How Evans came, saw and conquered Formula E in Rome

When the Western Roman Empire fell in 476, its child emperor Romulus Augustulus was deposed – with its former lands across Europe shattered and split between numerous barbarian tribes. Rome, although later commanded by kings, viceroys, and popes across its rich history, has not watched an emperor assume rule over the city in over 1500 years. Until now, it seems.

In deference to his team-mate's complete domination of both Rome E-Prix races, Jaguar’s Sam Bird declared Mitch Evans as the new Emperor of Rome. Whether Bird has the authority to formally bestow such an honour upon his team-mate is of little relevance, such was Evans’ command of the double-header of races around Rome’s EUR district. EV-eni, vidi, vici.

In the opening three races of the 2021-22 Formula E season, Jaguar had been off-colour; the Big Cat proved slow to wake from its winter hibernation. A double-points finish in the first Diriyah race got the team off the mark, but abject results in the second race and in Mexico City left it with much to do. Jaguar needed Rome, the host of its Formula E victory, to work its magic once again for a revival in fortunes.

Not that it looked like it would happen from the outset. There were hints of Jaguar’s pace in the opening brace of free practice sessions: Evans was second quickest in FP1, with Bird third fastest in FP2. But once qualifying beckoned, neither Jaguar made it into the knockout duels.

Evans missed out on displacing Pascal Wehrlein from Group A’s top four by a tenth of a second and would line up ninth, while Bird was baulked by Sebastien Buemi and caught the chequered flag ahead of what was intended to be his flying run. Furious, Bird ripped off his gloves and slapped the Swiss driver’s halo in the pitlane with them. He'd start 13th. 

Stoffel Vandoorne captured pole position, seeing off both DS Techeetah cars on his road to the final; Jean-Eric Vergne was beaten by half a second in the quarter-final, while a mere 0.015s split Vandoorne and Antonio Felix da Costa in the semi to pit the Belgian against Envision’s Robin Frijns. Although just missing out on securing pole for the first race owing to a Turn 2 mistake, Frijns was in fine form and gamely queued up on the front row.

At lights out, Evans was able to take two positions with one fell swoop off the line, dispatching both Porsches after Pascal Wehrlein and Andre Lotterer were comparatively more sluggish in leaving their grid slots. The timing of that move, Evans explained, was considerably important in his run to victory.

Evans made a good start to move ahead of both Porsches as ahead Vandoorne and Frijns contested the first corner

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

"When you’ve got two team-mates together, they can work with each other,” the Kiwi reflected. “And they were quite conservative at the start; they weren't really a threat for me, which allowed me to be conservative. But while being conservative, I had good pace so I could keep up to the guys ahead.”

Avalanche Andretti’s Jake Dennis was next on Evans’ checklist, although it was put on ice for a spell following a first-lap pile-up into the uphill Turn 7. Edoardo Mortara had been dumped out of the qualifying group stages and was looking to make up ground to preserve his championship advantage, but rashly tipped Oliver Rowland into a spin – which collected the Venturi driver’s team-mate Lucas di Grassi as the two Nissan cars came together. Of the two, Maximilian Guenther came off worse, suffering damage that eventually contrived to tip him into the wall two corners later. Thus, the safety car appeared.

Once the technicolour dreamcoat-liveried Porsche Taycan pace car pulled in after Guenther’s Nissan was moved aside, Evans began hounding Jake Dennis for his sixth position. The two stuck together in the first 10 laps, clearing da Costa as Dennis got his elbows out more than the stewards felt he should have – copping a five-second penalty in the process.

When Dennis took his second dose of attack mode a lap later, Evans disarmed his own activation and stuck to the racing line at the hairpin centrepinned by the Marconi obelisk, moving ahead of the Andretti driver and clearing Jean-Eric Vergne in the process. With fourth place in his pocket, Evans’ next task was to reel in the leading trio of Frijns, Vandoorne and Nyck de Vries.

There was no answer for the Jaguar’s pace; Frijns was two seconds behind by the end of the next lap as Evans built a mammoth break that, with two laps remaining, got him 7.5s up the road

It was at this point where de Vries began to drop, and the reigning champion was easy prey for the Jaguar to get its teeth into. With Vandoorne and Frijns now battling fiercely over the lead, Evans used the opportunity to pick up his second attack mode and resume his pursuit of victory. The two in front had been trading places all through the race but, on lap 17, Vandoorne was in second and next to fall to Evans’ advances.

Shadowing him on the run up to Turn 7, Evans hung to the outside and positioned himself within Frijns’ wake, giving Vandoorne no chance to fight back. Frijns could now be forgiven for feeling hot under the collar with pressure from the charging Jag building, but was powerless to halt the inevitable from happening on the following tour. Evans, still with a minute and a half remaining on his attack mode duration, once more sat on the outside on the road to Turn 4, making Frijns take to the inside in preparation – but to no avail: the lead belonged to Evans and he immediately began to scarper off up the road.

There was no answer for the Jaguar’s pace; Frijns was two seconds behind by the end of the next lap as Evans built a mammoth break that, with two laps remaining, got him 7.5s up the road. In that moment, the Aucklander made the choice not to emulate Porsche’s Mexico City tactics, in which the German squad had built up such an energy advantage that it could afford to stretch the race to an extra lap. Instead, Evans backed off on the penultimate tour to bring the lap-count down to 27, a move that he explained was to “eliminate risks” and seal a hard-fought victory.

After passing Dennis, later penalised for his move on da Costa, Evans made supreme progress

Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

“When you've got good pace and good energy, you can be in control of it. That's what I had today,” he noted. “I had an energy advantage; I could use that but then opted to make the race a little bit shorter. I didn't need to, but I just thought, 'it's motorsport, you eliminate risks', unlike [Mexico] where we got burned by that. I thought I’d just bring it home.”

Frijns eventually won the battle between he and Vandoorne, feeling that his strategy to expend his attack mode activations early on was the right call on his way to second place. Although he felt his “fair but hard” battles with Vandoorne – and eventually Vergne – caused him to sink energy into defending his position, he admitted that Evans had “dropped us dead” when the Jaguar eventually came to play.

Vandoorne agreed, explaining that Evans “was in a different league”, while Vergne said that he elected not to fight too hard for a podium position in the event Evans took the race to an extra lap. But the Frenchman was convinced that “it’s going to work out” in Sunday’s race – a promise he looked set to deliver on after the opening sessions.

And thus, the two-time champion plonked his car on top of the pile in Sunday’s sole free practice session, chiselling Edoardo Mortara off top spot at the climax of the session. Vergne then, by the skin of his teeth, managed to get his car into the qualifying duels and rode the train all the way to the final, beating Frijns and Lotterer to book his place into a pole shootout with Dennis.

Dennis had underlined his credentials for pole by beating Evans, in his first duels appearance, by half a second to make the final – but failed to replicate the magic of his semi-final lap, giving Vergne ample leeway to claim his 14th Formula E pole.

True to Vergne’s Saturday proclamation, it rather appeared to be working out just fine. Although Dennis put the screw on Vergne at the start, the polesitter was able to bat him away and start to build up a lead, while the Brit spent his time in an ultimately futile bid to keep Lotterer behind. The Andretti team had got its sums wrong in Race 1 and was hoping for a points reprieve in the second Rome event, but Dennis struggled for pace and Evans was soon past him too.

Once more, fourth-placed starter Evans was out for blood. He cleared Lotterer on the seventh lap and began to cut the lead to Vergne before the race was interrupted for a safety car, brought out to expedite the clearance of Antonio Giovinazzi’s unresponsive Dragon Penske machinery. After just a lap sitting behind the increasingly ubiquitous Porsche Taycan, Evans kept on Vergne’s coattails through the restart and on the 11th lap simply breezed past the Techeetah.

Vergne led Dennis and Lotterer in the early laps of race two, but Evans was on the prowl behind

Photo by: Andrew Ferraro / Motorsport Images

From there, one could be forgiven for expecting Evans to waltz off into the distance once again – but the nature of the change in attack mode activation threw an extra dimension into the mix, as Formula E introduced a single eight-minute activation for the second to introduce a different tactical approach.

Frijns used his on lap 12 to rocket into the lead having passed Dennis beforehand, picking his way past Lotterer, Vergne and Evans in quick succession to continue his excellent weekend. Lotterer duly followed suit on the following lap, which set his own upward trajectory into motion, prompting Vergne to follow the crowd and dropped behind Bird.

Evans, however, would not be moved. His plan was to wait until lap 18, then take the wide line at the Marconi hairpin and begin a late-race ascent once his rivals had exhausted their own supply of extra power. Then Alexander Sims came to a stop at Turn 14, prompting the safety car’s return and giving Jaguar a colossal scare, as it became apparent that Evans might not be able to cycle through the full attack mode duration by the end. To ensure drivers use the power boost, arming attack mode can’t be done under a safety car, and nor can a driver end a race with attack mode time remaining without incurring a penalty.

"Sam really helped me today, so I owe this one to him. He held off JEV a little bit, not intentionally but what he had to do just to make sure I had a nice gap. It's been a dream weekend" Mitch Evans

Luckily for Evans, the race was going to go to extra time; Giovinazzi’s and Sims’ stoppages topped the timer up with an extra five minutes and 15 seconds of racing. With another swift safety car period over, Evans finally took his attack mode on lap 20 to drop to fourth behind Vergne – and, thanks to the efforts of Bird keeping the bulk of the pack at bay, nobody else. Vergne was hence quickly disposed of on the run to Turn 4, allowing Evans to roar up to the back of Lotterer and Frijns by the start of the 22nd lap. Seven corners later, Evans was back in the lead after another swashbuckling display.

Not that it was over quite yet. Bird, for all his work in doing Evans a few solid favours, was unable to react in time to a late Nick Cassidy charge and unceremoniously dumped the 'other' Kiwi into the Turn 7 wall. Another short, sharp safety car stood in Evans’ way of victory, with Vergne now looking to harry him at the end having cleared the Frijns-Lotterer duo. But contrary to Vergne’s belief in the previous day, it didn’t work out. Evans had too much energy and cruised to the double in style.

“Sam really helped me today, so I owe this one to him,” Evans gushed. “He held off JEV a little bit, not intentionally but what he had to do just to make sure I had a nice gap. It's been a dream weekend.”

In firm juxtaposition to Evans’ joy, Vergne labelled his race as a “mess”, getting embroiled in a fraught radio discussion over strategy despite moving to the top of the championship. Frijns, meanwhile, collected another podium to complete a brilliantly consistent weekend.

Evans, however, could celebrate more after ‘treating’ himself to a zero-alcohol beer after his race 1 win; after all, only the finest wines would be befitting of Rome’s new emperor. He came into the weekend on a miserable run; he saw off his competition - and he absolutely conquered.

Race winner Mitch Evans, Jaguar Racing celebrates with James Barclay, Team Director, Jaguar TCS Racing, Craig Wilson, Race Director, Jaguar TCS Racing, the team

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Motorsport Images