Formula E: Evans takes his third victory in Rome

The Roman track is very uneven, very narrow in places and very poorly visible in some corners – this condition played a fatal role in the course of Saturday’s race.

Mitch Evans started from pole position today and he got off to a good start and kept the lead. His Jaguar teammate Sam Bird, who also started the race from the front row, covered the rear and fended off Sasha Fenestrasz’ attack, but he and Mitch soon switched positions. At the same time, the speed of their cars allowed them to gradually escape the rest of the pack.

At that point, Pascal Wehrlein was unlucky, his electric Porsche car was left without a front wing at the fledgling flea market and the German had to return to the pits to replace the front fairing. It seemed that he had lost the chance of a normal result.

But already on the third lap, yellow flags appeared on the track and an electric safety car took off – Andretti racer Andretti Lotterer had an accident and heavily destroyed the car. He himself was not injured, but little remains of the suspension on the right side of his Porsche 99X Electric (Andretti uses equipment from a German company).

On the 5th lap they restarted and the battle on the track resumed. Bird was still in the lead, but not for long – almost immediately losing first position to Evans. Third was Fenestrasz, fourth was René Rast, a McLaren driver.

But on the next lap, Sasha went on the attack against Bird, neatly beat him, moved up to 2nd and rushed to chase the leader. At the same time, Bird could not stay in 3rd position, Rust also overtook him.

On lap 7, Evans was instructed by radio to use the powerful Attack Mode, which required going off the line in the turn 15 hairpin. But he failed to get back to the lead position, because after that, Fenestrasz activated the same mode, which made him add as well.

But on the 9th lap, very serious problems occurred on the track, as a result of which the race had to be stopped for a long time by red flags. Sam Bird lost control of the car after the 6th turn, he flipped and Sebastien Buemi crashed into it at full speed. This corner is narrow and almost blind, so the Briton’s broken car was later rammed by Edoardo Mortara in his electric Maserati car. He too did not have time to react to an unexpected obstacle.

A total of six cars were damaged in one way or another as a result of the “domino effect” in the incident – in addition to those mentioned, Antonio Felix da Costa’s Porsche, Lucas di Grassi’s Mahindra and Van de ABT Cupra were also damaged. Robin Fryance damaged. Subsequently, it also emerged that the DS Penske team was feverishly repairing Jean-Eric Verne’s car in the pits. Most importantly, however, all riders seem to be okay, although of course a medical car immediately appeared at the scene of the accident and took Sam Bird to the track’s medical center.

By all accounts, such a serious incident has not happened in Formula E for a long time. The tarmac around Turn 6 was littered with debris and the guardrail was damaged on both sides, and it took time to get the track back in order.

The race resumed almost an hour after the start, although only 8 laps had been completed. The top five before the restart looked like this: Fenestrasz led the way, followed by Evans, Rust, Jake Dennis and Nick Cassidy. Besides, Dennis was just lucky in that accident: he was driving behind Bird, and when Sam’s car started to spin around the track, he miraculously managed to slip by.

Before the restart, the peloton completed a lap behind the safety car, but then the cars were lined up again on the starting field. There were only 14 left and the riders still had 16 laps to go.

Fenestrasz held onto the first position, Evans attacked him and Dennis managed to push Rust back and get into the top three. On lap 11, Dennis went on the attack on Evans, but he fought back.

On the next lap, Cassidy was able to overtake Rust, but there were some problems with the German McLaren, so Rene returned to the pits.

Meanwhile, Dennis was very actively attacking Evans, and it was clear that Mitch barely held second position, but still held it. But on lap 15, Jake managed to bring the attack to an end, and the leader of the championship personal classification first moved into 2nd position, and then famously defeated Fenestrasz and led the race.

At the same time, Sasha’s car batteries had less energy than his rivals, and it was more difficult for him to resist their attacks, which Evans took advantage of and got ahead of the Frenchman. Evans now had one job: to try and catch up with Dennis.

On lap 18, Nico Müller passed Fenestrasz, who continued to lose ground, while Swiss driver ABT Cupra was now running sixth.

When Dennis left the line to reactivate attack mode, Evans returned to first position, but of course Jake immediately began to pressure him, intent on taking the lead. But on lap 20 Mitch also went for the high power mode, so the battle for 1st position was postponed. At that point there was already quite a bit left for the finish and the end of the race promised to be interesting.

On lap 22 Evans launched a nice attack, took the lead again and immediately tried to make a gap on his pursuer. He was also helped by the fact that Dennis was attacked and beaten by Nick Cassidy! Jake soon missed Max Günther, a Maserati driver.

With two laps to go Evans’ Jaguar was ahead, almost two seconds behind Cassidy’s car, and it was clear that Mitch was close to victory. But then yellow flags appeared on one of the sectors, because a piece of a wing fell off someone’s car and left it in the middle of the track.

The riders had to be extra careful, but this did not affect the situation in the top three. The cars broke up at fairly noticeable intervals, and there was no longer any particular intrigue. But for 4th position a sharp battle broke out between Jean-Eric Verne and Jake Dennis. In the last lap, the two-time Formula E champion even took the lead, but Dennis managed to bounce back.

Although the batteries of Mitch Evans’ car were running low, there was plenty to keep the pace going all the way to the finish: the New Zealand Jaguar driver didn’t even let anyone near to take his third victory on the tricky circuit from Rome.

1.639 seconds later Nick Cassidy crossed the finish line and almost seven and a half seconds later Max Gunther. At the same time, Dennis, who until today led the individual standings, lost the first line to Cassidy, and Evans moved up to third place and is exactly 20 points behind Nick.

After a nice victory in Saturday’s race, commentators immediately started calling Mitch the “Roman Emperor”, he clearly felt an extra burst of energy and tomorrow he will try to repeat last year’s success with new energy – we remember that he in 2022 won both races of the Italian weekend.