Mitch Evans pins cause of 'destroyed' Formula E victory hopes: 'This place gives me PTSD'

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."