Lucas Di Grassi was in celebratory mood after an “historical moment” for the Lola Yamaha ABT team, in which it claimed its first Formula E podium in Miami.
The famed British manufacturer took its first open-wheel podium for 37 years when the Brazilian navigated the chaotic conditions at the Homestead-Miami Speedway to finish in second place behind winner Pascal Wehrlein.
It was an incredible achievement for Lola, which took delivery of an GEN3 Evo car for the first time a year ago this month.
Speaking to Motorsport Week after the race, di Grassi acknowledged that there is much more work to do for the team to be in this place on a regular basis, but was elated for the team’s hard work starting to bear fruit.
“It’s a good moment, good historical moment,” he said. “Honestly, I didn’t expect it to be so soon, because I think we still… our software, it’s still not there.
“We’re still kind of trying different stuff, and we can only try it really during the race weekends, because we don’t have so much testing, and testing is so different from the tracks we race, that it’s very hard to make progress while we go, let’s say, you go to Jerez… and then you race in Tokyo.
“What you develop there is very rarely correlated, so we need time. But saying that, I think we used all the opportunities, we did a fantastic job with the car setup, and we were lucky, and the result of that is the second place.
“We take it, 18 points, first podium of Lola, first points for the team. Amazing result, we’re going to celebrate a lot, and tomorrow we figure out what we have to improve more for Monaco to continue to scoring points and to be competitive.”
‘Still work to do’ for Lola after grabbing opportunity amid red flag chaos
The Miami E-Prix was full of drama and confusion, with di Grassi grabbing his podium after drivers in-front of him failed to complete their Attack Modes before the chequered flag, which meant they were penalised and subsequently dropped down the order.
Despite the obvious improvements in the Lola package, the misfortune of those in-front aided the result, and di Grassi is keen to stress there is a lot more to come from the team.
“In Jeddah, we could understand that the car had a good efficiency, but again, efficiency is a combination of a lot of things.
“For example, people don’t really think about it, but if your traction is bad, it means that you’re wasting energy into friction. So if you have the perfect traction, you accelerate faster and you use less energy.
“So all of these little nuances, when you sum 10 points like that, it becomes a huge difference, and today, for example, Antonio [Felix da Costa] was 3-4% more, it was impossible even to compete. So we still have a lot of work to do and we still need to improve to be able to be consistently scoring points.”
READ MORE – Miami E-Prix: Pascal Wehrlein wins amid chaos and confusion after race restart
