"Yeah, it was frustrating and I guess a bit strange," admits Evans. "My parking is shocking and I started thinking that I might fail [my licence]. If I had, I was going to ask as a joke if they thought I was good enough to be a racing car driver. I was lucky I passed."
Later, after a few minutes on TradeMe, he was impressing his girlfriend with a slightly used VW Golf GTI.
Even then, his jump from track to road wasn't without its bumps - "the speed limit did become a bit of issue ..." - but he managed to fix that problem by transferring the lead in his accelerator foot over to his imagination.
He enjoys reflecting on a very Blues Brothers fantasy: it's just him in a fast car and whole bunch of cops chasing him around the country, with no road spikes, no crashes and no one getting hurt. "I've always thought that'd be a cool experience, just not so cool if you get caught."
If it's standard teenage fare, don't go comparing him to a standard boy racer, because you'll get the lecture on his frustration at being in any way associated with idiots who think a set of flashy tyres instantly turns them into Grand Prix contenders.
Especially since he knows the risks. Evans was just 1 year old and sleeping in the family car when his father, Owen Evans, broke the New Zealand land speed record in 1996. During another run to try going even faster, a tyre burst and Evans senior's car and body were all but demolished as his Porsche cartwheeled into a paddock. Then there are the deaths this year of Indy driver Dan Wheldon and MotoGP rider Marco Simoncelli to ponder as well.
"That's the thing, boy racers don't understand the consequences of what they're doing ... and I understand those things all too well, even if sometimes I have to wipe it from my mind. There are always moments when you think about the safety of what you're doing - I guess it is a barrier every time you strap yourself into the car - but stuff like a tyre bursting is beyond anyone's control. We all know we're under risks [but] what happens, happens. This is my choice."
Remarkable in someone so young, Evans' focus on his sport is absolute. When asked, he couldn't name a single band he likes - it's all just music. Which, for a teen, is ... well, unnatural.
There's a very good reason then that almost every record for "youngest ever" in New Zealand racing seems to have Mitch Evans' name attached to it. His life mission is Formula One (F1) or bust and he's in an awful hurry to have his shot.
Which is why he dropped out of school last year without a moment's doubt that it was the right thing to do and without anyone trying to mount an argument to stop him.
This is the young man who says he drives better than he walks. It was a near- run thing as to which came first as well; his first trundle behind the wheel came when he was only 4 years old.
Not that he ever had much choice. Simon, his older brother drove - and still does, with considerable success. His father, Owen, drove with even greater success, winning the old Wellington Street Race and almost dying while setting that unbroken New Zealand land speed record. Even Owne's father, Laurie, was a rally driver.
So, you can imagine that once he got his first go-kart on his 6th birthday and immediately began winning on the Mt Wellington racetrack, a whole bunch of dormant genes kicked in, telling him what he was born to do.
Now he's racing cars at up to 280kph all over the world, hanging out with the the rock stars of the F1 circuit and plotting a course that might yet see him joining their ranks sometime soon. He even has his own logo.
If it's heady stuff, he hides it well. Until he starts to reflect on how racing feels.
"It's all these huge sensations," he says with a grin. "They're unreal really, you've got the high speeds, then you feel the grip as you go into a corner and the G-forces hit you. You can't feel that stuff anywhere else in the world, it's only when you're pushing your car to its absolute limits. That's a huge adrenalin rush ... wow, I guess it's a like a roller coaster except that you're in control of everything it does. It's pretty amazing."
It would be wrong to say that his talent was obvious from the moment he started.
"I'd have to say that I never really noticed him standing out," says Bob Cunningham, the then-president of KartSport Mt Wellington, who saw all of the budding champion's early efforts. "He was very much just another kid down there and when I say that, it's because we had so many good kids. He had to climb over all of them to succeed."
"He seemed like just any other kid, and I'd say he's pretty much still like that now. For everything that he has achieved, he doesn't have a big head and he'll still stop to say 'gidday' to anyone ... I don't think any of those boys got into karting thinking it was going to be their future, but I think with Mitch, he's proved that he's a nice kid who has the X-factor. Now it all comes down to timing because you have to be ready when your opportunity comes along."
Evans' first big opportunity came early. He was only 13 - "I don't think I'd even hit puberty yet" - when he swapped karts for cars.
"By then racing had become my life I guess," says Evans, "and that's a huge commitment to make, for me and my family. So it's never really been a hobby, not with all the time, money and effort that it takes. I had to be totally committed because every weekend, every holiday had to be about racing. I even took time off school to compete. I played league as well [for Glenora] for a while, but I had to give up everything like that. I found that I had a connection with driving and once I won a few big things, I started thinking that maybe this could go somewhere."
But not everyone was convinced. Evans says some of his teachers at St Kentigern's College thought he would be better off studying and were not particularly impressed that he was giving up class time.
Evans admits he was hardly the ideal pupil and was told how he was wasting his time. Instead of arguing he simply turned the comments into that "I'll show you" motivation and carried on regardless.
At least he had an ally in the school's Director of Sports, Martin Piaggi.
"What I most remember are the mornings when his tutor group would meet next to mine," says Piaggi. "One morning he'd be there, then he'd be away for two or three days and I'd have to drag the details of where he'd been out of him. Invariably he'd have been to Australia or Macau or somewhere and won something, or he'd been off in his collar and tie asking some high-powered businessman for a couple of million dollars.
"So I think school was very difficult for him to take seriously. He would be off doing all that other stuff in a very different world, then he'd come back here and be told to pull his socks up ...
"I know academia serves an important purpose, but when you're leading a life like his, the skills he's picking up along the way are way more applicable to his future than anything he'll learn in a classroom. I just hope he goes right to the top so we can claim we had some input into his driving - which we didn't at all."
It wasn't until Evans' face began appearing on the television and in newspapers that the doubters began to back off.
In 2010, his last year at St Kentigern's (in what we used to know as fifth form), Evans won the New Zealand Toyota Racing Series, then skipped across the Tasman for the Australian Formula 3 championship, in which he finished second by a single point despite missing a round of races.
His school awarded him a prize for outstanding sporting achievement. Outside school, however, Evans had impressed someone who would play a far greater role in his life.
Just a year earlier, during the youngster's first Australian campaign, he'd caught the eye of F1 star Mark Webber.
According to Owen Evans, Webber had been searching for an Australian protege, but he was so impressed by the New Zealander's potential that he offered his considerable assistance.
Who could say no? It's not often a top-flight driver offers help to someone who could potentially steal their job. After starting as a mentor, Webber is now Evans' manager, which means the impossible dream now seems more achievable.
Not only do the pair train together, Evans is also driving for the MW Arden team - co-owned by Webber and Christian Horner from the F1 Red Bull Racing team - in the prestigious GP3 series.
The GP3 is raced in identical "wings and slicks" cars and features as the support race for the six European Grand Prix. It is the third ranked championship behind F1 and GP2 and is held in front of hundreds of thousands of people and, more importantly, the F1 team owners.
As usual, Evans met with almost immediate success and after winning in Barcelona found himself leading the competition.
"The buzz of having that many people watching me ... I've never experienced anything like that before," he says. "We don't have anything like that here. I can only liken it maybe to the All Blacks, where you're the main focus for the whole crowd. That's an amazing feeling. There's all this adrenalin going on and you have to channel it or you'll lose it."
Just as he has known glory, Evans has also known defeat.
He was leading on Britain's legendary Silverstone circuit when a mistake during a tyre change saw him given a penalty that dropped him all the way down to 24th. His fortunes were further dented by a run of mechanical breakdowns and he finished the season in 9th place, 34 points behind the winner from Finland.
For a guy who does all he can to maintain total control over everything, to be brought down by other people's mistakes must be difficult to deal with.
"I try to find the positives from every situation, and with that one, well, that was pretty hard to do. It was a team mistake - which feels a lot worse for me - but I'm part of the team as well and I could just as easily have made a mistake on the track. But nothing has really changed, the odds of me achieving my dream are ... it's hard to say what they are, let's say pretty slim, and that kind of stuff doesn't help. It just means if I do succeed I'll have done something pretty special."
He's unwavering in his pursuit: he gave up on fast food three years ago, trains constantly, analyses every moment he spends in the car while following a near-obsessive regime of superstitions.
From which boot he puts on first, to which side of the car he climbs in from, his build-up to each race follows a specific order to appease the fates. He's reluctant to outline them in any detail as he says the last time he did that his luck began to turn.
That would be his admission to the Herald's sports writer, Chris Rattue, that he has three pairs of undies which he wears on specific race days. They are all red, obviously, because everyone knows red is the fastest colour.
Given his superstitions, it seems a little odd that he draws the line at using a psychologist - many top drivers use them - but then he probably thinks they'd only muddy his clear mental waters.
Especially when he's battling to accept a few harsh realities of his dream. The biggest failing of F1 racing is that it doesn't represent the cream. In the end, it represents the richest.
Evans' GP3 programme costs about $900,000 a year; stepping up to GP2 adds another $2.5 million on top of that. If that sounds like big money, an F1 campaign will set you back $250 million.
This is why a lot of F1 drivers come from filthy rich families, paying their way to the top. "That's the really frustrating thing for me," says Evans. "I'd rather have the drivers there who really deserve it, who have the ability, but that isn't how it it works and that's just the reality. It's a huge bummer."
Trying to keep up with the pace financially takes huge effort. It's probably the most stressful part of Evans' job and can have some unwanted mental spin-offs.
The last thing he wants to worry about when making a risky passing manoeuvre is whether or not he can foot the repair bill if it goes wrong. Not when the qualifying times for this year's GP3 sometimes had the entire field separated by only one second. It's go for broke even when you're broke.
Which is why people like Colin Giltrap are so vital. As a long-time friend of the Evans family and a supporter of New Zealand racing in general, he has been a financial mainstay of the teen's career.
Cashflow aside, his international contacts also gave Evans the opportunity to sit down with racing legend Jackie Stewart following his victory in Barcelona.
"[Stewart] was hugely impressed," says Giltrap, "but then [Mitch] is a hugely nice boy, and he came away saying he wished he could speak like Mitch on TV. He's so mature for his age, with all the talent you could wish for and I'd have to say that after all the years I've been involved in motor racing in this country; he's the one. He sticks out and I know Mark Webber is just thrilled with him.
"If everything works out, he's going to be amazing, but next year is vital if he's to make it. He simply has to win. We're now seeing drivers making it who Mitch beats regularly, so there's no doubting that he has the talent. He just needs to get himself to the top of the list. He deserves it."
But there's no time for reflection and barely any room to squeeze in a Christmas break - everything now turns to next year's GP3 campign which kicks off in May. You can be sure it's all Evans is focused on.
"Even when I'm asleep I'm working on ways to get faster. If you don't dream it and breathe it, then you have to resort to Plan B and find something else to do, and that's not something I ever, ever let myself think about."
