Formula E: Evans grabs Jakarta E-Prix win as Vergne’s win draught continues

Evans held off his final attack mode until he opened up a gap to the drivers behind him, and then used it to steal the race win of the first ever E-Prix in Indonesia away from Jean-Eric Vergne, who still hasn’t won a race this season.

Mitch Evans managed the race brilliantly to win the 2022 Jakarta E-Prix from the DS Techeetah of Jean-Eric Vergne, who held on to second place ahead of Edoardo Mortara.

The Jaguar TCS Racing driver started the race in P3, and moved up to P2 in the early stages of the race. He then cleverly held on to his final attack mode and deployed it towards the end of the race, helping him into the lead.

The race got underway without much drama, until a wheel came loose off Oliver Rowland’s Mahindra, which forced him to retire and brought out an early safety car. As the race resumed, both the DS Techeetah cars locked up their wheels in the same corner, and Mitch Evans capitalized on this by overtaking Antonio Felix Da Costa, who started in second place.

A little while later in the race, both the DS Techeetah cars activated their attack modes on the same lap, and Da Costa attempted to get past Evans, but wasn’t successful in doing so. He later lost P3 to Edouardo Mortara, and had to battle with championship leader Stoffel Vandoorne’s Mercedes to keep 4th place.

After losing the race lead while activating his second attack mode, polesitter Jean-Eric Vergne retook the race lead from Evans using the 13 per cent extra power available in the attack mode duration. However Mitch Evans still had an attack mode left in the bag which he reserved to use deeper in the race.

Evans only triggered the second attack mode once he was a decent amount of time clear of Mortara in 3rd place, and came out in front of him by the smallest of margins to retain P2 after activating attack mode. This left him with plenty of energy and a clear road up ahead to go on the chase after the race leader. He eventually caught Vergne and made a dive-bomb move on him to grab the race lead.

Vergne applied tons of pressure on the New Zealander – especially in the last 2 laps – which allowed Mortara to close into the battle for the lead. It could have gone either way between the 3 of them in the closing stages, but Vergne ended up aggressively defending instead of attacking Evans as he ran out of battery and the top 3 finished as is, with only 1 second separating the trio.

While Vergne is still to win a race this season, this result saw him inch that much closer to championship leader Stoffel Vandoorne. Mitch Evans now sits in P3 behind Vergne, and Mortara in P4, with only 12 points separating the 4 drivers.

Formula E World Driver’s Championship Standings After Round 9