Vandoorne steps up to Formula E race seat with Jaguar

Stoffel Vandoorne will return to Formula E this season following confirmation that he will replace Mitch Evans at Jaguar TCS Racing.

The 2021-22 champion joined the team as its reserve driver last season and steps up to a race seat after Evans, who had been with the team for a decade, opted to switch to the new Opel program.

“[I’m] very motivated and happy about it because it's where I put all my priorities for next year,” Vandoorne said in a media call ahead of the announcement. “I wanted to be back in Formula E. I wanted to be back with a good team in the best conditions I can, and I feel like joining Jaguar is giving me the best opportunity to achieve all of that. So I am very excited about it."

After being let go from the MSG team after it transitioned from Maserati to Citroen backing last season, Vandoorne was left without a drive for the first time since he joined the Formula E grid in 2018, instead taking a role on the sidelines with Jaguar. He says that experience has set him up nicely for his racing return to racing in the series.

“One thing that has been nice is to follow it from the sidelines last year, which wasn't always the most exciting part, but I've been able to see how this team runs races behind the scenes, spending time with the strategists to see what decisions, what their thought processes during the race,” he said. “And I think having that knowledge coming into the race seat now gives me way more confidence, trusting the people behind me when I'm in the racing car as well, because I know what thought process they have.

“I know that they're not preferring one driver over the other. I know that they're always trying to do the best for you as an individual and as a team, so having that experience from having dealt with them during the year is just bringing a lot of confidence to me that we're a very strong group of people we're not perfect but we're at least trying to maximize our opportunities and chances, and these guys are going to yeah do everything to be successful.”

But while he hasn’t raced for a season, Vandoorne doesn’t see that as a disadvantage, having also split his time helping Jaguar develop its new GEN4 package with a race seat in the World Endurance Championship with Peugeot and in another development role with the Aston Martin Formula 1 team.

“I don't feel rusty at all because I've still been racing in WEC this year, and I've also probably done the most mileage in a GEN4 car up until now compared to a lot of the other drivers because thisGEN4 development started quite early,” he said. “I think we started testing in January this year, so it's been a long project already.

“So I don't feel like I'm rusty at all. I've still been competing in other championships. I've been busy with a lot of other stuff with Aston Martin as well in F1, so it doesn't really feel like it's been that long to be honest.”

Vandoorne split his time away from the grid helping Jaguar develop its new GEN4 package with a race seat in the World Endurance Championship with Peugeot and in another development role with the Aston Martin Formula 1 team. Jaguar TCS Racing

Aside from his first season, Vandoorne won races and took multiple podiums in every season of Formula E's GEN2 era. GEN3 was less successful for the Belgian, with just two podiums – including a stunning win in the wet in Tokyo in the 2024-25 season – being his only return. But with his arrival at a race seat at Jaguar coinciding with the new GEN4 ruleset coming into play, Vandoorne says it's a point he can "reset" and return to form.

“I'm still the same driver, I'm still very talented and motivated, and I think success in motorsport has its ups and downs,” he said. “I don't think anyone has been, let's say, on top all the time in their career. Everyone's always had to had to deal a little bit with setbacks, and for sure, in some parts of GEN3 wasn't my best form, but I'm also learning from that, and I'm carrying a lot of that that experience forward into GEN4, how to deal with that, and kind of how to reset and learn about a completely new car.

“GEN4 is going to be very different. A much more powerful car, I think a lot more technical in some aspects as well. And I've also got a great team around me. I'm with a team that has won or has been one of the dominant teams in GEN3. They've won two championships, so they have been class of the field, and for me as well to join them last year already, it was a great experience to see how exactly they were different to to some of my previous teams that I have been with in GEN3, so I have huge belief in those guys that they're going to be competitive again in GEN4, and I'm very happy to be to be a part of that.”

And he doesn’t see there being any additional pressure in replacing Jaguar’s longest-standing and most-successful driver in Mitch Evans.

“I don't think that really adds anything extra,” he insisted. “I think we're all very talented racing drivers, and the nature of racing when people move around, especially in a competitive championship, is you're kind of always stepping into someone's shoes or seat with high expectations. And I think in any of the top teams that you're racing for, you're always expected to perform, and I think that pressure ultimately comes, in the first place, from myself because I want to perform at my highest level.

“So I don't see it any different. It's kind of a mutual pressure that we all want to perform, we all want to live up to the past performances, and to make sure we carry that momentum from last year into next year.”

Vandoorne will partner Antonio Felix da Costa this season, the Portuguese driver having joined the team prior to the last campaign in place of Nick Cassidy (who went on the race for the team Vandoorne departed). It’s the only driver line-up of those confirmed that will feature two world champions but Vandoorne isn’t expecting that to generate the sort of friction that can come from having two star names in the same garage.

“We've been very hard competitors for most of our junior careers and then then into Formula E as well, so obviously there's always this part of competitiveness between us, but ultimately we're racing for one of the biggest teams in Formula E as well, we’ve got to respect the team as well, and we've always or we're always going to be professional in that that way as well,” he said.

“In this initial phase of GEN4 where it's all a little bit of an unknown, we don't really know how competitive we're going to be. We're working extremely closely together, really pushing the team as much as we can. There's not really any games being played, any hiding, let's make our car and team as competitive as we can, and then hopefully we're strong enough so we can fight it out on track between us.”