Protests by both DS Techeetah and BMW I Andretti against Mitch Evans’ third place in the Monaco Formula E race have been thrown out by race stewards for two different reasons.
The protest centred upon an incident 15 minutes into the Monaco E-Prix when Jaguar driver Evans was defending second position from the charging Jean-Eric Vergne’s DS Techeetah.
The two briefly touched at the modified harbourfront chicane and Evans cut the latter part of it and rejoined in third, while eventual race winner Antonio Felix da Costa capitalised and claimed second. His team-mate Vergne was compromised and fell back to fourth.
DS Techeetah enquired at the time through its team manager Nigel Beresford if Evans would give the position back to Vergne and initially it looked like that would not be sanctioned.
However, it subsequently was communicated to Evans that he had to give the place back when his engineer Josep Roca told him on the radio that “race direction changed their mind. Let JEV through as you attack.”
He subsequently did so but only when he went off line at Casino Square to take the mandatory attack mode, meaning that he effectively did not voluntarily let Vergne by and relinquish the position in manner that redressed the perceived advantage gained by cutting the chicane.
This was not placed under further investigation via the race director to the stewards and after the race DS Techeetah officially protested Evans.
But this was rejected because, according to the stewards “they took already a decision about the case which the competitor protested against”.
BMW i Andretti, which achieved fifth position in the race with Maximilian Guenther, also protested under the same basis but its official completion of the necessary documentation was completed outside the 30-minute post-race cut off, meaning it was thrown out immediately.
The Race understands that race officials indicated that they would look at the specific events of the incident for future consideration on how communications could be applied in other incidents of that kind in the future.
Although he did not directly address the relinquishing of a position to Vergne when he took the attack mode, Evans did say that “the whole race was a bit messy to be honest.”
“I got caught up with JEV, I was really good on energy, just biding my time and he put a really last-minute move on me in the chicane. It was awkward, it was so tight there.
“He was sort of half up there but then he hit me and I went through. I wasn’t sure if I had to give it up or not. And I got a really late call that I had to, like three or four laps later.”
