Joel Eriksson is being considered for a shock return to Formula E after recent talks with the Envision team made him an unlikely favourite to replace Robin Frijns.
Eriksson, who drove for the Dragon Racing team in 2021 and then made two appearances for Envision at Berlin in May 2024, has been the official Jaguar reserve and development driver for the last three seasons.
Envision will stick with Sebastien Buemi for a fourth season after recently confirming a deal to keep the 2015-16 champion. But Frijns was recently informed that he will not continue with Envision, meaning that he will likely slip off the grid for the first time since 2017.
The Race understands that Eriksson is in serious contention along with last season's Maserati MSG pairing Stoffel Vandoorne and Jake Hughes but is currently favoured after his stand-in performances in Berlin last season.
The Race also understands that there is a growing lobby for Theo Pourchaire within Stellantis, which wants to see him get more racing experience in Formula E next season (when Stellantis' own teams are full), but that any serious loan talks with Envision are still yet to occur.
For Envision, which has fielded an unchanged line-up since Frijns returned to the team at the end of 2023 when he replaced Jaguar-bound Nick Cassidy, adding Eriksson to its squad will be seen as a major surprise if it is confirmed.
This is because several drivers with much more experience and Formula E success such as Hughes, 2022 champion Vandoorne, Sergio Sette Camara and Sam Bird are all available or about to be available and looking for drives for the forthcoming season.
However, The Race understands that Eriksson has been an option throughout Envision's evaluation process in recent months and is attractive because it already knows him well and will also be receptive to racing under a relatively simplified single-season contract.
Envision has suffered two disappointing seasons after being crowned 2023 teams' champion with Buemi and Cassidy. In that time the team has seen significant changes in its structure too, with former technical lead Mike Lugg leaving the team last February.
Buemi's engineer Connor Summerville has stepped up into a more overarching engineering role as well in that time and the team has also recently welcomed performance engineer Cory George and strategy engineer Anousaha Tarabad, who joined from the Aston Martin Formula 1 team.
Envision Racing would not comment on its 2025-26 driver line-up when approached by The Race but is expected to publicly confirm its driver line-up early next month.
Would choosing Eriksson make sense?
A switch from Frijns to Eriksson might seem somewhat left-field considering their relative achievements in Formula E but from Envision's perspective there is plenty of justification for such a move.
Most obviously, it knows Eriksson from not only his time with the team at Berlin last May when he scored two points for a ninth place, but also way back to January 2018 when he joined Antonio Giovinazzi at the team for the rookie test in Marrakech.
The 27-year-old has since taken part in just 10 E-Prixs, the two with Envision at Tempelhof and eight with Dragon in the 2021 season when he replaced Nico Mueller. On that occasion he stacked up reasonably well against team-mate Sette Camara, scoring a point in London.
But it has been in his role as a reserve at Jaguar from 2023 onwards where Eriksson forged a strong reputation among engineers as he worked at base and at races in conjunction with simulator and fellow development driver Tom Dillmann, one of Formula E's great behind the scenes resources.
That, allied to the fact that Eriksson will be much cheaper than Frijns, will be attractive to Envision, a team which clearly has an eye on Gen4 as much as it does on the financial regulations under which it might be able to free up cash from a different strategy on drivers.
With the step up in anticipated Gen4 costs, teams such as Envision will have to cut certain costs and look for more frugal alternatives to established drivers with more of an emphasis on establishing its own stars.
Additionally, Eriksson's potential deal to join Buemi would clearly be a one-season deal only with an option for the team to extend beyond that, depending on results, giving a wider choice of drivers for the advent of Gen4 in 2026-27.
