The wider consequences of a €1million Formula E influencer shunt
Accidents happen in motorsport. Small ones, big ones, significant ones, inconsequential ones. It's as much in the nature of motorsport as a hamstring pull is to football or a broken racket string is in Tennis.
Professional sport has always had consequences and frankly it needs them. But when those moments get blurred with entertainment - getting novices in the cars, in this case, especially on street tracks - then they can become dangerous and expensive.
That is what happened to several teams at last month's Formula E Evo Sessions in Jeddah, where 10 content creators/media influencers took part in a competition with the actual race cars that were used in that weekend's fourth and fifth races of the Formula E season.
Put in black on white it seems barely credible that 10 novices with no more than a day's preparation could be let free on a high-speed street circuit in cars capable of 175mph. But that is what happened.
That it ended in tears and a €1million bill for one team will mean it is unlikely to ever happen again in that format. That it ever happened in the first place is for many in the paddock, even now, still a major surprise.
This is the story of how one of Formula E's biggest accidents happened, what went on behind the scenes, and the unpleasant practicalities for Lola-Yamaha Abt, which will still be tasked with finishing the rebuild of Zane Maloney's car in the Jarama paddock next week.
The shunt
What needs to be realised about the Evo Sessions initiative is that it was mostly unpopular with the teams even before the incidents in Jeddah last month.
Lola-Yamaha Abt is a decent case study in that it has far better things to be doing with its car, its team and its image than allowing a Formula E novice with no prior experience of powerful single-seaters into a car.
Last year and this, the team could not afford the expense, the labour and the time of major damage. This is heightened in 2026 as it splits and juggles its resources to test, develop, make reliable and then homologate its Gen4 Formula E car.
The 2026 edition had Izzy Hammond, digital content creator and daughter of former Top Gear presenter, Richard, in Maloney's Lola Gen3 Evo car. She spent a day preparing in the simulator at ABT's base in Germany and got a seat fitting at Lola under her belt before heading to Saudi Arabia.
After several exploratory laps, Hammond qualified with a lap of 1m37.240s, almost 10 seconds shy of the fastest time set by DS Penske guest for the day, Ethan Payne (better known as 'Behzinga'), a member of a collective consisting of YouTubers, social media influencers and internet personalities called The Sidemen.
His time of 1m27.984s was itself 12.8s off Edoardo Mortara's pole time for the previous day's actual Formula E race.
Hammond then went into a second quarter-final of the day solo as Cupra Kiro's driver and Mexican automotive content creator Juca Viapri had already shunted his car at the final chicane earlier in the day.
Approaching the Turn 13 left hander, Hammond took too much speed in, realised too late, braked and understeered off in to the wall amid flailing hands, a shower of carbonfibre and a 25G impact that destroyed the car from front to back.
The disruption
While Hammond was getting precautionary checks in the circuit medical centre - and it should be said, she did later issue "massive apologies" to Lola which had been "so amazing and I returned the favour by putting their car into a wall sideways and destroying it" - Lola and the FIA were evaluating the wreckage.
The damaged front powertrain, suspension, and several other components nudged the cost of the damage over the seven-figure mark in Euros.
The new chassis itself is €429,000, while the powertrain (MGU, inverters, gearbox and supplementary parts) which comes under the manufacturer's perimeter is just over €500,000. Add to that the front powertrain kit and dyno testing and it is likely the accident cost around the €1.1m-€1.2m mark.
The cost, from a component point of view, was absorbed by the promoter Formula E Operations as pre-agreed before the event.
Lola, FIA and Formula E Operations staff immediately combined to assist in ascertaining new parts and also a fresh new survival cell, which Lola deputy team principal Frederic Espinos confirmed was chassis #48 - the last Gen3 one stocked by Spark Racing Technologies.
"It was a big work, which was done by everyone, as you can imagine," Espionos told The Race.
"We had to reschedule the timing of everyone and people had to cancel their holidays. But this is where, as a racing team, nobody was complaining, and nobody was doing anything except how to make it possible and do their best to rebuild his car.
"You have to appreciate the state of mind of the workers and the work that they have to do to push on."
There was also quite a bit of salt in the wound via a delay in getting the freight back to Formula E's logistics hub in Valencia in one week. An issue with the plane bringing the cars back meant that there was further delay before the race boxes and spare chassis arrived for Lola-Yamaha Abt crew members to start the rebuild.
The one saving grace for the team and Maloney in particular was that, as agreed prior to the Evo Sessions, no penalties would be accrued for component changes. The event was deemed to be a promotional event sitting outside of the present sporting regulations, hence why the FIA so distanced itself from the Evo Sessions.
The aftermath
Heading to Jarama, the team has broken the back of the repairs but there is still a hefty jobs list still to be completed in the Jarama paddock, which will be done over Wednesday and Thursday next week prior to the track action starting next Friday with a shakedown session.
The 2026 Evo Sessions saga for Lola-Yamaha Abt will then finally be over. But it has a legacy that many senior Formula E figures The Race has spoken to, including Espinos, don't want to forget.
"My view [on the Evo Sessions] hasn't changed and is the same since the beginning," commented Espinos.
"For me, we are playing with fire, and we knew that at some point a crash would happen. If you put people [in] who are not prepared, and when you ask them to drive a car which is difficult to drive, and which has professional tools, there will be problems.
"It was easy last year because we have Scott Mansell [better known as Driver 61] who was a professional driver, so we were kind of relaxed. This year we knew, since the sim, that potentially there can be an accident because, and this is nothing to do with skills or whatever, it's just that they are not prepared enough.
"Even for the [official] rookie test, if you put a guy from FRECA [Formula Regional European Championship] for example, it's a challenge because it's tricky enough even for them, never mind an Evo Sessions driver.
"We knew it would happen, and unfortunately, it happened to us, so it's not a surprise for me."
Formula E CEO Jeff Dodds told The Race last month that the "Gen4 car won't be allowed for non-elite racing drivers" and that if you put media personalities matching that criteria into it "it's just going to be too big and too powerful for them".
"So, I think we'll have to look at what we do next to continue to engage that audience, but it won't be in the same format," added Dodds. "The learnings we get from this one will carry forward, but it won't be for something similar."
There will be a sizeable exhalation of relief from many teams reading that, chief among them being Lola-Yamaha Abt.
