Formula E farewell: Lucas di Grassi says "I never had fun driving a race car"

After 12 seasons, Lucas di Grassi has brought his Formula E racing career to an end in London. During a media roundtable attended by e-Formula.news, the 2017 World Champion spoke surprisingly openly about the sacrifices behind his profession. Racing was never fun for him, the Brazilian says, as he recalls spending 150 nights a year in hotels, dealing with enormous pressure and taking extreme measures to save weight during his Formula 1 career.

Lucas di Grassi was part of Formula E from the very beginning. Before the inaugural race, he helped series founder Alejandro Agag build up the new championship. He then joined Abt for the first season and won the inaugural E-Prix in Beijing in 2014. Di Grassi subsequently competed in all 12 Formula E seasons. The only event he failed to start was the 2023 Cape Town E-Prix, when Mahindra withdrew both of its cars before the race for safety reasons.

Asked what he would miss after stepping away as a racing driver, di Grassi first listed the things he definitely would not miss. "I won't miss the simulator hours. I won't miss staying 150 nights a year in crappy hotels, eating German food most of the time. Sorry to the Germans. And I won't miss the time away from my family." Earlier in the media roundtable, he had already described how many birthdays, weddings and celebrations with friends he had missed because of his racing career.

"This isn't fun, this is a profession"

For di Grassi, the reality of being a professional racing driver is very different from how the dream job may appear from the outside. "I don't have fun racing. A lot of people think that when we are driving, we are having fun. I have fun doing my hobbies, when I can do what I want, at the time I want and for as long as I want. Racing is not a hobby. I never had fun driving a race car."

"I had adrenaline, I had the spirit of competition and I wanted to win very badly," he explains. "But I never had fun. When I was in the car, there was so much pressure and so much stuff happening." That pressure affected his life long before he climbed into the cockpit. "When I had a race, it started 10 days before: sleeping at the right times, adjusting to the time zone, eating the right things. I couldn't have a normal life. And this was all because of racing. So it wasn't fun."

Di Grassi illustrates just how far those sacrifices could go with an example from his Formula 1 career. "When I was in F1, I was 15 kilograms overweight. It's no fun not having dinner and going to sleep on an empty stomach because I needed to lose weight to be competitive."

"I even cut metal parts out of the zipper to save weight. I took the insoles out of my racing boots to save weight. That's how I was getting sick all the time. This isn't fun. This is commitment and this is a profession."

"I will miss the competition"

One part of life as a racing driver will nevertheless be difficult for di Grassi to leave behind. "I will miss the competition. I will miss the feeling when you actually achieve a victory or a title."

For him, however, that feeling is fundamentally different from simply having fun behind the wheel. "It's about the feeling you have when you win. That's a very different type of approach. I think people from outside don't realise that this is the case. That's what I'm going to miss."