At a time of year where we start to think of gift-giving, Lucas di Grassi will find something that he’s been after for years under his Christmas tree.
The new GEN3 Evo Formula E car will introduce four-wheel-drive to the series for the first time. It’s the series’ 11th season, so the move has been a long time coming. di Grassi has been angling for it since Season 5, when Formula E introduced the first incarnation of its GEN2 car.
“When we moved from GEN1 to GEN2, I said ‘let’s go four-wheel-drive’, because four-wheel-drive is the future of electric cars,” said the Lola Yamaha Abt driver. “You need a motor in the front to regen so four-wheel-drive makes sense.
“With GEN3 to GEN3 Evo, the biggest change is the four-wheel-drive, and it’s only 50kW. We have 250 available, just change the software and we have 250 of it. With 50 kW it’s already changed massively, it’s a different car to drive, it’s (got a) much faster response, it’s better, the car is more stable in high speed, the acceleration 0-100 (kph) is a second faster, so it’s a massive difference.”
With the performance electric car market awash with four-wheel-drive offerings, di Grassi feels that the change won’t just be a big shift for the driving and on-track experience, but will also improve Formula E’s road relevance.
“I think Formula E was very bold in creating an electric series when very few people understood that the future of the mobility industry would be electric,” he said. “And as time passes it just becomes more clear that either a large part of mobility or a large part of the powertrains or the whole powertrain will be electric. So electric technology becomes more relevant every time.
“Currently the technology being developed is still very commercially relevant. You can still transport a lot of what we develop into production cars, and this year especially because it’s four-wheel-drive it becomes even more relevant because pretty much every single car that is an electric sports car is four-wheel-drive. So it’s a big step forward.”
The GEN3 Evo ruleset will last for two seasons before GEN4 arrives, which will bring another big technological leap. di Grassi says “I need a two hour window to say exactly what I want from GEN4”, but did suggest that the improvements coming with GEN3 Evo can be amplified further.
“Although we are a bit late on doing this change, finally we did it and it is the biggest step that Formula E has done and in GEN4 I think all this will go even further,” he said. “The car will probably be made already to be four-wheel-drive from scratch and that’s what I want to see. I want to see tires that have more grip as well and some form of downforce that does not compromise races but you can use a bit more of the power available.”
The changes to the car – which also includes grippier, faster degrading tires – will also change the complexion of races. Whereas Attack Mode previously proved to be more of a hindrance because of the need to drive through an activation zone off-line to unlock the temporary boost in power, now – with four-wheel-drive coming into play as part of Attack Mode – it can bring benefits and open up a range of strategy options.
“It will change massively during the races. Why we wasted Attack mode last season, why we tried to get rid of it, was because you could not put the power down,” di Grassi explained. “You could not put 350kW with the tires we had last year so you didn’t really gain a lot of performance. So you just tried to get Attack Mode out of the way so you don’t lose places and then you would be fighting for the energy in the pack race.
“Now there is a massive difference, I would say at some tracks it could be up to three seconds a lap with the four-wheel-drive. You are able to overtake even in short straights because you gain on acceleration. That has never been tried in motorsport before. I know when I drove in LMP1, and the other cars were not four-wheel-drive, where we could overtake. And the difference is so big on the exit of the corners that you could overtake in 30-40 meters, and in Formula E that will increase the overtaking possibilities even more that were already insane last season.
“If you are in the wrong position and you have used Attack Mode and there is a safety car and people behind you didn’t use, you’re going to lose your position. So Attack Mode becomes a very useful tool strategically, and that’s going to change the game: How you position yourself? How you use energy? Do you use Attack mode in the beginning? Do you do it at the end? You have the battery heating up and you don’t want to do it at the end, but maybe if there’s a safety car at the end and maybe you lose out, so there is now probably six, seven moving points that you really need to take care (of) to be able to extract the maximum out of the race. So I think it’s going to be very, very interesting.
“My only concern is the wet races. This tire, if it’s wet and cold, it’s worse than my ice drive that I did in Greenland. So that’s my only concern. Apart from that, I think the tire deg is something that the driver can make a difference, the four-wheel-drive, the temperatures of everything, so it will be a very complex race.”
While Formula E has finally caught up with its eventual introduction of four-wheel-drive, di Grassi’s Lola Yamaha Abt team is naturally still behind compared to its rivals, having only joined the series ahead of the upcoming season.
“The feeling is good,” he said of his team’s current position. “Theoretically it is far better than what we had last year but we need to develop everything and we are two years behind everyone.
“A lot of the brake systems, controls, energy, all of that you can carry over where we have to go from scratch. I expect we’ll continue to find performance in the car for a long time and even if we try hard to improve as much as we can, we need time and we need mileage to get to the level of the top performers here.”
