Victory the only aim from pole for Evans

Mitch Evans has only one target in mind in the upcoming Zürich E-Prix, converting his maiden pole position to a first series victory.

The Kiwi was supreme in qualifying as he came good on his season long promise and surged to pole position by over a tenth to nearest challenger Andre Lotterer.

Having been threatening the top spot since the beginning of the season, Evans was thrilled to finally clinch his first pole in Formula E.

“It feels great! Finally we’ve been able to convert our strong pace that we’ve had all season to pole position,” said the 23-year-old. “Obviously I would have loved for it to happen earlier, but it’s great to finally tick that off for the team.

“It’s been a long two seasons with a lot of hard work on and off the track, so it’s great to reward the guys with that and get the monkey off our back. I’m super happy with everyone in the team, but we have the race to come and am hoping for a clean first few corners, then focus on the rest of the race.”

Andre Lotterer, who will line up alongside Evans on the front row, had put in a stellar lap earlier in the Super Pole session but was pipped by Evans by only 0.137s. The pressure upon the shoulders of the Kiwi was tremendous, especially with only one warm up lap as he explained.

“It’s hard, especially with only one preparation lap. The brakes aren’t in the window for a Super Pole lap, so I was a bit conservative in turn one and lost a tenth compared to my first lap [in the group stages], which was not great as I could see it on my dash that I was behind and had to make up lost ground, which I did, so to have two tenths on him [Lotterer] is great.

“You never know when it’s your day, if you look at Berlin and other places we’ve had chances to get pole but we couldn’t convert it, I knew we had a good shot today as we were fast from the get-go. It was nice to deliver for the team and now we look towards the race, hopefully we will taste champagne afterwards!”

With only one more surge of action still to come, the target for Evans is very clear.

“Obviously starting pole you wanna convert it, but we’ll take each lap as it comes and hopefully see the chequered flag before anyone else!”