The Jaguar Racing team left the DHL Valencia E-Prix weekend without points, as both British driver Sam Bird and New Zealand driver Mitch Evans failed to score in both races of the weekend at the Circuit Ricardo Tormo.
James Barclay, the team principal at Jaguar Racing, said: “Sometimes, the days where you are less successful are the days where you learn the most.”
Evans and Bird were in Group 1 qualifying for Saturday, as they were the top two contenders in the driver’s championship. They qualified in eighteenth and twenty-first position, which set them on the back foot immediately for the race: they had to fight their way to the top ten, where points would be scored.
Evans was involved in a collision with Sérgio Sette Câmara (Dragon-Penske Autosport) in the first race of the weekend, which led both drivers to retire. The Kiwi was dropped down three places in the next qualifying session. The track evolution of Sunday’s qualifying set him in the bottom half of the starting grid.
“Our pace was good today but some of the strategy calls didn’t work out in our favour,” reflected Evans. “We were really compromised a lot with the drying track conditions in qualifying.
“It’s nothing too major to worry about so we’re going to go away, take these learnings and focus on a a clean run in Monaco.”
Bird, driver’s championship leader after Round four in Rome, qualified his performance in Valencia as disappointing for himself and the team. Fortunately for him and Evans, all the teams in the top three positions of the team’s championship did not score a large number of points.
“Very disappointing weekend for myself and for Jaguar Racing,” said Bird. “Fortunately, from a damage limitation point of view, the people around us didn’t score huge points either.
“I’m really looking forward to Monaco and hopefully we can score some points there.”
Round six of the Formula E championship saw both Evans and Bird making large steps forward in the race, with the former moving from nineteenth to ninth, before an energy-conserving measure took him out of the points tally. Sam Bird managed to pass his old Envision Virgin Racing teammate Robin Frijns and the Dragon-Penske Autosport driver Nico Müller and finished fourteenth.
Bird remains joint third in the ABB FIA Formula E Drivers’ World Championship with 43 points alongside his old teammate Frijns. Kiwi Evans remains fifth in the championship with 39 points, ahead of René Rast (Audi Sport ABT Schaeffler).
The team stated they were looking forward to the next event in Monaco. Round seven of the Formula E World Championship will take place on Saturday 8 May 2021, in the full configuration of the Circuit de Monaco.
“We’ll be taking these learnings and putting them into our preparations for Monaco,” said Barclay. “We’re really looking forward to racing on this iconic circuit and hopefully putting the Jaguar I-TYPE 5 back into the points.”