Mahindra Racing has just announced that it has signed Lucas Di Grassi (BRA) who is a former Formula E world champion. He is the most decorated driver in the championship’s history with a career that includes Formula One and three podiums at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The Mahindra racing is aiming at the Championship title with the Gen3 era, Lucas Di Grassi will participate in the all-electric series from season nine.
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Current the Mahindra racing driver is Oliver Rowland (GBR) in the two-car team, Di Grassi will work alongside him and will replace Alexander Sims (GBR). As per the company statement, Alexander Sims has left the company to explore other opportunities, he had participated in four seasons in the series and two with the Indian outfit. Before the new series starts next year the team of these two racers, Di Grassi and Oliver Rowland will continue Mahindra Racing’s Gen 3 testing program.
Highlighting Di Grassi’s career, He won the Formula 3 World Championship in the Macau GP before going on to finish runner-up in FIA Formula 2 and earning himself a Formula One seat. Post-Formula One, he raced the FIA World Endurance Championship and took three podiums with multi-Le Mans winning team Audi Team Joest, which gave a kickstart to his successful eight-year Formula E racing career. So far he has won 13 races and has been to 38 podiums, and three pole positions to total an unrivaled 994 championship points. In 2015-16 he won the championship with ABT Sportsline, which has recently been announced as a Mahindra Racing customer team from the start of the 2023 season.
Dilbagh Gill CEO and Team Principal at Mahindra Racing, said, “There’s no doubt that Lucas [Di Grassi] is one of the greatest Formula E drivers in the history of the sport – the stats and the silverware do the talking – but, for us, his appeal is much wider than that. We are the only team that has been net carbon zero since inception, earning us the title of The Greenest Team in Motorsport, and it is fundamental to our existence that we are driving forward technological developments in electric mobility with passion and knowledge both on- and off-track. We believe Lucas is perfectly positioned to do this and we are ready to get him bedded into our ground-breaking Gen3 program within the coming weeks. Our ambition is for Mahindra Racing to become FIA Formula E World Champions and Lucas’s experience and drive will be instrumental in achieving this.”
Lucas Di Grassi, commented, “Joining Mahindra represents a new challenge in my career and the timing could not be better: with the introduction of Gen3 in season nine of the FIA Formula E World Championship, everyone is starting from scratch. Having a seven-year relationship with ABT Sportsline, in which we won the world championship together, will give us a good springboard – the team will use the Mahindra Racing powered by a ZF powertrain, and this additional data and my close connection to the engineers will stand us in good stead. The short-term target is to win races and long-term is to help Mahindra Racing to win the world championship and become an icon in electric racing worldwide. We will build an exciting and sustainable future together.”