Image via @FIAFormulaE
Watch: Mitch Evans wins a dramatic Mexican ePrix
Mitch Evans survived first lap contact with pole sitter Andre Lotterer to claim his first win of the Formula E season in Mexico.
Image via @FIAFormulaE
Mitch Evans won an incident-packed Mexico City ePrix, taking his first win of this season and only his second overall.
Lotterer takes pole, Abt cleared to race
Andre Lotterer’s Mexican outing started on a high as he bagged Porsche’s first-ever Formula E pole position.
The German clocked a 1:07.922 to grab pole by 0.063s ahead of Jaguar Racing’s Evans and Mercedes-Benz EQ rookie Nyck de Vries.
Sebastian Buemi and Sam Bird were fourth and fifth having made their way into Super Pole while championship leader going into Mexico, Stoffel Vandoorne, round out the top ten.
Mahindra Racing’s Pascal Wehrlein dropped to the back of the grid after a penalty was applied for changing the gearbox.
Daniel Abt, despite suffering a massive 20G force crash in practice and being checked out in hospital, was cleared to race.
Lotterer and Vandoorne crash out
Starting 1-2, neither Lotterer nor Evans made the best start on Saturday evening but Evans managed to sneak through.
Challenged by De Vries, Evans needed to put space between himself and the Mercedes and dived up the inside of Lotterer on the opening lap.
The duo made contact with the Porsche racer dropping to fifth after being pushed on the grass.
Evans took the lead. From there the Jaguar Racing driver did not look back.
Evans put in a flawless display, even managing a restart as a result of Nico Muller’s Turn 1 crash.
But while the New Zealander was faultless, Lotterer’s race went bad from to worse as, trying to recover ground, he hit the Turn 3 wall with shredding bodywork causing a fire.
Further back Antonio Felix da Costa and Jean-Eric Vergne played the team order game as DS Techeetah tried to establish a top dog by twice ordering the drivers to change position.
That was ultimately sorted out when Da Costa raced away from his team-mate.
Bird added his name to the list of crashers, out in the stadium section, while Vandoorne hit the Turn 3 wall.
Evans romps to victory
While the drama played out behind him Evans raced to a 4.2s victory ahead of Da Costa with Buemi in third place.
Defending Formula E champ Vergne recorded his best finish of the season in fourth ahead of Alexander Sims and Lucas di Grassi.
Abt retired with just minutes left on the clock.
The result
1 – Mitch Evans – Jaguar Racing – 46’42.093
2 – Antonio Felix da Costa – Techeetah – 4.271
3 – Sébastien Buemi – DAMS – 6.181
4 – Jean-Eric Vergne – Techeetah – 14.331
5 – Alexander Sims – Andretti Autosport – 19.244
6 – di Grassi – Team Abt – 28.346
7 – Oliver Rowland – DAMS – 29.750
8 – Edoardo Mortara – Venturi – 30.204
9 – James Calado – Jaguar Racing – 30.796
10 – Pascal Wehrlein – Mahindra Racing – 31.132
11 – Jérôme d’Ambrosio – Mahindra Racing – 32.818
12 – Robin Frijns – Virgin Racing – 33.665
13 – Maximilian Gunther – Andretti Autosport – 35.512
14 – Brendon Hartley – Dragon Racing – 36.399
15 – Oliver Turvey – NIO Formula E Team – 50.888
16 – Neel Jani – Porsche Team – 1’04.891
Stoffel Vandoorne – Mercedes – 1 Lap
Sam Bird – Virgin Racing – 5 Laps
Daniel Abt – Team Abt – 6 Laps
Ma Qing Hua – NIO Formula E Team – 11 Laps
Nyck de Vries – Mercedes – 18 Laps
Andre Lotterer – Porsche Team – 25 Laps
Felipe Massa – Venturi – 30 Laps
Nico Müller – Dragon Racing – 34 Laps
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