The reasons why Fortescue bought a majority stake in the Penske Formula E entry, and will run the team from next season onwards are simultaneously straightforward and complex.
The uncomplicated part is that the Australian industrial and technology giant, that began as a metal mining operation before expanding in to multiple industry technology interests, essentially wants to tell the world about its technology and its sustainable credentials and it can do so via the world’s only all-electric World Championship, Formula E, which it already knows and trusts.
Now, the more complex part. After it lost the tender to supply traction batteries for the Gen4 car – a deal that went to the Italian based Podium Advanced Technologies company in 2024 – Fortescue Zero started to look at the possibility of owning and running a team, or at the very least partnering with one beyond its commitments as the significant service provider for the Jaguar TCS Racing team.
Jaguar is essentially a brand in Formula E, self-funded via JLR and affiliate partners, with Fortescue providing the technical and operational expertise.
Fortescue Zero Racing will become a second ‘customer’ team to Jaguar alongside the Paysafe Envision Formula E Team. The creation of the Fortescue Zero Racing – using Jaguar’s GEN4 powertrain – will not change the existing technical partnership between Fortescue Zero and Jaguar TCS Racing.
Clearly, Fortescue has a huge thirst to decarbonise its mining fleet. This is the real story it wants to tell and was corroborated by some if its executives to FEN earlier this week.
Realising what a great asset it had, via the acquisition of Williams Advanced Engineering (WAE) from EMK Capital and Williams Grand Prix Engineering in 2022, Fortescue has set about trying to articulate its standing and ambition through its myriad technology innovations. But amplifying that as a full-on race team proved to much of a temptation to ignore when it knew Jay Penske was open to selling the majority of the team he set up ahead of Formula E’s birth in 2014.
Fortescue wants to not only get the message across about its continuing decarbonisation, it also wants to commercialise its business much further in a variety of industries it believes it can help make much cleaner.
But that can’t be done if it is unable to have a strong platform to tell the world about its notable works. Hence competing in something as progressive and growing as Formula E, which is about to potentially breakthrough to a much bigger audience via Gen4 and its recent partnership with Disney.
Running a Formula E team is probably a good way to achieve a lot of those goals, as it separates Fortescue a little bit from the Jaguar team while it achieves that, yet still allows them to talk about being Jaguar’s technical partner, as it has been for a decade now, as a rolled-in narrative.
The Penske deal gives an additional platform in an ecosystem where it’s relevant to what Fortescue is doing by decarbonising all their mining fleet via the technology that they are creating, advancing and of course selling.
For Formula E, certainly in the short-term, this is a win/win. Ditto Fortescue. For what this all means in the long-term the fascination really rests in precisely how it will be run and the intricate paths it wants to walks amid an ever evolving grid.
Why Fortescue chose Penske?
Fortescue started talking to Penske about an acquisition earlier this year. But an acceleration for a deal to happen came as the 2025-26 Formula E season drew to a close in August at the London E-Prix.
Prior to that, knowing that DS was leaving as a brand and that Opel were essentially talking over its slot albeit with its own bespoke factory entry, Jay Penske had multiple options open to him and he didn’t make an panicky decisions.
As time went on it was clear that becoming a manufacturer in its own right – the option preferred by its former technical manager and deputy team principal, Phil Charles – was not viable. The build and development of that was started but the financial arsenal needed to develop it properly and make it a true reality never happened.
Another option was working with Porsche as a customer. This was discussed but not thought to have been close to becoming a genuine deal, as Porsche’s evaluation of its second factory team continued to be pondered upon….and pondered upon….and pondered upon.
Then there was working with Jaguar as a second customer team in addition to Envision, a deal which the Chinese owned team largely agreed upon almost a year ago.
But unbeknown to anyone outside of Fortescue and Jay Penske personally, a secret deal to buy the majority of the Penske Formula E operation was getting increasingly serious. Penske became more and more open to relinquishing control of his entity that he set up in 2013 ahead of the first Formula E season.
He made his bittersweet decision around the London E-Prix last month and is understood by Formula E Notebook to have informed his staff shortly after.
Back to Fortescue’s perspective. They had three possible scenarios to come on to the Formula E grid, licence wise.
Fundamentally there were only two franchises available for sale, one was Penske and one was MSG, but MSG, almost torn to pieces by an insane near take-over by the eccentric Brooklyn Earick led circus in early 2025, signed a four-year Gen 4 contract with Citroen in the late summer of 2025.
That meant the Stellantis powertrain supplier was of zero value to Fortescue because they were not going to use any other powertrain but Jaguar, given that they actually produce it.
Penske, still not committed to anything by the time of the London E-Prix, hadn’t signed any deal for Gen4, simply wasn’t committed anywhere. It was really the only franchise that was available to Fortescue at this stage and it went in for the kill.
Penske also had the attraction of a fully functional team. Plug and play, etc. That was attractive to Fortescue because they weren’t going to put a whole team together in such a short a space of time.
They now face a huge race against time to get cars on their wheels after such a late deal to go racing. But if anyone can, it feels that Fortescue Zero can.
