News Summary
- Australian mining and energy company Fortescue Zero has acquired Penske’s Formula E operation, ending the Penske name in the championship after 11 seasons and making Fortescue the grid’s first Australian-flagged team.
- The new customer outfit will run Jaguar’s Gen4 powertrain from the season starting in December, taking the total number of Jaguar-powered cars on the grid to six, split between the factory Jaguar TCS Racing team, Envision Racing and Fortescue Zero.
- Formula E’s Manufacturers’ Championship only counts each powertrain’s two best-placed cars per race, so the extra Jaguar entries raise Jaguar’s odds of a high-scoring result rather than adding a new scoring slot outright.
Fortescue Zero’s purchase of the Penske Autosport operation closes a chapter that runs back to Formula E’s very first season in 2014, when the team entered as Dragon Racing before eventually becoming DS Penske for the DS Automobiles partnership that ends this year. Stellantis’s decision to prioritise Opel and Citroën within its Formula E commitments left Penske without a manufacturer partner for the Gen4 era, and Fortescue — already Jaguar’s technical partner and the championship’s Pit Boost fast-charging supplier — stepped in as the buyer.
The takeover keeps the team’s Oxfordshire base intact and adds two Jaguar-powered cars to a grid where the British manufacturer will now supply six entries once Fortescue Zero’s cars join the four already fielded by the works Jaguar TCS Racing squad and Envision Racing.
What that means for Jaguar’s title ambitions is less straightforward than the headline number suggests. Formula E’s Manufacturers’ Championship only awards points for each powertrain’s two best-finishing cars in any given race — a rule that already applied when Jaguar supplied four cars through its factory team and Envision. Adding two more Jaguar-powered entries doesn’t create a new scoring slot; it simply increases the number of cars competing for the two spots that do count. In practice, that raises the statistical odds that at least two Jaguar-powered cars finish inside the points on a given weekend, particularly at the tracks or in the conditions where the works team’s own pace is inconsistent.
There’s a second, less measurable benefit. Fortescue Zero’s history as a Jaguar development and technology partner — including its work on the championship’s fast-charging Pit Boost system — means the team already has an unusually deep working relationship with Jaguar’s engineering side. Gus Pichot, Fortescue’s growth and energy chief executive, framed the move as a shift from behind-the-scenes supplier to competitor, saying the team was “here to race, to win and to innovate.” More track time across a wider range of drivers and setups, even from a customer team without factory status, typically feeds back into a manufacturer’s development pool in ways that show up in results over a season rather than immediately.
The move does carry risk for Jaguar as well as upside. A stronger customer team narrows the gap between Jaguar TCS Racing and its own satellite outfits, and if Fortescue Zero or Envision starts beating the works cars regularly, it complicates the manufacturer’s ability to present itself as leading its own platform — a dynamic already familiar from other electrified categories where the works team doesn’t always come out on top of its customers. For now, Jaguar heads into the Gen4 era with more cars carrying its name into Q1 than any rival manufacturer on the Formula E grid, for whatever that turns out to be worth once the season actually starts.
FAQ
Who bought Penske’s Formula E team?
Fortescue Zero, the electrification arm of Australian mining company Fortescue, acquired the Penske Autosport Formula E operation and will run it as a Jaguar-powered customer team from the Gen4 era.
