Mitch Evans described his Marrakesh ePrix as a ‘tough day in the office’ as both Panasonic Jaguar Racing cars finished outside of the points.
Although he made contact with Loic Duval at the start of the race, Evans managed to move up into fourteenth place.
However, he then missed his braking point towards the end of the race, resulting in a lock-up and a brush with the wall.
“Tough day in the office in Marrakesh,” Evans said. “I had a frustrating start of the race after contact with Loïc Duval which put me out of position.
“I then spent the rest of the race trying to recover. Fortunately, I managed to gain some positions before I kissed the wall towards the end of the race after a lock up when I was trying to save some energy.
“Luckily, there was no damage to the car. It’s a shame about the race but that’s racing and the main thing is that we now have further data to analyse and digest during the gap to the next race.”
It wasn’t much better for his team-mate Adam Carroll, who started in last having had a spin in qualifying.
He did manage to move up some places during the race, and inherited fourteenth when Evans went into the wall at the end.
Carroll was optimistic though, saying “My race was compromised by a mistake in my qualifying lap. This meant I started at the back so I had a busy race trying to move up the pack.
“We had a quick car change and the second half of the race felt really strong. It was good to build on Hong Kong and the team is improving with every session.”
These sentiments were echoed by Team Director James Barclay, who saw the improvements in the team and reliability as cause for optimism.
“Even though we’ve had a tough race there are still many positives and further learnings that can be taken away from today.
“Ultimately we didn’t maximise our potential in qualifying, but we know we had a faster car than the times showed.
“We had no reliability issues throughout the weekend which is reassuring for our new team and we were moving forward up the grid.
“We also made some good improvements on team operations after lessons learnt in Hong Kong which is positive for Panasonic Jaguar Racing as a team.”
