Formula E arrives in Tokyo this weekend for the first night races in its history, and the timing could hardly be crueller for Mitch Evans. The Jaguar TCS Racing driver led the championship into China with room to spare. He leaves it nine points adrift, and the venue waiting for him has been the unhappiest on the calendar.
The collapse was swift. Evans carried a 19-point lead into the Sanya E-Prix before Dan Ticktum launched over the back of his car and left him without a score. He was eighth in the first Shanghai race, hampered by a grip problem, as Pascal Wehrlein won to trim the gap to three. A suspected DC/DC fault then ruled Evans out of the second Shanghai race entirely, handing Wehrlein a lead the Porsche driver — now on 141 points to Evans's 132 after his second win of the season — will defend across Saturday and Sunday at Tokyo Big Sight.
Evans is not interested in wholesale changes. "I don't think we really need to change anything, to be honest," he said. "A lot of it has been out of our control, but actually I think we've been pretty quick, apart from the wet in Shanghai."
The record in Japan argues against him. Jaguar has scored just 12 points across three completed Tokyo races over the past two seasons, all of them courtesy of Nick Cassidy, who now drives for Citroën. Evans has never finished a race there, taking 15th in 2024 before retiring from both legs last year.
"It hasn't been our best track in the past," Evans admitted, pinning some hope on a later calendar slot and the switch to racing under lights. "Our fortunes have gone in the wrong direction, but it's going to be a big fight until the end."
"I'm not overly concerned about it, really, because I think Jaguar turned a corner last year after Tokyo," James told RacingNews365. "I think there was a greater understanding of the Gen3 Evo package that we had, which unlocked the sort of performance and consistency we saw in the second half of last season."
The stakes stretch beyond the drivers. Jaguar leads the teams' standings by only six points from Porsche after 13 rounds, though Porsche tops the separate manufacturers' table. And the field behind the leading pair remains alive: Oliver Rowland, who scored a home win for Nissan in Tokyo last season, sits third on 114 points, with Evans's team-mate Antonio Felix da Costa — a Shanghai podium finisher — fourth on 111.
There is a wildcard, too. Lola Yamaha ABT took a maiden Formula E victory in Shanghai when Lucas di Grassi, who has already announced plans to retire, gambled on set-up in the wet and won from the back. On a street circuit lit up for the first time, with four races left before the GEN3 era closes in London, another surprise would not be out of place.
Free practice opens on Friday, with the first of the two races on Saturday evening local time.
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