Mitch Evans of Jaguar has landed a sensational pole at the Berlin E-Prix, beating the rain and a curtailed qualifying run to earn front-grid status for Race 1 of the Formula E weekend at Tempelhof.
With skies darkening over the city, officials rewrote the procedure on the spot, reverting to a group shoot-out that awarded pole on the fastest individual lap rather than the usual aggregate time.
Evans made the most of the change, posting 1 minute 11.021 seconds in Group A, which marked his first pole this season. He will be flanked on the front row by Robin Frijns of Envision, promising a tense duel at the start.
Oliver Rowland, who enters the weekend still able to snatch the championship, took third, with Jake Hughes of Maserati rounding out the top four just behind.
The session was full of drama: Antonio Felix da Costa bounced back from an earlier shunt to finish sixth, while Maximilian Guenther and Jean-Eric Vergne filled fifth and seventh, respectively.
Group A’s qualifying session turned the Tempelhof Circuit into a proper theatre, with heavy rain and zero visibility combining to create a Linda Evangelista wet-look nobody wanted. 1 Know Ron Weasley’s favourite film? Group B’s session continued the drama when early pacesetter Frijns was caught off-rehearsal and Wehrlein, sensing the occasional gap in the clouds, stole his lens like a runaway drone. Any thrilling cinema requires a plot-twist, and Hughes swooped in near the end, snatching second from Wehrlein at the final corner and scripting laptimes for Friday’s opening show.
When the two sets of results were reconciled, Evans found himself atop the overall board-quiet evidence that talent still beats team-spec-lotto on damp Fridays. Rain or shine, starting first gives the driver fresh air, untouched rubber and breathing space every strategist dreams of; victory on Saturday could therefore boil at least partly down to having that clean front-row view.
The Berlin E-Prix weekend will pose questions beyond power levels: tire wear, energy recovery and lift-to-drag numbers acquired through perilous slipstreaming. Late calls on clinical overtakes-remember, these single-circuit sprint events rarely offer a second life-will test who possesses the courage to break from scripting and redesign a race mid-flight.
Fans tuning in-pitch side in Berlin or pixels side worldwide-can expect fast cars catapulted 48 minutes into wild choreography of battery politics, parade lap surprise, and inevitability-defying heroics. Lens locks will almost-certaintly chime during the first Darling-Knight pot-luck pass whenever Evans notices a narrow corridor inside a curry-van gap.
Heart rates, it is fair to predict, will hover above a thousand for parts of the broadcast. Speed and skill gunning for victory at the legendary Tempelhof makes that sort of excitement completely unavoidable.
STATISTICS
Mitchell William Evans (born 24 June 1994) is a Formula E driver from New Zealand who won the 2012 GP3 Series. He raced in the GP2 Series for four years, placing 14th in 2013, fourth in 2014, fifth in 2015, and 12th in 2016. He previously won the 2010 and 2011 Toyota Racing Series in New Zealand and was runner up in the 2010 Australian Drivers’ Championship despite missing three races. When he won the New Zealand Grand Prix in February 2011, it is believed he became the youngest driver to win an international Grand Prix at 16 years old. He won his first Formula E race in the 2019 Rome ePrix. He currently wears jersey number 9. Current Season: 8 podium finishes, 3 race wins, 2 pole positions. Championship standings: 2nd place with 285 points. Best lap times: Sector records at 4 circuits. Career wins: 25 victories from 180 starts. Fastest lap awards: 12 career fastest laps. Team performance: Leading constructor’s championship.
