Lola comeback hits high note with di Grassi podium in Miami

Lola’s return to motorsport reached a new high point on Saturday at the Miami E-Prix with its first Formula E podium, courtesy of Lucas di Grassi.

The second-place finish for the Brazilian at Homestead-Miami Speedway wasn’t just the revived brand’s first rostrum appearance, but its first points too – and marked the first time since the 2023-23 season opener that Season 3 Formula E champion di Grassi had finished on the podium.

“It's a very special podium for many reasons,” di Grassi said. “One of them is I haven’t been in a competitive car for the last three seasons. And it's rough, because although the motivation [is there], it's for you to keep the motivation up knowing that you sometimes don't have the most competitive car.

“On the other hand, I think it's a very important podium for the team. It’s only the fifth race of this team.”

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It would be easy to say that the result was a perfect storm of an efficiency-centric race that was perfectly managed, and a wild finish that saw several drivers penalized after being caught out by time running out as they took their final Attack Modes, but di Grassi stressed that the result was a genuine one, earned on merit, regardless of the race’s unorthodox circumstances.

“We were even competitive in quali – it's not that we were nowhere and got lucky and then we scored the podium,” he said. “We were competitive in 300 (kW) in the quali runs, we were competitive in FP2, and then in the race we had, I think, apart from Antonio (Felix da Costa) me, and Pascal (Wehrlein), the difference between the energy was not that great. So we were doing a very good race.”

Pressed on how much the result was down to circumstance and how much was down to genuine performance, di Grassi pointed to his seventh-place qualifying result – marking the first time Lola had made it to the head-to-head duels reserved for the fastest four drivers in each of the Group sessions – as well as his earlier performance in second free practice, and how his car performed with 300 kW of power at his disposal, the state in which it races, aside from when in Attack Mode.

“What we can look at is performance in quali,” he said. “And we were competitive in FP2. when you look at the 300, it was fastest in Sector 1 and 3 in the free practice, and in quali, we were second, a few hundredths from Robin (Frijns) in my group. So the progress is there.

“But the field is so compact that we're talking about two or three tenths in a 90-second lap, which is super, super tight. In any other series two or three tenths gives you one place; here it gives you 10 spots on the grid.”

Despite the breakthrough, di Grassi admits there’s more to be done by Lola to cement its status as a regular contender.

“We have a lot more to improve in many different areas," he said, "from software to understanding the car setup to maximizing a lot of the hardware, the simulator…

“I remember when I was at Audi and Porsche came along, Porsche took two years to win a race, so it takes time for you to get everything going. Although I'm very happy with this result, in the race it was a bit of luck to be in the right moment at the right time. But we were in the right moment at the right time, and we were there from the beginning.

“So in a nutshell, we are making progress, but there is still a lot to do.”