Taylor Barnard’s position at the newly owned Penske team has been under question for the last three weeks, meaning that the last E-Prix winner is currently without a signed deal and therefore presently a seat on the Gen4 grid.
Barnard had an agreement with the previously owned Jay Penske owned team for Season 13, but a new deal has to be re-negotiated and drawn up at the now Fortescue Zero owned and led operation.
In addition to Barnard’s situation, it is believed that around 40% of the staff at DS Penske were actually Stellantis staff that were seconded to the team over the four seasons of those two entities working together.
Those staff have now gone back to Stellantis Motorsport and are being redistributed between Opel, Citroen and Peugeot projects. That meant that Fortescue Zero had to renegotiate with the remaining staff and offer new contracts as the old agreements were invalid after of the change of ownership.
Some of those staff are understood by FEN to have now become full-time employees of Fortescue Zero. In effect, Fortescue Zero did not buy the Penske company as a whole. Instead, it bought assets of the company because it was too interwoven with Penske Media Corporation, Jay Penske’s vast business empire.
For Barnard and his manager, Paul Mueller, this scenario led to intense negotiations for Barnard’s services to be secured as the pre-season test at Jarama looms in just eight weeks’ time.
FEN understands that Barnard is still a favourite to race for the Fortescue Zero team with negotiations and a fresh deal almost agreed upon and expected to be resolved this week. Should that go to plan Barnard could be announced in early October as Fortescue Zero’s first official driver signing.
Barnard’s only other options are now just the mysterious Porsche customer team known temporarily as ‘NewCo Formula E Team’, Lola and CUPRA Kiro. That is because Andretti, Jaguar, Envision, Mahindra, Citroen, Opel and Nissan are all locked and loaded from a driver line-up point of view for Season 12.
Who else are Fortescue looking at?
As revealed by FEN last week, Joel Eriksson and Dan Ticktum are drivers of interest for Fortescue as it looks at assembling its team for its first Formula E season.
Ironically drivers are probably the least complex of its challenges right now, as Fortescue Zero rush to get key staff signed up and two Jaguar Gen4 car built and readied for the pre-season tests in November.
It is unlikely to run its cars at all prior to a Valencia test day on November 11, which will be a private collective test prior to the public curtain raiser at Jarama a week later.
Fortescue still have a few weeks on their side to firm up their driver line-up. But Eriksson, a driver held in high regard by Fortescue Zero via his work at Jaguar when he was a reserve and development driver from 2023 to 2025, is believed to be under consideration.
The irony of the Swede driving a customer Jaguar, but it not being for Envision, will be obvious. Yet, Eriksson, who in many eyes did do enough last season to be given a chance in Gen4, which was actually his primary focus on getting back to the Formula E grid prior to his surprise call up for the 2025-26 season with Envision.
Ticktum, who is available, will also be an attractive prospect albeit coming with a degree of risk factor. And it is one that Fortescue, a company that doesn’t have any particular stiff corporate guidelines, may be willing to take. From a talent and out-and-out potential standpoint Ticktum may actually end up being the primary choice for the ambitious new team.
One of a few outsiders is Nikita Bedrin, who has sim tested and also rookie tested at Berlin for the Penske team in the past. The British domiciled Russian/Italian is highly rated at Witney, despite a modest junior single-seater career prior to 2026.
However, Bedrin is currently leading the 2026 GB3 Championship where he competes for VRD Racing and could be a longer term prospect for the squad as it starts to form a longer term plan in Formula E.
