How the Race was WON - Jaguar back on top! |2026 Miami E-Prix

Mitch Evans took the win in Miami, making him the driver with the most amount of wins in Formula E. A record-breaking win. First of all, before we get into how that win was possible, let us know what you thought of the race. Who was your driver of the day? Get it in the comments, we want to understand. That win today did not come without a lot of things making it possible. Strategy, patience, discipline, attack mode use. Some things that even happened before the race even started. Albert and I are going to get into all of that in this video, so stick around. But first, let's talk to our winning driver, Mitch Evans. Mitch Evans, what a drive. Record-breaking win. Congrats. Thanks, mate. It was an awesome race. Had a crazy amount of pace in the wet. In the dry, it's been a really big challenge for us. Just being off all weekends. But when you've got pace like that, strategy and passing people become a little bit easier. Very happy. I wasn't expecting that going into the race. 15 wins in Formula E is a really special milestone, something I'm proud of. It's a huge accomplishment. You mentioned it there, some key bits of strategy that allowed that race win to be possible. Me and Albert are going to go into that in more detail in this video. But I've got to ask, how much of that came almost before the race even started? Predicting the weather with the set-up and even just last-minute changes on the grid. Honestly, it was really challenging because, as usual, you get different forecasts. We started getting a few spits before the race or even before we actually went on for the lap to grid. In the end, it was quite stable, so it was very hard to... What do you do with tyre pressures? What do you do with set-up? The team nailed it. Just kept it really simple. As I said, after the first lap or two, I knew that I had a bit of a beast underneath me. I just had to try and execute on my side and get the job done. Of course, we've seen how much Atacmo plays in having a good strategy in Formula E this season or in every season since it's been here. How crucial was it today to get that first use in nice and early? Yeah, I think we were one of the later ones to go for our first one, which probably 12 months ago I would have gone earlier. I think Flippe went first, a few other guys went first ahead of us. But I had so much pace, I could catch back up to them after their first attack and then go for my first attack after I got to the back of that front pack. Once I knew I could do that, then I knew we were in for a good shot. Those final stages of the race where you were in the league, you were up on energy, you were hitting all your targets perfectly, you're in Atacmo, you must have been rubbing your hands at that point. Yeah, obviously it gets to a point of the race where you know it's yours, you just have to bring it home, so you just don't want to make any silly mistakes. But I felt like I just had a couple of attempts on Nico all the time, so that gave me some good confidence not to overdo it and try too hard and outbrake myself. I knew the car was capable of pulling it off, it was just down to me to do my job and bring it home. Once I had that one-minute attack overlap, and I stayed ahead after I activated the second attack, it was all about execution after that. So, Albie, that was an interesting race. A lot to dive into there. Mitch Evans with a record-breaking win. What can you tell us? Because a lot happened. There was definitely a lot that happened. It was maybe not as back and forth as the couple of races we had before, it was a little bit more spread out, but we can have a look at the race trace here from start of race to the end. So, we started the race under safety car, so this is sort of the first four laps here before they bunched up and took their normal start. And so you can already tell the shape of the race isn't your usual sort of U-shape where they slow down and then speed back up and they're sort of really closely bunched. That's what we would normally see in an FE race. But with those wet conditions, you can see that the grids really spread out and some cars just did not have any pace at all. You look at Gunther, you look at Dan Tickdom, and they just really sort of fell off the earth there. And that just sort of shows you a lot was happening on the grid from a tyre and car point of view. That's what I was going to say, because you mentioned it perfectly there, is that the gaps are so much bigger than we usually see that early into the race. So, does that suggest that there was something in terms of setup or even strategy on the grid that had an impact instantly? Exactly. You remember obviously in qualifying it was cold, but it was still dry. But then between qualifying and the race, heavens opened up and the track was wet, so all the teams would have been watching the radars really closely and then trying to decide what's going to happen in the race. Is it going to dry up? Is it going to stay wet? What do we do with the car setup? Most importantly, what are we doing with the tyre pressures? Because that's something they can still adjust all the way up to the five-minute board on the grid. And you can see, again, depending on where you start the race, maybe if you're further back, you take a bit more of a punt. If you're in the front, you just want to be the same as everybody else and just make sure that you're in the mix. And you see these cars that are just falling off the earth here. They just don't have the same performance. You look at Naito, you look at Cassidy, they just didn't have the pace of the others in the front. And most of the time, that's a tyre pressure thing. So essentially, tell me if I'm wrong here, but they've set up for the track to dry a lot more significantly than it actually did. So they're effectively racing on dry setup when it comes to tyres, but it's still wet. Exactly. So you can sort of set your pressures to the minimum pressure, which is what you want from a tyre performance in the dry. But in these kind of conditions where you need a lot of temperature in the tyre because it's just so cold and wet, you just raise the tyre pressures, you reduce that contact patch on the tyre, and that helps you generate that temperature. And clearly, the cars at the front definitely would have been more along the lines of that, and that's where the performance difference comes from. And you don't need to be a race engineer to see who it didn't go so well for, because they're literally, as you say, just falling off a cliff. Let's start, though, with the race winner himself, Mitch Evans. Talk me through the race. So Mitch, you can see after the safety car comes in and they do their normal start, Mitch was actually in the sort of top group, I would say. Right at the back of that top group, there were about six or seven cars up there. And there were a couple of other cars that took attack mode around him. So for me, actually, before the race, I was having this discussion with Sam, and I actually felt that was the right move strategically. Take your attack modes early, get out in the front, don't be in the mix with everybody else, just try to use that all-wheel drive while everybody still is on rear-wheel drive and trying to get their tyres up to temperature. You take your attack modes early, you have a big difference in performance, get out to the front and lead. And that's kind of what you saw Nika Muller do, they just used that attack mode very early, taking the attack mode pretty much right from the beginning of the race and staying up in that lead group. If you look at Mitch, he was sort of at the back of that first group, but he was still hanging on. And then by the time he took his first two-minute attack mode, then he was in a good position right at the front. And crucially, he left the six minutes towards the end so that he could basically cover off any attacks later on. And that's pretty much how he won. Interesting. So if we go towards the later stages of the race then, for looking at Mitch Evans specifically, when he came around to using that second use of attack mode, like you said, he had six minutes remaining. He was in the lead, he was up on energy. I mean, I said to him himself, he must have been rubbing his hands. That's quite a unique position for a Formula E driver to be in. Absolutely. I mean, to be fair, in those conditions, the energy is probably a little bit less important because they were driving pretty flat out in those conditions of low grip. That said, that six minute was key. So if I just zoom in right to the end of the race for these three, you can see that Pascal takes his attack mode on lap 32 and then literally the next lap later, Nico Muller also with a six-minute attack mode. He just covered him off nice and easy. So then everyone was on attack mode. Everybody had no energy issues. So again, he covered off Berlin quite easily. And then with Mitch, again, it was one of those, where he sees Muller take it on one lap, he easily covers him on the next lap. And by then it was just, I wouldn't say easy, but it was relatively straightforward. It's the early attack mode, but not as early as others. Not as early as some of the others. But I think in general, for me, they had good pace in the car, which always helps. They got their tyre pressures right. So he was able to stay in the front, along with his teammate, in the mix of the front. And then they timed their attack modes pretty reasonably. Not too early, not too late. Sort of just in the middle. Goldilocks, if you will. Timing. And then at the end, that six minutes, he was able to cover off everybody else. But for me, the performance in the car and getting the tyre pressures right, that for me is the key. So the team, him and the team, rolled the dice on the tyre pressures and turned up double six. Worked out really well. But credit to the team and Mitch behind the wheel as well, because he drove fantastically well to maintain that energy, to be leading for as long as he did without losing energy to those around him. I mean, that takes experience, doesn't it? It's also just the skill. In those conditions, the track is changing all the time. You get it a little bit wrong getting on the kerb or on the painted surface a little bit more. So it just takes a hell of a lot of concentration during the race. This is usually a sort of race you expect Nick Cassidy to do well in, almost irregardless of where he starts the race. But that wasn't the case today. No. Tyre setup, tyre pressure, bad call from the start? I think so. I mean, if you take a driver of Cassidy's abilities, especially in managing these kind of races, in low-grip conditions, I just think he didn't have anything to fight with. When you're starting, you make those decisions on the grid. And if you think that the track's going to dry faster than it does, and it doesn't, then you're just a passenger most of the race and it doesn't take a lot. But if you look on the race trace here, Nick literally comes off the screen here. I have to zoom out quite a lot. And you see literally how far back he dropped. He's just hemorrhaging lap time the entire race. And he leaves his attack modes until the end. But realistically, there was no chance. He was out of the fight by mid-race because the circuit didn't dry up enough for him and he was just hemorrhaging lap time. And the last driver I want to talk about is Sebastian Buemi. Because from near back of the grid to finish where he did, he didn't make the positions. It was almost like Cassidy-esque, his drive. Why did it work so well for him and not for others? So I think for me, again, because they had envisioned a strong race, both Ericsson and Buemi. I think they had probably similar setups, similar tires. And I think the team did a good job there making sure that they gave their drivers a chance to fight. They left their attack modes right until the end. So if you look at Buemi here, he does his two-minute and his six-minute, basically back-to-back. So they're essentially running eight minutes of attack mode. And they just did that all at the end. And he did a good job. What you don't see here is all the other cars, but there's a big group of cars here right at the end. And Sebastian did a good job in that group, really. Excellent insight, as always. Now, we've got a couple of questions from fans. And as a reminder, if you do have questions, make sure to let us know in the comments what you want us to dive into in these videos. Now, Ali has said, beneficial over using it earlier, yet some jump it early, like in Mexico or today, or in Miami, for example. What is the motivation to do that? So I think Ali's question was more for, let's say, a traditional dry race. So we'll leave this one out of it. But generally, so the trend we've seen is that most teams take attack mode at the end because they feel like that's going to be the best from a track position and when they win in point of view. The alternate reason for taking it earlier, normally it's to do with tires. Depending on the circuit and how hard it is on the tires, if you leave it too late, the tires are already pretty hot and you just don't have the grip to be able to use even your all-wheel drive. If you're in a dry race where it's been really hard on the tires, like in Mexico, for example, and you wait till the end, you already don't have any tires left. I'm going to give you all-wheel drive, but you still don't have any grip, so you can't make up that difference in performance. And then the second reason is if you leave it too late sometimes, the pace is so high. Again, there's not enough of a delta between 300 and 350, rear-wheel drive, all-wheel drive, because everyone's targets are so high. No one's doing any lifting, so again, you just lose that benefit. Okay, great question. Great answer, also. One other question we've got from RacingHarryFE, good name, is how do team strategies change with wet weather? It depends on whether it's a continuously raining race or a drying race like we saw today, but the good teams will have been prepared for all of those situations ahead of time. They'll have written down in their procedures, right, what am I going to do with the car setup? I can still make some changes on the grid, so do I give myself a cut-off time to make sure I can get all of these changes done? And then there'll be a second point where, right, I need to decide on the tire pressure strategy for the race, so again, those are things that are going to affect the performance of the car, and the performance unlocks those strategies. In a wet race, for me, especially one where there's continuous rain falling down, visibility is king. So if you're at the front and you're out of the spray, you're going to have an advantage. You'll remember a race in Shanghai a couple years ago where the gaps just opened up because nobody could see anything, right? So in that case, take an attack early, making sure you're at the front of the grid rather than, don't worry about the energy. That energy really, in a wet race, doesn't even matter as much because you're not using as much on every single lap. You just can't get the power down, so you don't waste any energy, so you're driving pretty much flat out the whole race anyway. So from a strategic point of view, using that attack mode, using that all-wheel drive, that timing of it, and the overall car performance from your tires and your setup, those are the things that are going to affect a race strategy point of view. Okay, right, one to keep in mind next time we have a wet race. Indeed, very good question. Albie, thanks very much. We now understand how that record-breaking win was accomplished from Mitch Evans. That's a huge accomplishment, isn't it? It's impressive. Thanks very much for going into that. Great detail, as always. Let us know any other questions you'd like us to go into, any other topics you want to cover in these videos. Drop a like on it if you enjoyed it, and we'll see you again soon.