Di Grassi heading to retirement with no regrets

Lucas di Grassi insists he’s got no regrets as he prepares to draw the curtain on his motorsport career.

After a 24-year career that has yielded wins in multiple categories including Formula 3 – and the Macau Grand Prix – GP2, the World Endurance Championship and Formula E, where he was also the series' third champion, di Grassi is stepping away from driving after the season-ending doubleheader in London this weekend.

While a perennial championship contender in the first half of his time in Formula E, di Grassi has spent the latter half largely in underperforming machinery, taking just four wins – two of those coming with the Audi Sport Abt team he won his title for – as opposed to the 10 (and a best championship finish of fifth) he got in the first six. But while that might look like years of missed opportunities for a driver that clearly has the talent to achieve more, di Grassi doesn’t see it that way.

“I have zero regrets in a way. I don't think this way,” he insisted. “I think that if you gave 100% of what you could do in that specific moment, and you thought it through as best as you can, that's the decision. 

“One decision that, for example, I could have stayed at Maserati (then Venturi with whom di Grassi raced in the 2021-22 season), and then I signed with Mahindra. By the time I went to Mahindra, Dilbagh (Gill, former team principal) left Mahindra, so the guy that signed me, I went there, there was no CEO anymore. Then was the start of GEN3, I had one of the worst cars for four years now. I had Mahindra, then I had the Cupra, which had the Mahindra powertrain, which was the initial powertrain, which was not so good, and then started the new project with Lola, which was starting from scratch again. So it was four years of driving one of the worst cars in the grid. 

“Would have been different if I stayed with Maserati? For sure, but it was my decision at that moment and I stuck to my word because we had an agreement, and that's life. I don't regret it. I did the best I could when I was in that car, pole position in the first race, we scored the podium (in Mexico City in 2023), so you just have to deal with it and put your heart and soul into what you do.”

After a lone season in F1, di Grassi was all-in on Formula E from the start, winning the electric series’ first race in 2014. Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

The 42-year-old has a similar outlook on his Formula 1 career. di Grassi was the first driver attached to Formula E, helping develop and promote it before its first race in 2014 following a single season in F1 with Virgin Racing.

“In hindsight, it's very easy, right? I think as a general philosophy, the only thing that I learned through my career that I wish I would have learned earlier, is to focus more on things I can control, and not focus a lot on the outcome of certain events in general. Of course, if you know the outcome after, it's very easy to go back and say you chose right or you chose wrong. 

“There's some ifs in Formula 1. For example, I had a chance to race for Brawn GP back then. So when Honda collapsed, I tested for Honda, the car I tested became Brawn GP later on. I had the chance to race for Renault, so there are a lot of ifs. But also, if I look at the negatives, if there was a chance I would never make it out of go-karting or not even started go-karting. Or if I never raced, I didn't want to race for Alejandro [Agag, Formula E founder], in GP2 – if I never raced for Alejandro, probably would not have been involved in Formula E, because that relationship actually created the long-term relationship. In life there are so many ifs.”

One potential “if” di Grassi isn’t dwelling on is whether he should race Formula E’s GEN4 car. Arriving next season, the new car will have almost twice the power of the current one, with permanent four-wheel drive that will result in higher speeds and lower lap times. 

“Of course it's nice to drive the GEN4,” he said. “I tested the GEN4 in February, it's a great step forward. [It will be ] very interesting to see how it's going to develop. 

“If I would be in a top team winning races, would I have stopped at this time specifically? Probably not. But given the conditions: I'm already the oldest by far in the championship, and I understand from a team perspective you don't want to hire a guy that is already at the end of their career. If I was a team principal right now, I would never hire myself. You want to hire a guy at the prime [of their career] and that you can count for the next four years. I'm not going to race four [more] years.”

And while it would be normal to think that stepping away before its arrival could lead to a fear of missing out, di Grassi says Formula E’s rapid development rate would only lead to similar thoughts when future car generations arrive – and his impending retirement is already something he’s put off once for an entire four-year regulation cycle.

“Even if I would have done one year of GEN4, it would have been a single year,” he said. “Even if you always want to stretch another year, and that's actually what I did – I wanted to stop during the pandemic. When we had the pandemic and I stayed six months at home, I was already thinking, ‘I’ve already won the title, achieved enough, I won many races and many podiums, I think it's it's good time to stop.’ And then I said ‘No, no, no, the GEN3 is going to be cool,’ and you do one more year, and then I stretch one more year, and then a new project comes along. If you think like that, you're going to try to race forever. 

“But for me, it was a good time. I'm 42. Even if it's a hard stop, I made the decision, I prepared myself for this decision. I studied at Harvard for the last four years, I have so many companies, I run so many things, I gathered so much experience now, I think I should focus on the next 20 years of my career. 

“So that's my mindset right now. But it's going to be an amazing car to drive, and I think the races are going to be amazing. And GEN5 is going to be even better than GEN4, so if you do GEN4 and then GEN5 comes, I’ll want to drive GEN5, and then GEN6 is going to be better, so you’ll never stop.”