Lucas di Grassi is now almost a month on from making his decision to stop professional racing public.
The 2016-17 Formula E champion has become synonymous with the world’s only all-electric world championship and his push for it to be taken seriously in the early days gave it an authentic voice from its very genesis.
But what now for di Grassi, one of racing’s true polymaths?
“I want to build stuff, I don’t want to advise in regulations,” di Grassi tells Formula E Notebook from the streets he has made his home over the last 15 years, Monaco.
“I want to build something new. I want to help the championship to be more successful, and I want to help Team Lola to be more successful. I haven’t decided what I’m going to do next. But whatever I decide, I want to be hands-on for at least the next 10, 15 years and build something that creates a lot of value.”
There has been an assumption that the Brazilian will become an advisor to the FIA or indeed even one day run for the presidency itself. He’s quick to cool such notions.
“Although I could be in the FIA, I don’t think it’s the best use of my time for the moment,” he says. “Maybe in the future I’ll change this. But I don’t see this as a retirement. I see it the other way around. I see that I was retired until I stopped driving and then I would start working.
“It’s funny because a lot of people make money and then they retire and then they go race cars, right? And now I want to work to actually build something that has a lot of value.
“One of the reasons I decided to stop driving is because I use a lot of my time to be able to go fast. Like I spent the last 20 years or 30 years of my life doing this. Going to bed every night thinking about what I need to do tomorrow to be faster at the racetrack. So, I put a lot of energy, and I put a lot of thought into how I can get better in what I’m doing.
“It’s reached a point now that I go to bed and I think, ‘okay, how can I build more value?’ and how can I create.’ The driving consumed a lot of my time. Although I did some stuff inside, but the driving was my main thing.”
The future is always important for di Grassi, who like he has in his entire career, plans and builds with careful thought and precise detail.
“Now, I think building, working on the future for the next 20 years, it’s not a way to say it’s a retirement. It’s just like a different chapter of my life,” he says. “A lot of the sportsmen, they stop and they are a bit lost on what they then do because they don’t prepare enough.
“I prepared a lot for my transition. Like I went to Harvard, I ran a few companies like Roborace, like the scooter championship, a lot of things. So, I did a lot of things preparing myself for this transition.”
Di Grassi will be a part of the Gen4 period and indeed will continue to develop the Gen4 car for Lola throughout this summer. That might actually be a bit of a test for how he feels in and out of the cockpit. But for now, the die is cast and di Grassi will, come December, be on the other side of the pit wall, still opinionating, still pushing. Don’t worry about that!
