Mortara was caught up in contact at the start of the race, getting pinched between Jean-Eric Vergne and Sam Bird into Turn 2 - which forced Mortara to make contact with Bird twice to end the Jaguar driver's race.
The contact took Mortara's front wing off, and forced him to retreat to the pit for repairs - where the Venturi driver emerged back on track last of all runners, over a half a minute away from the back of the field on course to finishing 18th in a race won by Jake Dennis from Vandoorne.
Mortara reckons that Vergne tried to "straightline" the chicane, which caused the incident at the start - although the Swiss says he shouldn't have been in that position to begin with after qualifying ninth with a lap of grip and confidence.
Having scored no points in the opening London race, Mortara feels that his championship chances have slipped away, as he now sits 29 points behind Vandoorne with three races left on the 2021-22 calendar.
"I think that today we lost it. So mathematically, there is still a chance but believe that the gap now is starting to be too big to think about championships," he told Autosport.
"It was not the day I was hoping for. We were not competitive right from the start and already yesterday was not looking that good, but we actually made some progress.
"Then today, it was another like Formula E stupid contact with streaming, you know, trying to make a corner with JEV.
"JEV basically tried to straightline Turn 2 and made me and Sam retire. It's frustrating, obviously, but in the first place, you shouldn't find yourself there.
"It seemed that we didn't really had the pace. And that was actually quite surprising, because we were lacking quite a bit. And so I guess that we will have to try to find even more pace tonight."
Mortara was handed a penalty when in the pits for repairs, as his car's ready-to-move status light was on while the mechanics were replacing the nose on his car. The 35-year-old did not dispute the penalty, feeling it was "right" for the crime.
He added that he was not particularly hopeful of his fortunes in Sunday's second race, given his struggles so far.
"If we would be on another racetrack, we'd be quite confident that we will be competitive," Mortara said.
"I would say that it's still possible, but I believe that you know, we've been struggling like since two days now.
"We will try to give our best tomorrow obviously, but doesn't really look that good at the moment."
