After both Kiwis set impressive qualifying lap times in the group stages, Mitch Evans just lost out to the Nissan of Oliver Rowland in the quarter‑final qualifying Duel. Nick Cassidy delivered an impressive lap to finish P3 in his group but unfortunately had his lap time deleted because of a technical infringement.
In front of a sell‑out crowd of Formula E fans, at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez, Mitch lined up on the grid in P5 and put up a good fight to put himself in position to progress in the closing stages of the race. On Lap 17, Mitch took his first four minutes of Attack Mode which, for this season, triggers not only an extra 50kw of power, but also all‑wheel drive capability. With this activated, Mitch was able to climb six places to a promising P4 position.
After the majority of the field had completed their Attack Mode activations, Mitch was in P8 with his final boost remaining and slightly up on energy to the cars in front of him. In the closing laps, as Mitch was about activate his final Attack Mode, the Andretti of Nico Müller experienced a legality cut, causing Nico to slow dramatically. Despite Mitch doing his best to react, he was unable to avoid a collision. The incident caused him to retire from the race with what looked like a great opportunity to progress in the closing laps.
Nick Cassidy started the race at the back of the pack in P22 ‑ a challenge in any Formula E race but one which Nick and the team felt determined to make the most of. On Lap 27, Nick activated his first six minutes of Attack Mode, but any opportunity for progression with this benefit, was quickly taken away by the first Safety Car. Nick used his remaining two minutes of Attack Mode in Lap 34 before finishing the race in P12.
JAMES BARCLAY JAGUAR TCS RACING TEAM PRINCIPAL:
Today has been a rather unusual day for us, an E‑Prix with no points, something we haven’t experienced in our last 23 consecutive races. Mitch was in a strong position, with a late Attack Mode still to use and slightly up on energy but what appears to be a legality cut for the car in front of him resulted in Mitch unable to avoid contact. Nick started in P22 and we knew it would be a challenging race from this position. With all the cars around him on the same strategy, we couldn’t make the progress that we wanted to. Another good drive from Nick up to P12, but unfortunately it wasn’t enough to get into the points. We’ll now look forward to Jeddah and use this as motivation to get back to scoring strong points for Jaguar TCS Racing.
MITCH EVANS:
I started in fifth, so I was hoping for a better result, the race wasn’t fantastic and the incident at the end was unavoidable. I was right behind Nico but he had an issue and suddenly slowed. I tried to react but I just caught his left‑rear, so there was nothing I could really do. Overall, it was a disappointing outcome so we have work to do before the next race in Jeddah.
NICK CASSIDY:
Today has been really frustrating. As a team we made fantastic progress this weekend. We started with a challenging FP1 but made all the right steps to have a really strong car for Qualifying. I was able to get into the Duels with only delivering one push lap which was incredible, so to have my lap time deleted was really frustrating. Mexico City is a hard track to overtake on so starting from the back made it hard to progress. We will now look ahead to Jeddah and spend time in the gap continuing to improve our performance.