Formula E may have gone in to its annual hibernation period from a promotion and marketing standpoint but teams have been toiling at tracks scattered over Iberia in recent weeks as they hone their Gen4 development packages.
The upcoming homologation period will be shortly upon the six manufacturers of Stellantis, Porsche, Jaguar, Nissan, Lola and Mahindra. Then it will be a mad dash to build up the race cars for an informal test day at Valencia on November 11 before the four days of public running at Circuito del Jarama between November 16-20.
Trying to find any kind of hierarchy at present is still very difficult considering the ongoing testing and discovery of issues and challenges that all of the manufacturers have been going through.
However, it seems reasonably clear that Porsche and Stellantis are in very good shape after their testing so far. Nissan and Jaguar have seemed to encounter more issues as they have introduced more genuine Gen4 parts, while Lola is said to be quick but fragile.
Mahindra still appears to have a mountain to climb but have some time on their side as they try and claw back some of the lost time from their late introduction to the Gen4 era.
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Jaguar
Jaguar was in action at the Guadix circuit last week with Antonio Felix da Costa and Maximilian Guenther (recently confirmed at Paysafe Envision) in action.
The Jaguar development car has shown pace in its testing programme so far but has, like most others, also lost track time with reliability issues. The nature of these are not known but are believed to have impacted on run plans.
Envision personnel were at the test to gain further knowledge of the Gen4, a policy it has followed since the end of 2025 when Sebastien Buemi became the first non-Jaguar contracted driver to experience the car.
An expected deal with the Penske team should be finalised shortly and that entity, which is set to have a new majority owner, is expected to attend the pre Jarama test at Valencia, pencilled in for Wednesday 11th November, with a pair of Jaguar Gen4 cars.
Nissan
Recent signing Zane Maloney got a brief first taste of the Nissan Gen4 car at Calafat in north east Spain earlier this month just a few weeks after he had concluded his running in the Lola Gen4 car at Estoril.
Maloney was joined at the test by development driver Sam Bird and it is understood by FEN to have been a difficult test with Nissan experiencing and specific issue that limited their running.
Nissan are again in action this week at Monteblanco where Maloney will get a more concentrated amount of time at the wheel. A further test is planned for the end of September before the homologation period for the teams’ cars begins next month.
Stellantis
Stellantis have tested throughout the summer but took a break at the end of August and are not scheduled to run for several weeks before reconvening prior to the homologation period.
Nick Cassidy, Jean-Eric Vergne, Mitch Evans and Theo Pourchaire have all been in action at tracks such as Spanish tracks at Andalusia, Calafat and Guadix and are the only four drivers to have run since Andre Lotterer and Tim Tramnitz undertook miles in the early stages of reliability testing at the start of 2027.
Citroen and Opel appear to be in reasonable shape on performance runs across the testing although several more days are in the diary yet before the official test at Jarama in mid-November.
Mahindra
Mahindra were scheduled to join Jaguar at the Guadix test but had to change plans at the last moment.
A spokesperson for Mahindra told FEN that the team “had been producing some updated components for the test car and the supply chain time meant we couldn’t physically get them to Spain in time to run so the car is running in the UK instead as we can receive the components, build, validate and test them faster than trying to ship back and forth.”
Prior to that planned test, Mahindra had spent time on the AVL test rig in Austria in early August but then completed an initial test with both Edoardo Mortara and Nyck de Vries sampling the development Gen4 car prior to the re-arranged Guadix plans last week.
Lola
A two day test at Guadix late last month, in which Dan Ticktum experienced the Lola Gen4 development car was said to have gone well for the British manufacturer, although some reliability concerns challenged the team.
Lola had a pre-planned stint at AVL’s dynamic test dyno-rig in Graz, in early September, at a similar time to when Lola moved in to its new facility at Silverstone. Further testing is set to recommence later this month in Spain.
