Mahindra tried to dress up its entirely expected driver continuity announcement but it still caught some out over the last 24 hours or so. The formal confirmation that both Nyck de Vries and Edoardo Mortara will continue for a fourth season together at the team as the Gen4 era begins later this year came today, but what comes tomorrow for one of Formula E’s best loved teams?
Nyck de Vries and Edoardo Mortara joined the Indian owned/British based team in the autumn of 2023, and have contributed significantly to the rejuvenation of it after a disastrous start to the Gen3 era in 2002/23.
The news of their new deals was not unexpected but Mahindra did look around earlier this year, speaking to several drivers. Likewise, both de Vries and Mortara also held some discussions with rivals, although none of them came to firm or binding offers.
Both de Vries and Mortara had strong Season 12 campaigns, with the former taking two victories, while Mortara had a particularly good first half of the campaign, ultimately finishing higher than his teammate in the standings by 22-points despite not scoring a win.
But Mortara did claim three podium places and four pole positions, establishing himself as a stand-out qualifying performers and a consistent points scorers.
Upon the announcement, Mahindra Racing CEO & Team Principal, Frederic Bertrand, thanked both drivers for “continuing this adventure with us as we begin its second chapter. Over the past three seasons, we have built trust, shared reference points and a strong way of working together. That continuity will be important as Formula E enters the GEN4 era.
“GEN4 will bring an even greater challenge, and Season 13 will demand a steep learning curve from the whole team,” added Bertrand.
“We have a strong foundation, but there is still a great deal to discover about the new car. Our priority will be to learn quickly, work through the details and improve step by step.”
Can Mahindra catch up?
Bertrand and his policy for continuity will hope that ghosts of 2022/23 do not revisit the Mahindra team.
That was when a poor initial execution of the new rules set saw the team mired in poor performance during the first two Gen3 seasons, with Bertrand effectively re-setting the team by bringing in both Mortara and de Vries, as well as highly rated engineer Jeremy Colancon, who came across from the Maserati MSG squad.
Fortunes started to change subtly in Season 10 (2024), but only subtly at first. But it was Season 11 (2025) where the fruits of the hard labour started to pay off with a return to the podium and several eye-catching qualifying performances.
But are Mahindra now in a similar position to where they were at the end of 2022?
Certainly, the one similarity is that their Gen4 project was firmed up and delivered later than rivals. This was a legacy of Mahindra’s indecision on whether it would commit to the new rules set, with a final decision only coming in November 2025.
Although its designers had long since begun work on their design, the lateness of the project compared to rivals combined with delays in specific components from outside suppliers meant that a first shakedown of the development test car could not be completed until the third week of July.
Further testing has taken place in recent weeks with both de Vries and Mortara having driven, although a plan to run at Guadix was recently cancelled in order to produce some updated components and spend time on the AVL test rig in Austria.
Mahindra is out again in Spain over the next fortnight before getting its car homologated and then going through further testing at the official pre-season test at Jarama in mid-November.
The unanswered question though is just how far behind Mahindra are in terms of understanding some of the nuances of the Gen4 car, particularly in the utilisation of the front differential, which Porsche and Stellantis in particular are said to have already mastered significantly.
