Mitch Evans’s burn from the stern Portland salvage job, his latest successful bid to remain in the Formula E title fight, was the polar opposite to his heroics at the previous round in Jakarta.
There, he somehow held onto a podium despite heavy artillery attacks from a brace of feisty Nissans. But in the Pacific Northwest, he fought another very good fight to land a fourth place that keeps him hanging, a little tentatively, on to the coattails of Jake Dennis, Nick Cassidy and Pascal Wehrlein in the Formula E title battle.
Earlier on Saturday it all looked very different when Evans stopped with a chronic battery issue in the second free practice session.
Despite a cursory wave back to this author and The Race’s founder Andrew van de Burgt as they watched on, humour was in short supply as Evans sat forlornly for several minutes while his ‘red’ car had to be treated with gloves, hooks and other safety devices to make sure it could be safely returned to the pits.
When that eventually happened, Jaguar team principal James Barclay told The Race that “for precaution we changed both the RESS and the rear end of the powertrain”.
The drama had actually started earlier in the morning for the team. A power cut in the garage took out all of its screens, so it was effectively running blind.
Although that was not thought to have contributed to any technical issues on Evans’s car, it was later confirmed that a RESS issue had indeed been experienced. Though Jaguar worked quickly to replace the RESS, a connection problem scuppered its progress and Evans was unable to take part in qualifying at all.
With DS Penske pair Jean-Eric Vergne and Stoffel Vandoorne starting from the pitlane ‘naughty corner’, Evans was in 20th for the start and he more or less freewheeled down to the first corner knowing that the ridiculously pedestrian pace, surely among the least spectacular starts to any motor race ever, would produce the mother and father of accordion effects.
Evans banked energy in the opening laps and he made little progress. Then, as he started to do so, the second safety car came out for Nico Mueller’s wrecked Abt-run Mahindra to be cleared.
It was a lengthy safety car period, lasting five laps in total, and included some reshuffling of the order – all of which irritated Evans, as it threatened to ruin his strategy.
“It just took too long, we were just waiting for our strategy, for it to work,” Evans told The Race. “Obviously I was good on energy, we were trying to get an offset to the other guys to be ready to make some progress, so it was just eating into my race.”
Basically, if Evans got the timing wrong with the safety car, the energy targets would go up and it would reduce his offset advantage.
It could have been worse as Jaguar’s saving targets could have been higher – but the fact they weren’t didn’t help his situation, and he “just got into the mentality that I started to want to make progress and it was just eating into the race”.
“Even though they added laps it’s just the targets going up, and it hurt me a bit,” said Evans.
As it turned out Evans fought through, picking numerous cars off to break into the top six.
From nonchalantly looking on at two media hacks trotting back to the media centre to being on the cusp of the podium, it was quite a few hours for Evans. At the first of those stages, he’d have bitten hands off for 12 points and a bonus one for the fastest lap.
“Before the race, 100% I would,” he confirmed afterwards. “It’s been a really tough day. Performance-wise, all four Jags seemed to be a little bit off unusually.”
Evans is right, and even race winner Cassidy alluded to a poor balance in his car earlier in the day.
“Obviously Nick’s won the race but over one lap [the balance was off], so qualifying I think would have been tricky anyway but it would have been better than starting from last,” said Evans.
“To get a real handful of points, before the race I would have definitely signed up for it, but saying that I got up to second at one stage with a good amount of energy.”
That was remarkable from a 20th position start but it didn’t last, as a late second attack mode activation meant he got swamped and pushed back to eighth.
“That’s when the energy targets “jumped up” and it became harder for Evans to make any use of the largely ineffectual extra 50kW boost.
“It was just a few things that didn’t go my way at a critical moment, otherwise I think I could have potentially won or at least been on the podium,” he surmised.
“But look, fourth is still good. There are obviously a lot of guys that didn’t finish, so to come away relatively in one piece and [having scored] 13 points, I’ll take that.”
Up next is the scene of his ‘King of Rome’ achievements of last April, when he frankly made the opposition look sluggish with a pair of dominant wins. But that was then – Gen2 – and this is now – Gen3.
The stakes are still as high but the racing is much madder. Looking to sanity check it is the wily Evans, who, should he reprise even some of his 2022 heroics, could head to London with a chance of banishing the ghost of last season – as it was at that event he effectively dropped out of serious and realistic title contention.
Keyword: Evans’s latest rescue was even more important than it looked