Evans 'annoyed' after 'frustrating' opening rounds

Mitch Evans has endured a "frustrating" start to Season 10, with him having been impacted by something in all three races this year. The Kiwi currently sits fifth in the Drivers' Championship on 21 points; however, he should arguably have considerably more.

Everything which has impacted Evans so far this season has been outside of his control, to add to his frustration. He endured a steering issue during the first race of the campaign in Mexico City, before being the victim of a second move under braking from Jean–Eric Vergne in Diriyah race one.

Evans and Vergne had two incidents in the opening race of the Diriyah double-header, a venue where the Jaguar driver was very fast. In the first incident, Evans was pushed into the wall by Vergne after exiting the Attack Mode activation zone.

In the second incident, he ran very deep into Turn 18 on the final lap, as a result of Vergne moving twice under braking whilst Evans was trying to dive up his inside. As a result of going so deep into the corner, Evans dropped from third to fifth. Neither incident was investigated, something which caught the entire team by surprise.

He then had an issue with his car during qualifying ahead of the second race in Diriyah, although this wasn't discovered until after the session. This problem was very annoying for Evans, who topped FP3 prior to qualifying.

Had it not been for all the issues and incidents which have plagued Evans so far in 2024, he would likely be just behind the championship leader, and his new teammate, Nick Cassidy.

Pace is clearly not an issue for Evans, who was asked by RacingNews365 how frustrating he's found the start of the season?

Missed 'some good opportunities'

"Yeah, it is frustrating, just generally a bit disappointed with how the season started," Evans said. "Because I feel like we've been, you know, one of the quickest cars on average, from all the practices, qualifyings, etc.

"I just haven't been able to convert it into a decent result. My best shot was probably in Diriyah race one, but we didn't execute the race properly. Then, obviously, in the last lap, I had a go at Vergne, and it didn't come off the way I would have liked.

"So I lost some places, and then obviously in Diriyah race two we had an issue in qualifying that we found afterwards. After being quickest in practice, that was disappointing, because that second race, the race format was a lap less, so less energy saving, therefore less overtaking.

"So to make that progress back was always gonna be tricky. So yeah, just generally a little bit annoyed with how it's started, but still some good points on the board. But, you know, I've walked away after Saudi feeling like we've left some good opportunities on my side of the garage, but it's still early days.

"We obviously seem to have the pace, which is obviously one of the main things, but you know, I'm definitely needing to start to ramp up in terms of big points and to get some bigger runs on the board. So that's definitely the focus.

"I mean, it's always the focus, but I feel like, yeah, I'm not on the back foot, but I am a little bit. Luckily, it's only been three races with about 13 to go, so I'm still feeling obviously very, very optimistic."