner, [on] the last lap, because the whole race was very unpredictable. Then the last five laps of this guy (da Costa), breathing on your neck, you don’t really know what could happen. Those last five laps could have gone either way, so it was literally coming out the last corner when I knew that it was finally done.”
Evans’ didn’t just face pressure from da Costa, but also the NEOM McLaren duo of Taylor Barnard and Sam Bird, who had a healthy energy advantage due to an unusual combination of drive-through penalties and two red flag periods – with the restart orders being scored from the previous lap – that allowed then to pocket energy.
“I was aware of their advantage,” Evans said of the McLarens. “Obviously it’s a huge advantage. I think they were a lap down, so they got their lap back, which it’s something to maybe to look into, because it’s a little bit… I don’t want to take any anything away from from Taylor, but it’s a little bit crazy. You could have a heavy advantage if that does happen in the future.”
Evans granted he also benefited front the red flags, the second one enabling him to have just enough energy to remain in first without backing off massively.
“I was expecting [Barnard] to come through, but the target was just high enough for me to manage,” he said. “It was all about the target. If the target was a little bit lower, kind of the level that we had before the last red flag, I think that he would have walked past us because it was so low. Luckily a red flag just bumped it up enough for us to hang on to it.”
