One of Formula E's standout stars, Taylor Barnard, isn't formally guaranteed a place on next year's grid. But over the course of the next few weeks his future will become much clearer and he is expected to line-up at DS Penske with Maximilian Guenther.
The Race revealed as McLaren's situation worsened that Barnard - who was a stunning fourth in the championship in his first full season - had signed an agreement with Penske earlier this year with the presumption of that opportunity being a race seat for 2027 after a second season with McLaren in 2026.
That now will not happen as the McLaren team is being wound down. So does that mean Barnard can be fast-tracked to a race seat for 2026 instead or could he even face a season on the sidelines?
The second of those options makes no sense for anyone. Barnard might be only 21 years old but professionals can lose momentum at any time in their careers and what would essentially be a gap year would be a major risk.
But here's the issue. The DS Penske team has Formula E's most decorated driver, Jean-Eric Vergne, incumbent alongside its two-time 2025 race winner Guenther. Three into two clearly will never go.
Through some intricate unweaving of existing plans, it is presumed that Vergne will be shuffled across to Stellantis sister team MSG for the 2025-26 season to replace Stoffel Vandoorne, leaving Barnard to slot in alongside Guenther, who has a multi-year deal directly with Penske.
That all makes a lot of sense. But The Race can reveal that Vergne has not been formally approached about such a move as of mid-August.
His contract is with parent company Stellantis exclusively and not with Penske nor DS Penske as an entity. But with no indication from Penske yet it suggests that the initial plans for Vergne to continue with the team for a fourth-consecutive season have now changed after Barnard's signing.
One assumes that Barnard's manager, the slightly mysterious Paul Mueller, has an assurance that a Vergne reshuffle can be made to allow Barnard to compete next season.
"I hope to be back in Formula E next season because I love the championship, I love the people, I love everything about it; the racing is super, super exciting, super fun for me as a driver," Barnard told The Race at the end of July.
"If I can be back, I'd absolutely love it. I'd enjoy it, and with one year of experience under my belt, that would be obviously better for my results. So yeah, I look forward to the future, whatever it may hold, and I hope to be back."
There are a lot of ‘hopes' in that from Barnard, which probably just reflects his cadence of chat at that time. What he has in his favour is that Penske can choose its own drivers to run. It owns the grid slot, it calls the shots. Not Stellantis.
If it really believes in Barnard, which it clearly does by initially making him an offer, it will get him in there however it can. The DS and Penske relationship has not been particularly strong in recent times and that perversely is in Barnard's favour just for getting his foot in the door.
Another strong attribute Barnard has, and one that will be right up Penske and its deputy team principal Phil Charles's street, is his no-nonsense approach to racing. It's one that made him quite unpopular in some quarters last season.
"Unfortunately, we're here to do a job, whether that makes people happy or unhappy," Barnard told The Race in London last month.
"The opinions of other drivers don't really matter that much to me. Of course, if I could get along with every driver on the grid, that's the most optimum situation. But that's not how it goes here.
"The racing is very tough, very aggressive, and that's what you need to do to be successful."
A new kind of pressure for Barnard
Assuming that Barnard does partner Guenther and Vergne joins new signing Nick Cassidy at MSG, then Formula E's new wonderkid will face a very different challenge to his season-and-a-bit within the family atmosphere of McLaren.
This will be a big test for Barnard and his adaptation to an entirely new way of going racing. Led by Charles, Penske is an operation that reflects the former Jaguar man. Driven, ultra-focused and with a work-ethic intensity that seems to split engineers' opinion, Charles certainly isn't everyone's cup of tea within teams.
Barnard will be expected to deliver immediately in a winning car that with Guenther last season was victorious but also brittle. Was that a legacy of Penske's forceful way of going racing? A Charles-led operation has been known to sail perilously close to the wind.
The intriguing aspect of Barnard signing for Penske is that it will thrust the 21-year-old to the forefront of an operation that is also known for its volatile structure.
Guenther found that to his cost in early 2019 when Jay Penske unfathomably decided to replace him with Felipe Nasr for an ill-fated three races in the previous Dragon iteration of his Formula E team. That was exactly what Guenther didn't need at the time, but he was brought back into the fold and then tempted to join Penske once again in the summer of 2024.
Barnard will have to grow up even quicker than he has at McLaren over the last year or so. It will be a tougher environment for him to perform in and there will be far fewer cuddles on hand than there were from McLaren boss Ian James.
There will also be the task of stacking up against Guenther, who outqualified Vergne over last season and brought home the team's two victories. On his day, Guenther is more or less unbeatable and those days appear to be growing in frequency.
But perhaps the biggest long-term challenge will be out of Barnard's hands. The question of where Penske is going in Gen4 is still unknown and seems to flit between a deal with Porsche for at least the first phase of that ruleset and perhaps going it alone with its own technical package as a registered manufacturer.
The first option seems the more sensible and should it occur that might be more aligned to Barnard's ambitions too. Getting him to develop an ambitious new project would be a major test for one so young, although those that have worked with him at McLaren have few concerns about his development based on his remarkable first full season in 2024-25.
