26/07/2025 21:45
Mitch Evans pinned the timing of his first Attack Mode as the cause
of his "destroyed" opening race to Formula E's London E-Prix, as it
left him stuck behind David Beckmann. The Jaguar driver started
from pole and led the opening stages, before being overtaken by
Nyck de Vries and Pascal Wehrlein. De Vries and Wehrlein both
overtook Evans using their opening attack mode, capitalising on the
New Zealander not taking it first. When Evans did take his first,
he dropped behind Kiro's Beckmann, costing him valuable seconds.
Evans' race spiralled out of control from there, as he was later
tagged by Dan Ticktum, resulting in a spin at the penultimate
corner. 10th is where he ended up, whilst team-mate Nick Cassidy
claimed victory. Asked by RacingNews365 if the strategy was
conducted as planned, Evans revealed": "No, we went completely
opposite as planned, I would say. "Simply, I should have won the
race. I was controlling the race well at the front, and we were
always going to go long in the Pit Boost, but we opted to go for
the Attack Mode. "It was too late, de Vries and Wehrlein got it
right when they went for attack. We were later, and we got stuck
behind Beckmann, and that destroyed our race." London nightmares
continue Discussing if he should have taken his strategy into his
own hands, Evans insisted: "I wish I did, yeah." He has a love-hate
relationship with the quirky indoor/outdoor ExCeL Centre circuit,
with the bulk of his recent memories having been negative. In 2023
and 2024, Evans lost the FE drivers' title, the latter due to a
strategic error and also himself missing the attack mode detection
loops, twice. In regard to the strategy failure in London once
again, Evans reflected: "I don't know, but this place gives me PTSD
I think, and it continues to do so after today. Yeah, probably one
for the team. "But yeah, sometimes, you want to put full faith in
the guys, they're clever guys. But unfortunately, some tracks... if
it was Berlin and going a lap later or not, it's not that critical.
"But when it's a track position race, like it was today,
unfortunately we missed it."
