Speculation had been rife that Envision Racing would make at least one change to replace either Sebastien Buemi or Robin Frijns, after a difficult Formula E season for the Jaguar-supplied operation.
But the 2023 world championship-winning team is anticipated to favour continuity in its driver line-up for next season after exploring several options in recent months.
Envision ended the season 247 points adrift of the top team this year, its car supplier, Jaguar, and finished the year as the sixth-best squad.
A turnaround of sorts started to be achieved in Shanghai at the end of May when Robin Frijns fought through the field to take a ninth place finish, his first points score since the Tokyo E-Prix nine weeks before. Buemi scored an eighth that weekend ending a similar pointless run.
Around this time, Envision had been talking to several drivers, notably Stoffel Vandoorne, Sergio Sette Camara and Jake Hughes.
When the driver market was delayed by other drivers' decisions, and the results of both Buemi and Frijns picked up post-Shanghai, a likely stick rather than twist policy started to look more probable.
Buemi has a firm contract at the team for next season, while Frijns is also believed to have something in place to ensure he also stays with the team as it enters the Gen3Evo era.
Also affecting the decisions within the team was the probability that it might be compromised again by Buemi and Frijns also being contracted to manufacturers that race in the World Endurance Championship for Toyota and BMW respectively.
Envision was forced to replace them at the Berlin E-Prix double header in May, when Joel Eriksson and Paul Aron stepped in as substitutes.
Frijns ultimately finished ninth in the points and Buemi was 13th, both having missed those two Berlin races compared to all but one of the drivers ahead who completed every race - the exception being title contender Oliver Rowland missing Portland through illness.
The Race understands that each driver has more flexibility next year because the WEC race that clashes with Berlin this season is at Interlagos.
This is crucial in the sense that it is after the 24 Hours of Le Mans and some manufacturers are known to be less strict on holding drivers to specifics of agreements after what is deemed a priority event such as Le Mans.
Keeping an unchanged line-up for Envision is now highly likely after several of the drivers it was talking to took themselves off the market recently. Hughes is believed to be on his way to Maserati, possibly with Vandoorne as team-mate.
“That (continuity) is always my favourite but we can't comment just yet because it depends on many factors,” Envision Racing’s managing director Sylvain Filippi told The Race in London last week.
“We haven't decided, so we can't comment too much. As a rule, continuity is always my preference, if we can.”
Frijns and Buemi are two of Formula E’s more direct individuals who wouldn’t have been shy in airing their views explicitly to Filippi, who will have been forced to listen and adapt to get the best out of them as well.
Should the continuity be confirmed it should be a turning point for the team that has looked a shadow of its former self for large swatches of a year it will want to quickly forget about.
Were Recent Results Crucial?
The fact that Buemi and Frijns scored so poorly prior to the final races of 2024 probably had little bearing on the fact they look set to continue with the team for next season.
Yes, they both made mistakes, but so did the team on several occasions. When things don’t click in Formula E they get amplified massively and Envision went into a spiral it struggled to extricate itself from.
Points before Shanghai
Buemi 24 (13th best in the championship)
Frijns 21 (15th best in the championship)
Points after Shanghai
Frijns 45 (5th best in the championship)
Buemi 33 (9th best in the championship)
But it wasn't far away on occasions. Yet the fact remained that with one of the two best technical packages on the grid it consistently under-delivered.
“It's not like we forgot how to go racing overnight, it’s just we're often a tenth off in qualifying,” reckons Filippi.
“It's the same team, same people. The only difference is Nick (Cassidy) going to Jaguar.
“He contributed some points over there. If he had been here, he would have scored the same points.”
That’s a moot point and one that many might disagree with but Filippi has a point when he adds: “The style of racing has changed. I have to be very careful not to overreact when the difference is so small.
“The hero-zero thing is very apparent here. But having said that, we have to find that tenth."
Buemi and Frijns did that at the end of the season, and while that is not the crucial element in retaining the experienced pair, it should give Envision a decent springboard for some decent Gen3Evo momentum at the end of this year.
A feeling in the team now is that when everything appears to have been studied and rationalised by the team, it seems they still have belief in their drivers.
Is Youth Ever an Option?
The overwhelming reason that most of the teams are conservative in their driver choices is that understanding Formula E and its highly specialist approach and execution tends to rule when making decisions.
This seems a little paradoxical though in the sense that this season several rookies have shone, particularly Taylor Barnard and Aron, who was unlucky not to score points on his cameo performances at Berlin Tempelhof.
The likelihood of all bar one or potentially two drivers transferring from the 2024 to the 2025 grid is high, with teams unwilling to take risks on drivers that don’t have experience of the aggressive and multi-tasking e-prixs that come thick and fast.
A prime example of this is the state that Ciao Collet was in after his ‘in at the deep end’ experience in replacing Rowland in Portland last month.
Collet did a fine job in outqualifying his team-mate Sacha Fenestraz in qualifying for the first encounter yet emerged from the race itself looking like he’d been at war for an hour as his thousand-yard stare trailed off into the distance. It's brutal out there in Formula E and rookies need several races to get anywhere near comfortable, ask Jehan Daruvala.
Even if Envision would have wanted to try and get Aron it would likely have failed. The F2 race winner and title protagonist will do everything in his power to get something in the F1 paddock in the future. So there was no obvious junior option this time.
