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It’s near-certain that Jake Dennis will be 2023 Formula E champion.
What’s not at all clear it who’ll be his 2024 Avalanche Andretti team-mate, though it may well be settled this month.
The Race revealed last week that both Robin Frijns and Sam Bird were in the frame for a drive with Andretti, but several others are known to have also been earmarked for the berth and outgoing Jaguar driver Bird is believed to now be out of the frame having agreed a deal elsewhere.
It looks increasingly likely that Avalanche Andretti’s list will include significant interest in Oliver Rowland, Norman Nato and Max Guenther in addition to recent Formula 1 exile Nyck de Vries.
Additionally the name of Lucas di Grassi has also been mentioned to The Race recently as an Andretti possibility, as the 2016/17 champion looks for an alternative seat to his current uncompetitive one at Mahindra.
Andretti has been looking to secure a new driver alongside Dennis for several weeks now and previously tested Linus Lundqvist and Zane Maloney in the rookie sessions – reigning Indy NXT champion Lundqvist in Berlin in April, and Formula 2 podium-finisher Maloney both there and in Rome last Friday.
The team took Andre Lotterer last summer after a strong suggestion from its powertrain supplier Porsche to extend the 41-year-old’s Formula E career, which looked like it would be over when the works Porsche team signed Antonio Felix da Costa for this season early last year.
Lotterer is employed by Porsche on a factory contract and also has the Porsche employed Fabrice Roussel as his engineer, which has been the case since the two worked together at Techeetah in 2018.
Avalanche Andretti team principal Roger Griffiths confirmed to The Race that despite overtures from several teams regarding Dennis’s services for 2024 “we’re set – no changes there” and that technically there is a remote possibility of “retaining Andre” too.
However, The Race understands that in reality Lotterer is set to concentrate solely on a Porsche 963 sportscar programme in 2024 and that Andretti is looking at alternatives for FE.
When asked if de Vries was of interest to the team, Griffiths said that “obviously the whole Formula 1 thing that opened up last week has thrown yet another driver in the mix, but we somewhat anticipated that.
“There are several drivers out there that we’re looking at. We need to make a fundamental decision: do we take a known entity, someone that we can put in the car and really hit the ground running, and potentially pay a higher price for that, or do we look to a rookie driver or something like that? It’s not a straightforward decision.
“We’re in no hurry, we’ve certainly got some interesting options but it’s going to be an interesting couple of weeks. I would like to say by London [at the end of July] we would hope we have something done.”
De Vries and Rowland are also known to be of particular interest to Nissan, which will not retain Rome podium finisher Nato next season. Rowland was a race-winner for Nissan but has been absent from the field since parting with Mahindra mid-season this year, while De Vries – 2021 FE champion with Mercedes – would’ve juggled a Maserati MSG Formula E drive with a Toyota World Endurance Championship campaign in 2023 had he not got the surprise but shortlived AlphaTauri F1 chance.
When asked if some former Andretti drivers such as Frijns or Guenther (pictured below) would be of interest to the team, Griffiths did not specify names but did say that “some are unknown to the team, whether they be from this paddock or other paddocks”.
Guenther has won a race for Maserati MSG this season but his drive there is not believed to be secure, while Frijns is thought to be unhappy with the performance at Mahindra’s customer team Abt Cupra.
“It’s really interesting to see what the right thing to do is. There’s also the added complexity of drivers who have got multiple programmes and how does that work out,” said Griffiths.
“It’s becoming less and less straightforward to say, ‘oh, well Formula E is your priority’. Particularly when you have a clash with other championships, how do you negotiate that clash, what’s the best thing to do?
“If a driver is in contention in one championship, you then have to say ‘well I’m sorry you have to forego this one’, or if they’re out of contention do you then have a bit more of an open view in releasing them for another championship?
“It’s got more and more difficult, which is why sometimes looking at somebody who’s not involved in another championship is a lot more straightforward.
“Taking somebody who’s got the experience is obviously a strong argument to go that route.”
Frijns, who will be a BMW driver in sportscar racing next season with his present World Endurance Championship team WRT, is one driver who is believed to be juggling the complexities of a possible dual programme in 2024. There is one definite FE/WEC clash next year as the series race at Berlin and Spa on the same May weekend.
This may or may not be achievable with different FE teams and may ultimately require compromises from both team and driver.
Andretti team owner Michael Andretti has attended the last three Formula E races and is broadly supportive of drivers doing dual programmes – but without compromising their priority series.
“I think, for a driver, it’s good for him to be driving whatever he can be driving,” he told The Race.
“I encourage my guys, especially in the off-season, to go and do the 24 hours of Daytona and things like that because it gets them going again. I have no problem with that, so long as it doesn’t get in the way of your main programme.”
Andretti, who himself raced for multiple manufacturers affiliated teams in his career, often dovetailing multiple programmes, also believes that any cross-manufacturer sensitivities are in reality not a concern.
“I don’t think it really matters,” he said of that possible complication and any fears of information transfer between manufacturers.
“Drivers don’t know that much about stuff that’s going on. They can’t say technically what they’re doing or anything like that. They don’t really know. I mean, a lot of times the teams don’t even know.”
