Looking back at Nico Mueller’s Formula E career, his current status at Andretti could not be more apposite than his previous programmes.
The Dragon Racing season-and-a-half from 2019-21 was conducted with an erratic team and usurpingly brought a chaotic time for a driver to try and make sense of the situation.
Then, when Mueller looked to be lost to Formula E, he returned with ABT CUPRA and immediately found himself in the least competitive car on the grid. The 2022-23 season was mostly a right-off, while last season saw Mueller able to shine and re-inflate his reputation with some sensational performances.
That piqued the interest of Porsche, where Mueller had plenty of admirers, none more so than overall team chief Florian Modlinger, who had worked with the Swiss ace extensively in Formula E.
Now there is a big chance for success with Andretti and potentially in the future with Porsche. But success in Formula E doesn’t come easily and Mueller knows it.
“When it comes to all the factors aligning, yes, it’s definitely the best shot I’ve had so far,” the Porsche factory driver tells Formula E Notebook.
“I feel like all the ingredients are there and now it’s about, slowly putting the puzzle together. I think maybe personally I would say I underestimated it, but you always hope, to speed up the process as much as possible.
“When there’s so many changes being made and you have very limited driving time, especially being a customer team, that it just needs a little bit of time.”
Mueller has worked briefly with his engineer Bertrand Fermine at the Nurburgring 24 Hours back in 2018 and a few other GT3 events with WRT. But it’s clear that Mueller’s side of the garage also needs time to become more naturally cohesive too.
“It’s definitely not a plug-and-play situation and it’s something that kind of grows together and you improve as things proceed,” says Mueller.
“You put the effort in to speed that process up and you try and put yourself into kind of race weekend situation when you’re working on the sim to speed up communication processes and stuff and grow together even more and more quickly.
“So, that’s definitely one of the parameters we’re working on as well. And I’m convinced that if there’s a championship where things like these make a difference, it’s Formula E. I think in many other championships, your engineers do the job more or less, you don’t really have to be that unit to the extent we see here to be successful.
“Here in Formula E, I think definitely if you want to make the difference, you need that as well.”
Mueller is well-known as a strong technical driver who understands a lot of the nuances of vehicle dynamics. He’s highly regarded by Hankook engineers that know him from DTM, so his feedback on the new Hankook ION Gen3Evo tyres has been welcome.
“I think now with the new Hankook tyre playing a very big role, the car being different and picking out where you, as a driver, have to adapt to what has been not as straightforward as you would think is challenging. Because the cars look very similar, even though the rear ends are different from manufacturer to manufacturer, actually feel quite different. I still feel like there is potential to be extracted by just getting more mileage under my belt.”
That of course is not an easy thing to achieve away from the amplified hot house of races due to Andretti’s customer status. Perhaps that is part and parcel of why Mueller hasn’t shown his true potential yet, even though it’s a very early stage of the season.
Still, Mueller is already popular with the team for his work ethic and feedback, which it feels will contribute to some big results sooner rather than later.
