Taylor Barnard should be quietly happy about his start to life at DS Penske.
While a single fourth place from two races doesn’t feel like a massive surge in momentum following his breakout 2025, the real truth behind the points collation is that he is continuing to do what he’s very good at – being very quick.
In Sao Paulo, DS Penske were not on form. It wasn’t quite gelling for Barnard at a track where, Stoffel Vandoorne’s 2024 pole position apart, the team has never delivered big results.
The team was evidently still struggling to get Barnard completely happy on the brakes and the pace wasn’t fantastic. Despite this, if reliability had been better, then Barnard would have joined teammate Max Guenther somewhere around the fifth or sixth position mark. But the car didn’t restart after the Pepe Marti inspired red flag, and that was that.
In Mexico City earlier this month Barnard was much more comfortable and he briefly celebrated another pole position, which would have been his third in total. But the slightest of overspills off the track, at the exit of the final corner saw the inevitable track limits penalty and pole was handed to rival Sebastien Buemi, curtailing wild and premature celebrations in the DS Penske box.
In the race it all went wrong though. Despite Barnard snatching the lead from an over-eager Buemi at Turn 1 and comfortably keeping in a strong position to win the pace, Barnard blotted his copybook again when he missed his Attack Mode transponder loops and demoted himself to a fifth position finish. That was promoted to a fortunate fourth after Jake Dennis ran out of energy on the finish line.
He was just a few centimetres out on hitting the loops properly as he took a slightly narrower line to the corner. He was far from the only one with Felipe Drugovich, Mitch Evans and Zane Maloney making similar errors.
Had that error not occurred Barnard would likely have been in a scrap with Oliver Rowland for a runners-up position at the very least.
“It’s just one of those things and for me you do everything right, but if a little thing is slightly off, two little decisions, you end up fourth instead of potentially first or second,” DS Penske deputy team principal, Phil Charles, told Formula E Notebook.
“But the positive is we were quick. We were in the right place, and if you keep doing that, eventually you get the spoils. Ultimately, we were pleased.”
While Barnard’s travails were entirely of his own making, teammate Guenther was cursed with misfortune not of his. An innocent in the clumsy melee that accounted for da Costa and Ticktum, he was fortunate just to get to the chequered flag, albeit a delayed and frustrated 12th.
The Barnard and Guenther dynamic appears to be working quite nicely at present with each of the driver’s hard work ethic, positive demeanour and constructive working practice showing positively.
Whether all that will survive the inevitable scraps at the front of the field when they find themselves there is another matter entirely. But for now, DS Penske feels like a team that will win races this season, probably with each of its drivers contributing to that end.
In the background Penske’s Gen4 future is still unclear, although by now it must internally know its way forward. It won’t be with DS, so the presumption is that it will be with its own powertrain which it has been building and developing in the background for the last year at least.
While some pieces of the jigsaw remain to be placed, it appears its drivers are settled and ready to sign off the DS Penske partnership with a few more glory days yet.
