Polesitter Evans was able to cover off fellow front-row starter Pascal Wehrlein, whom he had beaten to pole by a quarter of a second, and begin managing his race from the start.
But as the first driver in the queue, his energy consumption was naturally higher compared to his rivals, but Evans felt that he was doing enough to preserve energy in the car and remain competitive in his bid to secure a third consecutive Formula E victory.
Instead, he found out from his Jaguar team that he was down on power and was forced to be even more sparing in his energy use, which left him vulnerable to Wehrlein, Jean-Eric Vergne and eventual race winner Stoffel Vandoorne.
“It was not the best,” Evans recalled. “It was looking pretty good before the race, and obviously kept the lead at the start. The first few laps I was underconsuming and our plan was looking strong.
“But we got the energy and it was a bit of a shock when I found that I was down on energy.
“Obviously towing everyone around wasn’t great but yeah, I just was a bit surprised. Obviously the whole approach changes, you start to try and obviously underconsume and to recover energy.”
Mitch Evans, Jaguar Racing, 2nd position
Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images
Evans said that once the drivers around him started to take attack mode, he eventually lost out more ground, and was fighting to remain in the hunt for good points.
The New Zealander said that it was emblematic of a “typical Formula E” race, and that he and his team could not rest on their laurels after a dominant weekend in Rome.
“Attack mode started to unfold and I got shuffled back a bit, we just lost out with that. I need to look at why we chose the first one because I actually lost out to Pascal as well,” he said.
“Unfortunate for him, he was having a strong race and not sure what happened with him, but fortunately I got him from that because I was like in recovery mode to try and equalise energy on these guys.
“But obviously I wanted to try and keep in the race as well, so it was quite hard and it was quite stressful. But I think we recovered really well and I think to get second today, we’re very lucky.
“Obviously something’s gone wrong somewhere because the car felt fine but just the efficiency and the energy wasn’t quite there.
“It’s a big difference to Rome, where I was the other end of it. I’d say it was just typical Formula E, you can’t get too ahead of yourself and you’ve always got to have things perfect.
“Maybe our energy prep wasn’t ideal and we had to pay the price today.”
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