MITCH EVANS
Since becoming the youngest person to win the New Zealand Grand Prix at age 16, Formula E driver Mitch Evans has made his childhood dreams a reality. The 29-year-old from Lynfield, Auckland gets paid to travel the world and race cars as fast as 300kph with his teammate and childhood friend Nick Cassidy, who is also from Auckland. Oh, and then he spends his downtime bumping into world-class athletes like Novak Djokovic at his local gym.
Evans joined the all-electric World Championship in 2016, driving for the Jaguar TCS Racing team. As a category, Formu la E has gained momentum and crowds each year since making its global debut in the grounds of the Olympic Park in Beijing in 2014, w ithah u ge p ush for EVs globally.
While travelling at super speeds week in, week ou tso unds like an adrenaline junkie’s heaven, Evans is equally fascinated by other people w ho p ush the boundaries. On his list? Kicking a soccer ball like Cristiano Ronaldo and picking the brains of Elon Musk.
“I think he’s [Musk] so impressive. If I had the opportunity just to learn from someone at his level, learning how they operate, I’d probably ask him abou ttheb usiness side and also the mentality of how he calculates risk. What he’s doing is remarkable and I think in 50 or1 00 y ears time we’ll look back and go ‘whoa, what he did was pretty spectacular’.”
Rarely home in Aotearoa for more than a week, when
Evans isn’t on a race track or enjoying summers in his new home of Monaco, he spends months in the UK test-driving simulators for Jaguar’s EV development. Becau seasm uch as it looks like men driving around a track very quickly ,som uch of the work is done before Evans even sits down in the car.
“Ever yy ear I go to the team factory to prepare for the next race, giving feedback for the software development. Motorsport is the best test bed for EVs on the road... It’s largely a software game,” hee xplains.
And it’s one New Zealand is exceeding at. Between Evans and Cassidy, they hold 15 wins, 37 podium finishes, 11 pole positions and 1076 championship points in Formu laE.J ust last month, Evans placed fifth in the Mexico City E-Prix. When you put those results alongside the likes of Liam Lawson, Shane van
Gisbergen and Scott Dixon, Evans says we are in a “golden era” for New Zealanders behind the wheel.
“It’s seriously impressive what Kiwis are doing in motorsports at the highest level. We punch so far abov eo ur weight.”