For the second time this season, Sam Bird has apologised to team-mate Mitch Evans and everyone at Jaguar TCS Racing, after the Briton took his team-mate out on Saturday in the Jakarta E-Prix.
Jaguar Team Principal James Barclay won’t be remembering Saturday’s tenth round of the 2022/23 ABB FIA Formula E World Championship anytime soon, with both Evans and Bird having qualified poorly. Neither driver progressed to the duels, with all the Jaguar-powered cars having seemingly struggled.
Despite their poor performance in qualifying though, both Evans and Bird progressed into the points during the race, until the incident occurred at the first corner. Similar to their collision in Hyderabad, Bird simply carried too much speed into the corner and braked too late, with Evans having been helpless. Bird went into the back of his team-mate, sending him into the barrier on the outside of the corner.
The Briton took “full responsibility” for crashing into Evans, with Bird having apologised to everyone at the Coventry-based team. He’s opening to “regroup tonight” and perform better in the second race on Sunday.
“I take full responsibility for the incident today on track and want to apologise to the team for the mistake. We had a difficult qualifying and race, and unfortunately so far this weekend, the car hasn’t been performing at the level we would hope. We’ll regroup tonight and come back stronger tomorrow.”
Evans failed to discuss the incident after the race and simply noted that he would’ve scored a “few points” had he not been punted into the barrier, with the Kiwi needing a big result on Sunday to keep himself in the title fight.
“I had a relatively good opening lap and made up a place but ultimately we’ve struggled with pace so far this weekend. I was in a decent position towards the end of the race and would have scored a few points, but that was all I could really manage today. We need to try and make the car faster on this circuit for tomorrow.”
