Evans resets Jaguar’s season with surprise Miami win

Mitch Evans is counting on his win in the Miami E-Prix to help Jaguar "reset its season" after a torrid start to the Formula E campaign.

Going into Miami, both he and teammate Antonio Felix da Costa had retired from a race and finished 11th, leaving the team that dominated the latter stages of last season with zero points on the board. But when rain arrived just before the race, it brought Jaguar right into contention when it hadn’t expected to be.

• RACE REPORT: Evans breaks Formula E's all-time wins record with victory at Miami E-Prix

“It's been a really tough start – raw pace, not quite there, especially in the dry this weekend,” Evans said. “It's been surprisingly bad, so the rain really saved me.

“That's in the back of my mind. I know ultimate pace is still lacking a little bit. So I need to work hard if I'm going to have a crack at this championship or get things back on track.

“Today in the wet the car was hooked from the first corner. And I don't know what they did – I guess we have to do the opposite of the dry because it's worked well in the wet here.”

Evans left it late to take his two Attack Mode boosts, and was able to progress with the first, using his second shot at the additional 50kW of power and four-wheel-drive to consolidate his lead over Porsche’s Nico Müller rather than reclaim it.

“It’s full credit to the team – they gave me a rocket ship, and that makes life so much easier, especially in these conditions,” he said. “You can kind of dictate when you want to do your Attacks. I can get close to the front without doing any Attacks when everyone had done an Attack in front of me.

“I was picking cars off a lot easier than I was expecting and then it was just trying to cover off Nico. He was also really, really quick. It was just once I got ahead of them. I was obviously just trying to cover him off for the last Attack. We both had six minutes left, but I just had enough pace to go to keep him behind.”

Evans’ victory moves him to the top of Formula E’s all-time wins list, but unlike Sebastien Buemi, the man he moves ahead of with his latest win, and third-most-successful Lucas di Grassi, he’s yet to win a championship, and checking off that box still means more to him than the race wins record.

“It's a special milestone, 15 wins – it's a good number,” he said. “I want to continue; there are things I want to do in this championship. Obviously, the big one is still lingering, but it’s something to be proud of, and hopefully it can kind of lead us to reset our season.”