A DTM champion without a requisite licence walks into a Formula E paddock!
Not the start of a poorly delivered joke but the reality of a situation getting ever more serious for Ayhancan Guven as he forms the stake on which to claim a seat with Porsche later this year.
The idea percolating within Porsche is for the DTM champion to race with its new second factory run team for the 2026-27 Formula E season, the first of the Gen4 era.
A positive initial test at Berlin last July appears to have acted as a springboard for a fast-track status not often seen at Porsche.
The manner in which Guven also won the DTM title so unforgettably at Hockenheim in October solidified a belief that he can carve a new discipline transfer route into international motorsport.
While it remains to be seen if he actually can, Guven has to think practically and that will centre around the requirement for gaining an e-licence to compete.
That means getting the necessary points via international competition and for 2026 that means partnering Timur Boguslavskiy and James Cottingham at the #91 Manthey Porsche team in the LMGT3 category of the World Endurance Championship.
Guven acknowledged to The Race last week that his and Porsche’s target of racing in Formula E and gaining the requisite licence points is “making everything a little bit complicated”.
“This is another reason why the WEC is interesting because it offers more points than DTM,” added the 27-year-old Turk.
“We are working on the licence points now.
“It’s an interesting world with the new [Gen4] car, and Porsche is committed. Now Porsche is no longer doing Hypercar in the WEC, to be world champion with Porsche, you have to race in this championship [FE]. And when they have four cars, for sure it’s interesting.
“If I am a Porsche driver, I have to match my ambitions with what Porsche is doing. My dream was to fight for overall wins with Le Mans, but then they stopped the Hypercar programme [in the WEC].
“So now I am hoping to get a seat in Formula E together with Porsche. It’s my short to medium term plan.
“But I still want to be involved in GT racing, I don’t want to leave sportscars, so I hope I do both. I love racing and I want to race as much as possible.”
Double World Rally champion Kalle Rovenpera and IndyCar star Colton Herta are taking headlong plunges into potentially icy and treacherous Super Formula and F2 waters this season. But Guven potentially going from DTM to Formula E in 12 months is just as disorientating.
While Rene Rast, Nico Mueller and Gary Paffett pioneered the route, Guven’s complete lack of single-seater experience stands out. But he’s not concerned.
“It could be a good step for me for a number of reasons,” he said.
“I am not a single-seater driver, but there are many things that are positive. I did the test, it went really well, so this was the first thing and also I have a sim-racing background and there is a lot of sim work in Formula E, so I fit that really well.
“Porsche is committing more and more to FE, having the four cars across two teams in 2026-27 for the first time, so these things are coming together to make Formula E interesting for me.
“The best time to step into a new championship is when there is a new car and everyone starts from zero.”
The final point is a pertinent one. The feeling with those that have attended the first two group tests for the Gen4 car report that the landscape will be very different for drivers and styles of racing for the new era.
Pack racing, certainly to the extent we have seen in recent seasons, will be a non-starter. More traditional single-seater assets will be useful but so too the strategic elements of whatever the sporting format dictates.
But in all likelihood qualifying will become much more important than in Gen3 meaning that outright pace over a single lap will be a major component to weaponise.
Another key indicator metric for Guven will be how the landscape looks at Porsche’s new team, which is going through the early stages of build right now.
That will include specific staffing requirements with recruitment a factor in this process in combination with using what Porsche already has at its disposal in terms of human resource capability.
That will come “at the end of the testing phase, shortly before the season starts,” according to Porsche’s director of factory motorsport for Formula E, Florian Modlinger.
“That's what we did in the past with our actual customers and our factory team too,” Modlinger told The Race.
“We use people from the factory team to go testing because we have no one dedicated test team.
“Then at the very end of the testing phase, when the car is sorted, the functions, the systems, everything is 90% sorted, we give it into the hands of the race team people, and also let the customer teams test.
“I think there we will not differ from what we did in the past, from the schedule, it will be very similar. The main focus now and the next months will be to fill the structure with the correct names. And this is a big challenge.”
A big challenge then, and one that will very likely include Ayhancan Guven.
