After qualifying P10 in his group, Lucas di Grassi executed his race well to go from P17 to P11
Incident-free race meant Zane Maloney was unable to make up the gap resulting from his 10 second stop-and-go penalty, crossing the line in P19
Round 15 of Season 12 takes place tomorrow, Sunday 26th July, at 20:05 JST/12:05 BST
Although it was a challenging start to the weekend, Lola Yamaha ABT left the first race just outside the point scoring positions.
After struggling for pace in free practice, Lucas di Grassi and Zane Maloney both finished p10 in their respective qualifying groups, lining up P17 (Lucas) and P19 (Zane) on the grid after penalties for other drivers.
On the opening lap, Zane came in to serve his 10 second stop-and-go penalty due to the gearbox change required after his suspension failure in Shanghai. This dropped him far back from the field, with his side of the garage hoping for a safety car or red flag to allow him to catch up. As it was an incident-free race in this regard, he was unable to close the gap and crossed the line in P19.
Lucas made up a couple of places in the opening laps and continued to try to work his way through the field before taking Pit Boost towards the end of the window. Following his stop, running in P11 and with one to two percent more energy than the cars ahead, potential points seemed within reach. He activated his Attack Mode on lap 31 but with the cars around him also in the higher power mode, was unable to make up too many places, ultimately finishing just outside of the points.
Lucas di Grassi, #11: ““It was a hard day for us. We extracted the most we could from the car but there’s still a lot of work to do and a lot of elements to improve ahead of tomorrow. Given this, the fact we managed to come up from 17th to 11th and almost scored a point means I leave today satisfied with my performance in the race. However, we of course want to score points and that’s just not where we were today, so we need to work harder to make it happen tomorrow.”
Zane Maloney, #22: “It was not too much of a race for us to be fair. We had the 10 second stop-and-go penalty already from Shanghai with the gearbox change, so we were hoping for a safety car or red flag which didn’t come and meant we were driving around at the back quite far away from the field. Generally, we struggled a bit for pace in practice and qualifying. However, I thought I did quite a good job and we’ll try to unlock some pace for tomorrow. It might be wet which I hope it is and then we can be back in the game as we have no penalty for tomorrow. It’s obviously great to be here in Tokyo for Yamaha’s home race and hopefully we can give them a good result tomorrow.”
Mark Preston, Team Principal, Lola Yamaha ABT, said: “After a difficult qualifying today, the race success hinged on two different strategies, given that Zane also had a penalty to serve. Both drivers executed their strategies well and we just missed out on scoring points with Lucas. Given it was basically an event-free race, Zane didn’t have chance to deliver on his chosen strategy. We will work hard to analyse the data and make improvements where we can overnight before we come back tomorrow to hopefully secure a positive result for Yamaha’s home race.”
The ABB FIA Formula E World Championship continues tomorrow, Sunday 26th July, with qualifying at 15:40 JST and the race at 20:05 JST. Find out where to watch the action where you are here.
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