Nico Mueller will drive alongside Jake Dennis at the Andretti Formula E team next season as part of a deal that has been triggered by an agreement for Mueller to become a Porsche factory driver.
As first reported by The Race, the former Dragon and Abt Cupra driver has been in negotiations with Porsche since early 2024 about a future role with the manufacturer. This was agreed in the early summer and is believed to have originally revolved around potentially replacing Antonio Felix da Costa for the 2024-25 season.
But when da Costa went on a run of results, including four wins from five races in May and June, the possibility of cutting short his three-year deal receded. That meant Porsche had to implement a Plan B for Mueller, who drove for its test and development arm in a Gen3 car in March.
With Porsche-powered Andretti's then incumbent driver Norman Nato contributing 47 points to Andretti's 169-point total in a 2024 campaign that the team has acknowledged was a "season of mixed results", Porsche and Andretti again began collaborating on a driver move as they did in 2023 when Andretti ran Andre Lotterer.
Mueller had a range of offers to race in Formula E, including a new contract from Abt Cupra and a deal to race for Maserati MSG. That second possibility included staying with the Peugeot factory team in the World Endurance Championship.
But in early July Abt confirmed that Mueller would leave the team at the end of the 2024 season. At the same time Mueller notified Maserati - which has now signed Jake Hughes and Stoffel Vandoorne - of his intention not to accept its offer as his Porsche-related plans became more solid.
Andretti has now announced Mueller as Dennis's team-mate for the upcoming 2024-25 campaign and said he will drive alongside the 2023 champion as part of a Porsche manufacturer test later this month in preparation for the Gen3 Evo era.
Mueller called it an "honour" to partner Dennis and added his target with Andretti was to take "my first Formula E win".
CEO Michael Andretti said the team was "confident that adding a driver of Nico's calibre will help us get results" in line with its "high expectations" for the 2024-25 campaign.
"His familiarity with electric racing is proven, and he has shown he can deliver strong results across a wide variety of Formula E tracks," added Andretti team principal Roger Griffiths.
An inevitable but complex deal
The Mueller/Porsche deal had a complex gestation and was made more difficult to accomplish as talks between da Costa’s manager Tiago Monteiro and senior Porsche management intensified around May.
At one stage, da Costa looked set to leave Porsche to pursue a combined WEC and Formula E programme next season, something he has not been able to do at Porsche since it decided to concentrate his activities on Formula E in the autumn of 2023.
Why Mueller has been brought into the Porsche fold is simple. He has a long-standing relationship with its programme director Florian Modlinger after the pair were successful together over several DTM campaigns in the last decade at Audi.
It was on Modlinger’s suggestion that Mueller tested for the team in March. From that point on, an initial test became discussions about joining Porsche for 2024-25.
That was when Porsche thought it potentially had to cover a da Costa deal cessation, but it then had to rethink when da Costa started winning and instead began forming a longer-term plan for Mueller, which is where Andretti came in.
The Porsche-Andretti alliance will run until the end of the Gen3 era in the summer of 2026, with the extension of its deal confirmed earlier this year after Porsche itself announced its intention to see out the second phase of Gen3 just after the 2023 Rome E-Prix.
From Mueller’s point of view, a long-standing deal with Porsche, which is likely to be for three years at least, could also open up possibilities in the WEC, where Porsche is known to be adapting its squad for 2025 and beyond.
As an Andretti driver, Mueller can feasibly achieve an aspect of a double FE/WEC programme, much as Lotterer did in 2023.
Mueller, currently part of Peugeot's WEC line-up, is expected to get some sportscar outings with Porsche next season and could be placed at its Hypercar customer team, Proton Competition, before he represents the Porsche factory Formula E team as da Costa's replacement in 2026.
But it feels like Mueller is definitely targeting a Formula E world championship in the future, something that looked way off in his ill-fated sojourn at Dragon Racing in 2019-20 and at a Mahindra-hamstrung Abt Cupra for the last few years.
Speaking to The Race at the Portland E-Prix in June, Mueller said that he felt like he had "a big point to prove here [in Formula E]" and that he has "been around for a while and have invested a lot of my energy and time into this project".
He added: "I feel like it's a format and a championship that suits me, I enjoy being here and driving these cars at the limit.
"I want to prove that I can win races and compete at the very sharp end in this championship because I’m convinced I can."
At Andretti next season, everyone should be a winner.
The team, because it's getting a free and quick driver capable of racking up bing points. Porsche, because it's positioning a talent with an affiliate. And of course, Mueller himself, because he'll get one of the fastest cars on the grid and limited pressure to go with it.
That could make for a one-off season where Dennis, now paired with a fifth team-mate in five campaigns, finally has a proper test from the other side of the garage following his intra-team victories over Nato and Maximilan Guenther (2020-21) and demolitions of Oliver Askew (2022) and Lotterer (2023).
