Evans wins crash-marred Rome Formula E race

Jaguar Formula E driver Mitch Evans converted pole position into victory during a fraught opening Rome E-Prix that was stopped because of a huge multi-car pile-up triggered by Evans’s team-mate Sam Bird.

Evans had anything but a straightforward run to his third race win of the season, beginning with losing the race lead to team-mate Bird, albeit something he quickly reversed on lap five.

Sacha Fenestraz passed him for the lead a couple of laps later but then the race was red-flagged after a violent multi-car shunt, triggered by Bird losing control of his Jaguar, eliminated six cars and left a straight full of debris and broken Gen3 bodywork.

Bird spun his Jaguar at the high-speed Turn 6 blind left-hander and was first collected by Envision’s Sebastien Buemi before Edoardo Mortara’s Maserati slammed into the rear of Bird’s Jaguar.

Antonio Felix da Costa was right behind Buemi and powerless to avoid slamming into the wall, skirting briefly under Buemi’s Envision-run car.

Abt Cupra’s Robin Frijns and Mahindra’s Lucas di Grassi were almost eliminated in the chaos, meaning just 14 cars took the race restart.

When the race resumed Jake Dennis made a rapid start, moving up from fourth to first within the first five laps.

He proved to be Evans’s main competition and it initially appeared to be moving away from Evans when the Jaguar driver missed the activation zone for his second attack mode.

But instead Andretti seemingly miscalculated Dennis’s energy and he soon slipped behind Evans and Envision’s Nick Cassidy who enjoyed his usual late-race flourish.

Cassidy couldn’t make a serious challenge on his title rival Evans, who was able to cruise in the final laps of the race to his fourth victory on the streets of Rome.

Second place for Cassidy allows him to overhaul Dennis at the top of the drivers’ championship.

Maximilian Guenther survived multiple clashes to claim the final spot on the podium at Maserati’s home race.

Dennis ultimately slipped to fourth, narrowly fending off DS Penske’s Jean-Eric Vergne and the Abt Cupra of Nico Mueller who recorded his and his team’s best result of 2023.

Ex-points leader Pascal Wehrlein, who came into the race 16 points adrift of the lead, used the red flag to bounce back from breaking his front wing on the back of Guenther on the first lap, ultimately recovering to seventh, although that became ninth when he picked up a post-race penalty for speeding under the red flag.

Therefore Nissan’s Norman Nato ended up seventh ahead of NIO 333’s Sergio Sette Camara, Wehrlein and team-mate Fenestraz who had a miserable late-race slide down the order from first to 10th.

Rene Rast – who took the restart third – had to bring his McLaren into the pits shortly after the race resumed, capping off a miserable day for the team after a qualifying shunt meant Jake Hughes didn’t even start the race.

It all went wrong for NIO 333’s Dan Ticktum too as he also ran into the back of the sole remaining Maserati of Guenther while running eighth, breaking his front wing, necessitating a pitstop that ruined his chance of points.

The first safety car was required just three laps into the race when Andre Lotterer shunted after losing control of his Porsche-powered Andretti on the bumps at Turn 6.

Race Results