Formula E Driver Mitch Evans an Exceptional Talent

Sitting in a business suite at the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Hong Kong, 23-year-old Formula E driver, New Zealander Mitch Evans is soft-spoken and unassuming.

But you need only ask Evans’ Panasonic Jaguar Racing team members to get an idea of just how explosive this kid is on the track.

“Without a shadow of a doubt Mitch has the talent to be in Formula One,” Jaguar team director James Barclay says.

“It’s great to see a young driver like him early in his career saying, ‘Actually, my future’s gonna be here in Formula E’.”

Born in Auckland, Evans shone in his rookie Formula E season last year as Jaguar made its debut, taking an impressive fourth place in Mexico.

“Mitch is a really exciting driver for us to have on board,” Barclay says. “He has a huge future in front of him. He sees an opportunity and very rarely lets it go to waste. Now he has a season under his belt, he comes in with that experience and is really confident.”

Winner of the 2011 New Zealand Grand Prix at just 16 years old, Evans took the GP3 title a year later – with Australian Formula One legend Mark Webber then labelling him an “exceptional talent” – and raced in GP2 for four years before signing for Jaguar.

“Last year in Hong Kong was tough,” Evans admits. “We were a brand new team, I was a rookie, it was the first race so it was really tricky. It just hit us like a tonne of bricks.

“There was so much to learn it was crazy, not just for myself but the whole team. It’s so hard to be prepared for everything that comes your way. It’s what we learnt to manage about the championship. “We’ll be taking all that experience from last year into this season – I’m a lot calmer this year than I was last year but as a team we’re really excited. We’re a completely different team now.”

Original article by Nicolas Atkin, South China Morning Post, December 1, 2017.