Is this a Formula E 'nearly man's' best chance yet at title glory?

On the 35th lap of the second race in London’s 2021-22 double header, Formula E’s four-way title battle took a decisive swing. Mitch Evans, one of those four drivers, had earlier reported that his car started to feel strange on the brakes. His Jaguar engineers in the garage were called into action to comb through his data readouts to try to alleviate the concern, and they hoped they’d found a fix. But it was to no avail.

At that stage in the race Evans was running fourth, a crucial position ahead of Stoffel Vandoorne, whom the Kiwi was trailing by 24 points in the title fight. Holding station would shave the gap down to 22 points; a miserable weekend in the British capital had already effectively ended the title hopes of Edoardo Mortara and Jean-Eric Vergne, albeit not mathematically. Thus, a good result for Evans could set up a thrilling two-way tussle for glory at the Seoul finale.

Instead, the braking issues became worse, to the point where Evans had to pull over and perform the Formula E equivalent of hitting Ctrl-Alt-Delete. That didn’t work either. Although he was able to get going again, the glitches causing the inconsistent feel on the brake pedal did not abate, prompting a permanent retreat into the pitlane. The potential 22-point deficit ahead of Seoul expanded to 36 points as Vandoorne moved up a position, giving Evans far too much to do once the field landed in South Korea.

That Evans took the title to the final race after winning the first leg of the Seoul showdown is testament to his determination. "Giving up" is not a phrase that exists in the New Zealander’s lexicon.

Lesser drivers would have failed to shrug off the disappointment of that London retirement, but Evans refused to wilt. That drive around the site of the 1988 Olympics set a high bar for his competitors to follow, the only blot on his copybook being a slight lock-up a few laps from home. Even last season’s successes were part of a rebound from a title near-miss the year prior, where another glitch – this time on the grid – struck in the Berlin finale to scythe down Evans’ title aspirations that year.

Despite missing out on the crown last season, Evans reflected on his runner-up finish in the championship with great fondness. But among the pain of losing the title fight, Evans and Jaguar found key areas to work on for the new season; the Aucklander explained that qualifying in particular had been a particularly sore point for the team.

Evans suffered terminal brake issues at the penultimate race of the season while in the title fight for the 2021-22 championship

Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

“It was a great year. A lot to be proud of, a lot to look back on, great memories, obviously,” Evans recalls to Autosport. “Coming to the last race and battling for the title was great, but missing out also really hurts. We ultimately come here to win the championship and to fight for it is great, but to miss out just like that after a really strong year is... It's just one of those ones where I'm very proud of the year we put together, but I feel like we came away with not the main prize. It's left me wanting more.

“I look back with a bit of a mix of emotions, and then you start to look at areas where we could have maybe done better. We didn't start the season off as strong as we would have liked, but we really recovered that with some great performances.

“Ultimately. the weird thing was our qualifying performance was maybe not as strong as we were expecting with the new format, because historically we've been pretty good there, which obviously I think hurt us a little bit. Luckily, we had some really strong race pace throughout the whole year, which recovered a lot of those compromised starting positions.”

"Coming to the last race and battling for the title was great, but missing out also really hurts" Mitch Evans

The failure to consistently feel comfortable with the new qualifying format afflicted both Jaguar drivers, as Evans’ team-mate Sam Bird frequently spoke of falling on the wrong side of the top-four cut-off in the group stage by a scant margin. That can be down to a litany of factors: track position, timing and tyre preparation are all variables here, and Jaguar may have just missed the mark on any of those fronts. Undoubtedly, the team will have been hard at work to unpick those threads.

On average, Evans had the seventh-best grid position last year, falling behind Jake Dennis and Nyck de Vries to underline how compromised the start of the race could be. And sure, his roars through the order could often undo a ropey qualifying session, but it’s simply easier to start from the front. That being said, having the best average grid position doesn’t entirely indicate success; Antonio Felix da Costa had the best average of anyone last season, but the Portuguese couldn’t manipulate that into a concerted title tilt.

In any case: after two title near-misses, will Evans make it third time lucky?

You can bet that he’ll carry that mantra into 2022-23. He’s had time to process the title loss, and he’s over it; now, his steely determination is focused on giving Jaguar the best possible opportunity for glory into Formula E’s new era. The difference this time is that, after a few years of iterative progress, the new cars require a huge reset in approach – not just from the teams, but from the drivers as well.

PLUS: How Jaguar got its teeth into Formula E's Gen3 development race

On average, Evans had the seventh-best grid position last year

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Motorsport Images

Thus, there’s no guarantee that Jaguar will retain its position as a front-running team from the get-go. The Big Cat cannot be written off, but it must take advantage of the expected early-season chaos to continue at the top. Evans knows this, and knows that it’ll take time to feel as comfortable as it did at the end of the Gen2 era.

“In general, I was really proud [with last year],” Evans explains, “and you want to carry that momentum and that confidence in the season. But it is such a massive reset, because there‘s only so much you can bring into it. Mentally, you come in with good spirits and high hopes, and you think ‘hey, now it's time to go one better’, and that's definitely the target.

“But on the other hand, you've got to be a little bit realistic and accept this is a complete reset, all starting from...not quite scratch, but there's not many things we can take from Gen2 into Gen3. So we're going to have to build that those foundations a little bit, again, with what this car needs.

“There's a clear goal within the team; we've come bloody close, and now it’s a big year to try and obviously go for that title. One big thing is trying to start off strongly, and that's something that I really want to target. After last year, that's definitely somewhere where we made life a little bit harder for ourselves.”

In that, Evans is alluding to the difficult start to 2021-22 that Jaguar endured, having conspicuously lacked pace in the Saudi Arabia and Mexico openers. He scored a solitary point in those opening three races, Bird scoring a handful more, as it looked dire for the team. The six-week gap between Mexico and Rome afforded Jaguar’s engineers time to course correct, which thrust Evans back into the mix with a stunning double-victory in Rome’s two races.

The turnaround in fortunes was exceptional, but Evans and Jaguar would surely rather not have to perform such heroics. To win this year’s title, they must hit the ground running in Mexico.

This will be helped by having the Envision team on board running the Jaguar powertrains; the two teams can share data and patch up any points of exposure that may leave the other team vulnerable. Jaguar team principal James Barclay reckoned that this was one of the areas where it lost out to Mercedes in the previous year, as the German manufacturer had Venturi on board.

Jaguar suffered a difficult start to last season before a huge turnaround saw Evans take a stunning double-victory in Rome’s two races

Photo by: Alastair Staley / Motorsport Images

Jaguar’s collective testing efforts in Valencia weren’t exactly filled with fanfare; Evans and Bird showed flashes of potential, but the Warwickshire manufacturer ran with little intent to show its full hand. In the race simulation held on the Wednesday afternoon, the team opted to run its two works drivers in clear air rather than indulge in the temptation to battle with the other drivers on the track. That said, Sebastien Buemi sustained a heavy shunt on the final day in his Jaguar-powered Envision after a braking problem, which will have precipitated worries ahead of Mexico.

PLUS: 10 things we learned from Valencia Formula E testing

For his part, Evans doesn’t know what to expect in the first race. Jaguar’s inconsistent formbook at the Mexico City venue aside, the drivers are in the dark regarding the pecking order in the 2022-23 championship – and likely will be until the first few races have come to a close.

“I've got no idea, just being completely honest. I've won in Mexico in the past, while last year was a real struggle for us as a team. Now we've got a whole new car to deal with, slight modifications in the track layout (the addition of an extra chicane), new regs to get on top of...it's just up in the air, really.

"As a team, we need to be as prepared as possible because there's a lot of hurdles" Mitch Evans

“As a team, we need to be as prepared as possible because there's a lot of hurdles; there's a lot of new things to get on top of operationally from a sporting point of view, just to make sure we're slick come Mexico.

“But if you're a betting man, she's a dangerous game to play.”

Regardless of your familiarity with the bookies, Evans surely has to be one of the favourites for title glory...so long as the I-Type 6 proves to be a regular contender. Across the past two seasons he’s probably been the most consistently impressive driver, and certainly one of the most complete racers on the grid, but too many unwelcome issues have stymied his progress from Formula E’s 'nearly man' to a title winner.

And that simply won’t do for Evans’ aspirations. He wants to win – and he can, if Lady Luck smiles upon him with good grace.

Jaguar’s collective testing efforts in Valencia weren’t exactly filled with fanfare, though Evans and Bird showed flashes of potential

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images