2022 FIA Formula E World Championship Round 3, Mexico
Jaguar Racing was looking set for a doublepoints finish with two laps remaining of the Mexico City e-Prix. A decision by the race leaders to extend the race by another lap meant the fearless energy strategy ultimately left both Jaguar drivers and a number of other teams with an extra lap to complete.
As a result, Sam Bird andMitch Evans, who had fought through the pack, finished 15th and 19th respectively. Neither driver was able to progress from the group stages of qualifying after a close and challenging session. Mitch missed out on a ‘duel’ by just two hundredths of a second. Starting in 11th and 17th on the grid, New ZealanderMitch Evans and Briton Sam Bird collectively climbed 12 places into the points, showing the race pace and efficiency of the Jaguar I-TYPE 5. Evans capitalised on his ATTACKMODE early in the race, taking three places in two minutes while Bird also climbed inside the top ten by making decisive overtakes.
“This has been a really tough day,” said Sam Bird afterwards. “We were there in race speed but when you’re starting towards the back, it makes it really tricky. This championship is the hardest in the world. We have a long break now and I have full belief in our team that we can turn this around.We have a great team, an excellent race car and I’m really motivated for Rome.” A strategic decision from the Porsche team, who were leading the rest of the field, meant that the race went long and into an additional lap. This left the Jaguar Racing drivers an impossible task to defend positions while trying to save enough energy to take the chequered flag.
“Congratulations to Porsche on their first victory in Formula E,” said James Barclay, Jaguar Racing teamprincipal. “We have a race package that can compete, but our issue today was that we weremarginally off the pace in qualifying.We have seen how important this new qualifying format is and we haven’t been able to optimise that yet, althoughMitch was just a fraction offmaking the ‘duels’.We took a gamble today to be aggressive and that didn’t pay off but we’re here to race and to score big points so we decided to take that risk.We now have a long gap of six weeks, and a lot of work to do to ensure we come back and get our championship fight back on track in Rome.We have a great teamso we’ll rally together and come back fighting.”