Lola Yamaha ABT has far exceeded external estimates on how many points they will gather over the course of its debut season in Formula E.
Currently at a healthy 28-points with seven races remaining, the fresh alliance has punched above its collective weight at several races so far this season. Some of those have been rewarded but most have not. However, at Tokyo earlier this month Lucas di Grassi’s fine fifth place was the overwhelming highlight despite that result being bettered in Miami a month before.
That’s because di Grassi and his team fully earned that result, with no good fortune attached bar the late elimination of Taylor Barnard and Edoardo Mortara’s self-inflicted penalty.
Fifth place was just reward for a very accomplished race. But, as ever, Lola Yamaha ABT are looking to the future, not only if it can achieve 50-60 points this season, which would be sensational, but also the wider picture of Gen4.
“Even though we only announced the second stage of Gen4, the relationship with Yamaha has been working away in the background on everything and it’s been quite cool to watch the step from coming from Gen3, and then learning a lot already from this powertrain and then applying it to the next one,” Lola’s Mark Preston told FEN in Tokyo.
“We’re trying to apply learnings from the actual races into the Gen4 powertrain that’s already being developed,” added Preston.
“Software continues non-stop, and a lot of that is us just transferring over. But of course, there’s new elements to the regulations too, so there will be a kind of separation of the code-bases at some point when there’s going to be Gen4 specific requirements, and then stuff that continues developing in Gen3 that will obviously just carry over any learnings and bug fixes and all the things that we’re still experiencing in Gen3 Evo.”
Lola has been beavering away back at its Silverstone base, and its Formula E technical lead Joao Correia has been busy with an eye on the Gen4 plans. Correia and other Lola personnel also spent time at Yamaha’s technical HQ in Iwata, Japan earlier this month.
“We’re obviously working away on the simulator and there’s testing coming up in October, so that’s happening quite fast,” remarked Preston.
“JC (Joao Correia) is working away, with the Yamaha guys, and it’s a bigger and bigger group of Yamaha engineers that are getting more confidence as they bring in in their technology.
“They’re also doing other work for us to predict batteries and temperatures and all the elements that go into the energy management system, and strategy.
“It’s just a never ending story in motor racing, as you know, it just keeps going like next week we’re bringing some interesting software updates, and then next race we’re going to have some more predictions of temperatures, and then everything gets better and better and better.”
