McLaren is taking over Mercedes’ factory Formula E team, along with all its staff, and expects it to stay at the top.
Mercedes announced its planned departure from Formula E after just two seasons in the category, despite its rapid success. It won the teams’ title in its second year (the first time Formula E awarded a ‘world’ championship) while the Silver Arrows’ Nyck de Vries won the drivers’ trophy. It’s in the thick of the fight again this season, De Vries and team mate Stoffel Vandoorne having already taken wins.
The team originally entered the 2018-19 championship as HWA (Mercedes’ customer DTM team). Now, Mercedes have chosen to leave Formula E, rather than commit to the Gen3 era, details of which were still largely unconfirmed at the time.
Nonetheless it was keen to find a buyer for the team. One soon materialised in the shape of McLaren, which signed a deal to take it over shortly before this year’s Berlin Eprix.
Speaking at the launch of McLaren Racing’s new EV racing edition, including Formula E and Extreme E teams, CEO Zak Brown explained to media including RaceFans how the takeover will work, and why they won’t immediately relocate the team to the McLaren Technology Centre, home to its F1 team.
“We’re going to pick up literally the Mercedes Formula E team, move it to a new location but in the same general vicinity,” he said. “So in the short-term, they’re not going to move to the MTC. That’s to give good integration to the existing team and not pick them up, move them all.”
Current Mercedes Formula E team principal Ian James will leave the marque to come across to McLaren, Brown confirmed.
“All EV racing will be led by Ian James, so Extreme E will then roll into what is now McLaren EV racing, he’ll be the [managing director] of that. So it will be the existing Extreme E team, existing Formula E team with Ian’s leadership across both.”
Entering Formula E as a new team can be extremely challenging. Ownership transitions like this, such as when Audi took over (their customer DTM team) ABT’s entry in 2017, can set things off-course in the delicate and very operationally-dependent ecosystem of FE.
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However, Brown said he expected the team – having been taken wholesale from as it was as Mercedes – to be able to be competitive from the off. “From an on-track point of view I see no reason why the Formula E team…
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