Mitch Evans avoided contact when Nyck de Vries dived to overtake and hit the rear of Alexander Sims, but didn't shy away from criticizing the defending champion's move in race 2 in New York
Formula E experienced another race with several bumps between cars last Sunday (17), when the second race of the eP New York was held - won by António Félix da Costa, from DS Techeetah. However, the most noteworthy was, without a doubt, the sequence of incidents caused by Nyck de Vries, who did not get along with Mitch Evans on the track and even touched the rear of Alexander Sims - causing the Mahindra driver to spin briefly.
After the race, Evans was asked about the moment, in which he was trying to pass Sims to maintain his pursuit of Stoffel Vandoorne. However, as Alexander closed the pass on the inside and forced the Jaguar down the outside lane, De Vries found an opportunity, dived with the car and touched both rivals. Thus, Mitch did not hide his disapproval with the current champion's move.
"I think he [Sims] had some temperature issue on the battery or some power problem, so I approached him and he was defending hard, to tell you the truth," Evans said. "I followed like that through a couple of corners and struggled to overtake quickly, and once we got to turn 10, he defended hard again," he explained.
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"Then Nyck [de Vries] decided to make a really late move on me and almost took Alexander out [of the race]," the Jaguar driver pointed out. "It was just a stupid move. I know he was told to try to overtake me, but I just didn't think it would be there," he pointed out.
Evans immediately tried to regain the position on the next lap, but hit a bump in the circuit and lost control of the car. Miraculously, he managed to recover the Jaguar single-seater while it was almost sideways on the track and drove off without major damage. In the end he managed to pass Sims and secured third place on the podium. Still, he left with the feeling that the result could have been better.
"I think we could have won today. I never say that lightly, we had a good car," he told Autosport. "I hit an undulation on the straight during the braking point, and I was very lucky to come out unscathed. It was very unlucky to hit it [the undulation], but to get away was very lucky," he admitted.
"I got all messed up, I had several friction marks [on tires] and lost a lot of time, it took a few laps before things got straightened out again," he stated. "Then things got better at the end again and obviously I passed Alexander. Honestly, I think we could have won," he repeated.
De Vries, in turn, also gave his side of the story - without mentioning the touch on Sims. The Dutchman, who is out of title contention for 2022, also hit one of the undulations of the track at the same point as Evans and lost control of his car after hitting the wall. He managed to recover to stay in the race, but with the damaged steering, the #17 Mercedes was no longer able to set the same pace as before.
"I'm disappointed that I couldn't give the team the result they deserved," De Vries lamented. "I think we should have finished at least fourth, but I couldn't get past Sims. When I tried the move, basically the same thing happened that had happened to Mitch [Evans] when he tried to pass me earlier," he said.
"I wasn't even aware of that undulation, but there's a kind of compression, and when you hit one, the wheels come off the ground and you lose control," he explained. "So I twisted the steering and obviously lost the rhythm I had before," he finished.