Lola Yamaha ABT maximises execution in challenging Shanghai E-Prix

It was a challenging start to the race weekend for Lola Yamaha ABT in the first of two E-Prix in Shanghai, which took place three hours earlier than scheduled due to forecast inclement weather.

Despite finishing P9 (Zane Maloney) and P11 (Lucas di Grassi) in a weather impacted FP1, both cars struggled for pace throughout practice and qualifying. Lucas qualified P20, with Zane classified in P15. However, the team worked hard ahead of the race to make changes which enabled pace to be improved once the lights went out.

The race started under dry conditions with Lucas in P18 and Zane in P19 on the grid following penalties for Zane and Norman Nato. Zane came in on the first lap to serve his 10-second stop-and-go penalty before the rain started to fall and then focused on saving energy. The rain got heavier as the race progressed until the Safety Car was deployed on Lap 19 due to the conditions. Once the Safety Car came in, Lucas took his six-minute Attack Mode, as did around half of the field limiting his ability to progress forwards. Zane took his extra boost of power a couple of laps later and was able to utilise this to work his way up to P12 ahead of the chequered flag.

Lucas di Grassi, #11: “It was a tough day in the office today. We didn’t have the pace in qualifying and then in the race, although we had a good first half, we didn’t manage to gain enough positions in Attack Mode. Therefore, we weren’t able to score points today. We are now going to work hard overnight, review the data and analyse everything. Tomorrow is another day and we will try again to achieve a positive result for the team.”

Zane Maloney, #22: “In qualifying we struggled a little bit for pace as a team but I think we maximised what we could. Of course, with the 10 second stop-and-go it effectively put us out of the race for the most part. However, there was a safety car which brought us back into play and once it came in we were able to make our way through to P12 on merit because it was a flat-out race at that stage in the wet. So overall it was a decent race with good pace when it counted. Now we turn our focus to tomorrow when we can hopefully get the car a bit quicker and put ourselves in the race.”

Mark Preston, Team Principal, Lola Yamaha ABT, said: “It started as a very difficult day with a lack of pace but we managed to make improvements between qualifying and the race, resulting in good pace at 300kW. The target today was to do a perfect race in terms of execution, with a good strategy and no mistakes from the driver, which we managed. This meant despite not finishing in the points we did finish higher up in the classification. Crucially, we have learnt a lot today that we can use ahead of tomorrow to capitalise on the pace we found and hopefully finish in the points.”

Round 13 of the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship will take place tomorrow, also at an earlier time than scheduled, with qualifying at 08:00 and the race at 12:05 CST (UTC +8). Find out where to watch the action where you are here.