Lola Yamaha ABT hoping to return stronger tomorrow after challenging first race in Berlin

Round 13 of the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship in Berlin, which was disrupted by the weather, proved to be very difficult for the team.

The wet weather led to the cancellation of Free Practice Two in the morning, with continued bad conditions meaning only the group stages of qualifying were held. Struggles with pace meant Lucas di Grassi and Zane Maloney lined up on the grid in P15 and P17 respectively.

After taking a gamble on strategy and set up which unfortunately didn’t pay off, Zane ultimately finished in P16, with Lucas two places behind in P18.

Lucas di Grassi, #11: “It was an extremely hard day for us. We did the best we could in terms of setup for qualifying and the race but unfortunately we made a decision to go with a full dry setup, expecting the track to dry up quicker than it did, so we were very slow for the whole race. As always, we will work extremely hard and I trust my team to make improvements for tomorrow so we can recover and score some points.”

Zane Maloney, #22: “After starting towards the back of the grid, we took a gamble with strategy in the race which unfortunately didn’t pay off. However, we will regroup, work hard as a team overnight and come back stronger tomorrow.”

Mark Preston, Motorsport Director, Lola Cars said: “Berlin is always a difficult circuit with a very different surface to that which we usually race on, which throws up challenges. We had very wet weather again, which we’ve had a lot over the past few races, making it quite difficult in qualifying and the race. Following a hard qualifying session, we experimented with setup concepts in the race that didn’t pay off on this occasion. However, we go again tomorrow and will try to achieve more on this challenging circuit.”

Thomas Biermaier, CEO, ABT, said: “It has been a very difficult day. Having no free practice always hurts us, particularly as a new team, as we need mileage, data and input. Going directly into qualifying we were not as competitive as we would have liked and going into the race we did the wrong strategy. We took a risk thinking it would dry up quicker than it did, which meant we were very off the pace. We will take all of the learnings from today onboard to help us achieve more positive results tomorrow.”