GARY WATKINS
FORMULA E
British racing car company Lola has announced a first project after its revival in 2022. But it will not be building chassis, rather it has partnered with Yamaha to develop a powertrain for the Formula E World Championship next season.
A new relationship between Lola Cars and the Yamaha Motor Company was announced last week with the intent to enter FE in time for the start of the 2025 season, when the Gen3 Evo chassis comes on stream. Details of how they will achieve that have not been released, but they are expected to supply the powertrain to an existing team rather than take up the vacant grid slots for a 12th squad.
The project is the first for Lola since the brand was purchased by amateur racer and green entrepreneur Till Bechtolsheimer in the summer of 2022. He suggested at the time that he wanted to use Lola as a “testbed and a platform for innovation in energy-efficient solutions”.
“The focus of this project is squarely around technological development in which Lola is fully invested,” he said on the announcement. “We see the highly efficient 350kW electric powertrain that underpins the manufacturer’s perimeter in FE as a cornerstone technology with exciting applications across many forms of top-flight international motorsport.”
Yamaha is making a return to international car racing for the first
