Mitch Evans heads into this weekend’s Formula E season-opening Mexico City E-Prix “100 per cent” tired of “being the bridesmaid”, with him finally wanting to become the bride and win the World Championship.
The Jaguar TCS Racing driver has lost out in the title fight in each of the last three seasons; however, he’s hopeful that Season 10 can finally be his year. The Kiwi certainly heads to the Mexican capital in good spirits, as he topped last October’s pre-season test in Valencia.
Mexico City was actually a bad weekend for Evans 12 months ago, with his title pursuit having really not got underway until his victory in São Paulo. Jaguar in general struggled for outright pace 12 months ago, leaving Evans to start the Season 9 opener in 10th and finish in eighth.
Much better is expected from the 29-year-old and the factory Jaguar outfit this weekend, considering the strong off-season they’ve had. For Evans to finally become Formula E World Champion, he must start the season well, something he failed to do, as mentioned, last season.
Whilst the 10-time race winner can afford to have a bad weekend in Mexico City, it would immediately leave him with work to do in Diriyah. Evans is aware of this and recognises that he needs to “start obviously better than last year”, given that he simply left himself with too much ground to make up.
To put it into some context, prior to his 2023 win in Brazil, Evans wasn’t even in the top 10 of the Drivers’ Championship. Performing at a high level isn’t the only requirement to being successful in Formula E, though, as you do require some luck. This is exactly what he didn’t have last season, most notably in Hyderabad and Jakarta where he was taken out by Sam Bird.
Of course, Evans also took out his new teammate, Nick Cassidy, in Rome, which effectively ended both of their title chances. Having Cassidy alongside him does increase the pressure on Evans somewhat, considering that he’s led Jaguar superbly the last few years.
Evans knows that Cassidy will have the “same mindset” as him ahead of the season-opener, although he’s making sure to not “put any pressure” on himself despite wanting to win the title.
“We’ll see. It’s been the same story for the last few seasons, to be honest. Look, I’m not putting any expectations on it. I go into every season wanting to win the title. Am I sick in being the bridesmaid? 100 per cent,” Evans said following a question by Motorsport Week, during a roundtable with select media.
“I feel like the last few seasons I’ve been operating at a good level and it’s not turned out as I would have liked. So I think you just need things to fall your way a little bit. Some things out of your control can really influence the outcome.
“So, yeah, I just want to start obviously better than last year and obviously as a team, hoping we got the same performance level that we had last year, and I think we can have a really good crack at it. You know, obviously Nick will have the knowledge. He just missed out, so he’ll be obviously fighting or having the same mindset as me.
“And there’s a few guys out there that maybe had difficult years last year that will obviously want to go out there and try and improve on things from last year. But personally, yeah, I go into every year the same. I’m not trying to put any pressure on it because you can’t really force these things and if you do, it can sometimes be worse for you.
“So I’m relaxed. I just want to try and do my job and then have a consistent year, and then if I’ve done a good enough job, come London, it should all be looking pretty good.”
