First double points finish for Lola Yamaha ABT in Monaco

It’s been a weekend of firsts for Lola Yamaha ABT with both drivers finishing in the points and the team scoring points in both races of the weekend on the storied streets on Monaco.

The team struggled for pace in the morning, with both Lucas di Grassi and Zane Maloney finishing P10 in their respective qualifying groups, starting P19 and P20 respectively.

In the race, the team worked to maximise the car and move up through the field. Lucas took four minutes of Attack Mode early in the race on lap eight, gaining four places. Zane initially focused on saving energy before taking six minutes of Attack Mode on lap 17 from P19, while Lucas took his second boost of extra power shortly afterwards. With the two cars running together they progressed to P12 (Zane) and P13 (Lucas) before a full course yellow impacted their ability to benefit from the additional power. Zane took his final attack on Lap 22 but was unable to progress much more through the field. However, penalties for drivers above them meant Lucas finished in P9 with Zane just behind in P10.

Lucas di Grassi, #11: “We scored points in both races in Monaco which is a fantastic result and one we have not achieved before. We managed to execute the race very well and the team thoroughly deserved these points. Even though of course we want to be fighting for wins and podiums, this is a great step and consistent points is an amazing result. Now we have to analyse what went right and what went wrong in the weekend so we can be prepared for Sanya next month and try to score more points there.”

Zane Maloney, #22: “We’ve struggled quite a lot for pace as a team this weekend. I thought I did a very good job in qualifying getting as close as I could to the field and I was very happy with my lap. Of course, how the groups played out I then had to start P20 in the race. We executed a very good strategy where I saved energy at the back before coming through the field. Although a settings issue limited my performance in 350kW meaning I wasn’t able to make up as many places in Attack Mode, we came away from the weekend with a point which is great for the team as they did a very good job. Now we move on to Sanya where we can hopefully add more points for the team.”

Mark Preston, Team Principal, Lola Yamaha ABT, said: “It was a challenging morning as we struggled for pace in qualifying however the team worked extremely hard to enable us to secure our first double points finish in Formula E. It is also the first time we’ve scored points in both races in a double-header weekend so I’d like to thank the whole team for a job well done. We will now continue to assess where we can improve in the gap before the races in Asia where we hope to continue this trend of improvement and securing points.”

Season 12 of the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship will now take a short break before continuing in Sanya, China on June 20th.