Andretti counting on Nissan switch to be a power move in Formula E

Andretti Global Formula E team principal Roger Griffiths is hoping for a stronger relationship with new powertrain supplier Nissan after four years partnered with Porsche.

The American team will start the GEN4 era as Nissan’s sole customer team, and while the brand has already been working on developing its package, Griffiths hopes his team will be able to play a part in the process before official pre-season testing starts in November.

“The biggest thing we're hoping to gain is more involvement in the overall process, whether that's track testing, development, collaboration, whatever it might be, just to have a greater influence in the direction of the program,” he told RACER. “Obviously, Nissan is already a way down the path on the physical design of the componentry, but I think we as a race team can offer a lot in terms of the next steps, the development direction, how to extract the maximum performance from it, how to get our performance-oriented guys working with theirs, to take on the might of Porsche and Jaguar so it's a more integrated relationship, is the key thing. 

“We always hoped that that would be the case with Porsche and it kind of started out that way, but once we got on track, the competitive nature of the two teams started working together, it all fell apart.”

Andretti and Porsche got off to a strong start with Jake Dennis winning the drivers’ title in the first season of GEN3, but tensions between the two soon arose, with Porsche wanting more influence on their customer, while on-track Dennis and Porsche’s Pascal Wehrlein – who succeeded Dennis as champion in 2024-25 – clashing on a number of occasions.

RELATED: Formula E champ Wehrlein and defeated rival Dennis hit sour notes after season finale

“We were always led to believe that it didn't matter which car won, as long as it had a Porsche logo on it,” Griffiths said. “We quickly found out that that wasn't the case and you can, to some extent, understand that. When you are running a factory team and the board is signed off on the budget to run a factory team, they are going to have their favorites, and when a little upstart customer team comes along and starts doing better than the factory team, it does raise questions in the boardroom as to why we do it. Why don't we just be a manufacturer? 

“I think it was a little bit difficult along those lines, and then there were some personality clashes with the drivers. So yeah, it was never straightforward. It's a compromise. It's always difficult when the people that are designing and developing the car or the powertrain or whatever are also racing it against their customers. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.”

And as Griffiths points out, a strong alliance between both teams should benefit both as a whole, but manufacturer politics can sometimes cloud that thinking.

“We always recognize the fact that you do need more than just two cars out there because more data means more opportunities to do analysis to understand what's going on,” he said. “If you find yourself in a situation where one driver is much stronger than the other with just a two-car team, then you're really only looking at one set of data. 

“So the intent was always to have the four cars running together and to be sharing information and all the rest of it. But then it only takes one engineer to say, ‘Well, why are we telling our customer team this? Surely we're giving away our secret sauce,’ to then start to undermine everything that you try to do from that high level. With these types of programs, you need everybody on board with the concept of what it is you're trying to achieve.”

After a weekend where intra-team tactics were a hot topic, with Porsche’s other customer Cupra Kiro helping out factory driver Wehrlein’s ultimately successful title push in both qualifying and the race on Saturday, while Andretti and Porsche didn’t even have a conversation about the matter – “they haven't even asked because they know what the answer would be” Griffiths said with a smile – looking forward 12 months from now, such politics aren’t expected to play a part.

“If we fast forward a year, I would expect… may the best man win,” Griffiths said. “Obviously we’ll do everything we can to help each other. We've got an obligation, if you like, to help around the manufacturers' championship, which is fine. But I think it's very well understood between us and Nissan, we'll do everything we can up until the point we hit the racetrack, and then we abide by the golden rule of not running into each other. But after that we have responsibilities to our ownership, our drivers, our team personnel and our sponsors, partners to do the best job we can, just as Nissan does. 

“So we'll be racing on the racetrack. Hopefully, it will be a fair fight, and we need to go into it in the right spirit. Hopefully, we've got good respect between the drivers and the teams and all the rest. I think the closer the collaboration is off-track, the better it will be in terms of racing on track because we'll start treating them a little differently. They're not adversaries off track and on track.”

Nissan spent this season without a customer team after the departure of McLaren from Formula E, but knowing about that team’s relationship with the brand helped inform the decision to make the switch.

“That was part of the decision process,” said Griffiths. “We did have conversations with one or two people that had been part of the McLaren team and got their take on how well things had gone, and it was almost unanimous in their response: it was very close, it was really good. That was one of the key reasons why we chose to go with Nissan. We looked at everybody as to where the opportunities were, and above and beyond everybody else, Nissan came to the fore to be the right partner. They seem to have the right philosophy from the outset, but they needed us to make them better.”
Dennis says that McLaren’s performances on track, where they often matched or even exceeded the performance of the factory team without pushback, is also encouraging for him as a driver.

“It seems like they had a good relationship with McLaren,” he told racer. “McLaren were, at that time, better than Nissan, and that's a really positive sign that they allowed that to happen. But from my side, as long as I've got all the same tools as the other guys, then I can do the job. But I am confident that the communication between us and this one will be super-strong.”

Nissan initially struggled at the start of the GEN3 era before taking multiple wins across the factory team and McLaren in the second season. By 2024-25, it was winning the drivers' championship with Oliver Rowland and that rate of development is encouraging for Dennis.

“Nissan coming in as our partnership is super-positive,” he said. “I think they've created a really good car in GEN3. I think their development was probably the highest from GEN3 to GEN3 EVO, which is super-promising that the development rate is good. I'm looking forward to working with them.”

Andretti is, of course, part of the TWG Motorsports group that has programs aligned with General Motors and Honda in other series and naturally, Griffiths says, conversations with those companies previously took place before the team went with Nissan.

“Of course, you look at it, you explore it,” he said. “It wasn't the right fit at the time. 

“Going back years, we were knocking on Honda's door, particularly in the early days when Honda was actually sending people to the track [that] I knew from my past life, because Honda, like many other manufacturers, were keeping an eye on what was going on. It was interesting, and we continued those conversations, but it wasn't the right fit for Honda when we were having those conversations. 

“And we've had conversations with some of the other partners that TWG Motorsports has, which is inevitable. You're always going to do it. You always find yourself at the racetrack with half an hour to spare once in a while in a different environment, and you talk about stuff. But at the end of the day, it's got to be a good fit for what their global philosophy is, whether it's the direction they're going with their own road car divisions as to whether it fits or not. At those points in time, it just wasn't a good fit for what they were looking to do.”

As a customer team though, Andretti will be restricted when it comes to testing Formula E’s new GEN4 cars. Each manufacturer gets 40 days of testing, with four of those specifically dedicated to customers. Not that it ought to impact Andretti – it was in a similar position going into GEN3 and not only did Dennis take the drivers' title, but Andretti finished ahead of Porsche in the teams' standings too. In fact, the top two drivers in the points were customers, with Nick Cassidy finishing second for Envision Racing, which beat its own works partner Jaguar to the teams' crown.

“Ultimately we had no testing heading into GEN3 either, so we were up against it and we won the first race,” Dennis said. “So statistically, having no testing is bad, but it's part of something that we have to accept as a customer team and just rely on their drivers to develop the powertrain as well as possible and then ultimately, I arrive at the first race with about four days in the car. 

“But it is what it is. We won the first race, we became champion in the first year, so I don't want to use it as an excuse. It's just more hindrance. If I've got the car to do it, then there's no reason why we can't win it.”