Stoffel Vandoorne – a former FIA Formula E World Champion – will be back on the grid full-time next season, becoming a Jaguar TCS Racing driver alongside teammate António Félix da Costa. For the Belgian driver, who had four wins, 17 podiums and 103 career race starts to his name, this move up from a sabbatical as the team’s Reserve and Development driver has come at the perfect time.
Having had a year out of the World Championship, after the departure of Maserati MSG Racing into the Citroën Racing outfit, Stoffel Vandoorne hasn’t just been sitting on the sidelines. The former Formula 1 driver has been actively testing the GEN4 Jaguar machines all year, ahead of Pre-Season Testing across 16-20 November next week.
“I am still the same driver,” Vandoorne begins, “I am still very talented and motivated and I think success in motorsport has its ups and downs and I don't think anyone has been on top all the time in their career - everyone has had to deal a little bit with setbacks.
“For sure in some parts of GEN3 weren’t my best form, but I am also learning and carrying that experience forward and how to reset and learn about a completely new car.
Vandoorne started his Formula E career with HWA, just three weeks after leaving Formula 1. Just five races into his rookie season, he had placed his car on pole position for the 2019 Hong Kong E-Prix and very quickly cemented himself as one of the championship’s brightest emerging talents.
A season later he was representing both Mercedes-Benz EQ in Formula E as a full-time driver, whilst also working as a Reserve Driver in F1. He, and then-teammate Nyck de Vries, would then win back-to-back drivers’ honours, with Vandoorne taking the drivers’ title in 2021.
After their leave from the all-electric championship, Vandoorne made the move to DS PENSKE for two seasons before joining the Maserati squad. After a year on the sidelines at Jaguar as a third driver last season, Vandoorne is now back racing full-time in the series and has a new machine to get behind the wheel of.
“GEN4 is going to be very different, and a lot more powerful and technical in some aspects as well,” Vandoorne continued. “I have also got a great [Jaguar] team around me, and with a team that has been one of the dominant teams in GEN3. They have won two Constructors' World Championships, so they have been top class of their field and when I joined them last year it was a great experience to see how exactly they were different to some of my previous teams that I have been with.
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“I have a huge belief in those guys that they're going to be competitive again in GEN4 and I am very happy to be a part of that.”
As well as testing the GEN4, Vandoorne has been competing in the World Endurance Championship with Peugeot and continuing his Test and Reserve Driver duties with Aston Martin in F1, adding “it doesn’t feel that long” since he’s been away.
He fills the seat of Mitch Evans, who parted ways with the Jaguar brand after 10 years for a new challenge at Opel.
“I don't think that adds anything extra,” he added, when talking about the pressure of replacing the series’ most successful driver in terms of wins – with 16 to his name, all with Jaguar. “I think we are all very talented racing drivers and the nature of racing is people move around – especially in a competitive championship – so you are always kind of stepping into someone's shoes or seat with high expectations.
“I think any of the top teams that you are racing for, you are always expected to perform and that pressure ultimately comes from myself, because I want to perform at my highest level myself so I don’t see anything different to be honest. It's kind of a mutual pressure we want to perform and live up to the past performances and to make sure we carry that momentum from last year into next year.”
The signing of Vandoorne and Da Costa is one of just a few line-ups in the championship’s history where both drivers have won championship titles. However, this is familiar territory for both racers, with Da Costa previously pairing up with Pascal Wehrlein at Porsche and Vandoorne teammates with Jean-Eric Vergne at DS PENSKE.
“I don’t see any issues at all,” the new Jaguar signing commented, when asked about inner-team competition between the two. “I have known Antonio for a very long time, he has been a champion as well in the past, same as me.
“It depends a lot on how both personalities embrace that, and how the team handles it as well, so I think it’s a combination of both how that relationship ends up working. We have been very hard competitors for most of our junior careers and then into Formula E. Obviously there is always competitiveness between us, but ultimately we are racing for one of the biggest teams in Formula E. We have to respect the team, and we are always going to be professional in that way as well.
“Especially in this initial phase of GEN4, it's all a little bit unknown, and we don't really know how competitive we are going to be. We are working extremely closely together and we are pushing the team as much as we can and there are not really any games being played or any hiding. It is really ‘let’s make our car as competitive as we can and hopefully we are strong enough to fight it out on track between us’.”
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