until Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League
The last time a trio of Formula E wins by one driver was pulled off was when Antonio Felix da Costa followed his Marrakesh win in February 2020 with his title-defining double at Berlin six months later.
That hardly felt like a trio of successes due to the pandemic-affected gap, yet it was in fact one of only two such occasions a driver has pulled off an unofficial E-Prix triple.
Sebastien Buemi’s early dominance in the third Formula E season of 2016-17 began with wins in Hong Kong, Marrakesh and Buenos Aires but famously didn’t guarantee him the title after the ‘FE/WEC clashgate’ fiasco later that season.
Mitch Evans, therefore, stands to join a select club at Monaco this weekend, and such was his form and dominance in Rome last time out, the odds on him achieving such a feat are less than favourable for punters.
Evans was embroiled in a thrilling battle with his close friend, business partner and rival da Costa last season. But despite executing his own memorable move on the DS Techeetah driver at the flat-out Beau Rivage section of track, the Kiwi ultimately was not able to hold onto the lead with dwindling energy figures in the closing laps.
He eventually even lost out on second place at the finish line as he ran out of usable energy, allowing Robin Frijns through as he was demoted to the bottom rung of the podium.
Evans though has that rare quality in Formula E, momentum, and a single win on the streets where he lives would likely have a much more emotional pull than the double he achieved in Rome.
Technically Monaco is kind to the Jaguar I-Type 5, which has a great aptitude for strong rotation capabilities through its suspension system design.
Paddock sages often wax lyrical about its traction from hairpins and tight corners too, but Jaguar technical head Phil Charles reckons there are others slightly stronger.
“I would say we’re OK on traction, we’re certainly not one of the best though,” he told The Race.
“There are a couple of others, maybe three other cars better than us. I think where we are particularly good though is in 90-degree corners.
“We’ve got a particular suspension that works in that scenario. It works really well in other scenarios as well but that’s a real sweet spot.
“The key to getting great balances at tracks like Monaco is being able to get the car rotated and lined up for the exit,” added Charles.
“You want to destabilise it at the point where the drivers are screaming to try and have stability on the way in, and then have something on the exit. You’re trying to link those two things with quick rotation. That’s quite a hard thing to do without upsetting either phase as well.”
Monaco doesn’t quite have the same amount of 90-degree corners as Rome has. However, last year Evans and Sam Bird were able to manage apex speeds and tyres well up until Evans got involved in a tussle with Jean-Eric Vergne at the chicane and slightly overspent his energy and flared his tyre temperature up a little.
Such fine margins decide Formula E races and racing at the front at Monaco is absolutely key to challenging for a win.
And you can add into this mix the difficulty in taking the attack zone at the outer extremities of the Casino Square entrance, which makes it hard to find a gap to take it without losing positions.
This is what Charles often refers to as the ‘the crocodile’ where cars can “often get a split in the race, you end of up either side of the crocodile head”.
That didn’t really happen at Monaco last time around and if that remains the case this time, it will be interesting to see if Evans or indeed Bird, should they be in positions to do so, ride the said giant reptile analogy as expertly as they did in Rome.
Evans has historically often left his attack mode deployment late, as was evidenced in both of the Rome races. The risk in this is obvious and in the second race, there were some moderate heart-beat flutters when a late-race caution threatened to catch Evans out.
Additionally, Monaco will also feature pack racing as there is a good tow benefit in traffic, meaning should team-mates qualify close to each other then intra-team slipstream benefits – practised ad nauseum at the pre-season Valencia tests – will come into useful operation.
The emphasis is on Evans right now, but team-mate Bird has proved himself to be very adept on the Monaco streets. He drove a superb race last season from a lowly 16th on the grid to seventh, although it could have been an even better score had it not been for some last-lap chaos at Rascasse.
Bird though heads into Monaco 2022 knowing he will have to take a three-place grid drop for his penultimate-lap contretemps with Nick Cassidy’s Envision Audi in Rome.
It means that the Jaguar driver will be going all out for pole position but he has yet to get beyond the quarter-final stage of the new duel formatted qualifying system this season.
When Oliver Rowland had exactly the same scenario in 2019 (for causing an accident at the preceding Paris E-Prix) he put his Nissan on pole but despite having a visibly quicker car was only able to come through to second behind winner Vergne.
That though was on the truncated Formula E track that bypassed the rise and fall of Massenet to the Nouvelle Chicane, on the full track Bird would have a chance if he can at the very least get to the final stage of qualifying.
Formula E though has a nasty habit of quickly turning the champagne flat. Nyck de Vries would have told you that on the second day at Diriyah and Porsche, despite useful points in Rome, expected more after its Mexico heroics.
Charles has a neat way of encapsulating why the formbook is so often tipped and shaken.
“In F1 if you have someone who’s really good at aero, they win a race by a second a lap,” he says.
“In Formula E, if you have someone that has a set-up advantage for example, that suits the track or a powertrain, and it’s got a little bit of something – a couple of key parameters worth a couple of tenths here and there, it can be telling.
“It’s also really easy to get the tyre slightly out of phase or get it ever so slightly wrong and suddenly you fall off that peak.
“All that is why the championship is so good, consistency is the name of the game.
“You have to learn every time you fall off that little cliff and try and get yourself back up there more often than not, and it’s really hard.”
