Nico Mueller will leave the Abt Cupra team after the 2024 Formula E season finale in London next weekend and could partner last year’s champion Jake Dennis at Andretti next season as part of a longer-term Porsche future.
The Race can reveal that Mueller has already informed Abt Cupra he will not continue with it into a third season, when it will switch to the new Lola-Yamaha powertrain.
The 32-year-old Swiss driver has been one of the revelations of the current Formula E season - taking four points finishes for his underdog team, reaching the duel phases of qualifying six times and outqualifying team-mate Lucas di Grassi 10-2 so far.
That has made Mueller a man in demand and he has been linked to several possible deals in recent weeks as he looks to set his 2025 racing programme.
One of these offers is believed to have come from Porsche, while the other relates to what is believed to be an all-encompassing Stellantis Motorsport possibility that could have continued his current Peugeot World Endurance Championship deal alongside an FE seat at the Maserati MSG squad, with which he was in talks with earlier this summer.
The Race understands that Mueller has already informed Peugeot he won’t be accepting the 2025 WEC offer, which means the same applies to the Maserati FE drive.
Mueller first sparked rumours of a possible Porsche future when he took part in a shock private test for the works team in Spain that The Race revealed in March. That appeared to exacerbate a deepening ill-feeling between Antonio Felix da Costa and some elements of the Porsche team at a time where da Costa had scored zero points and was struggling considerably with his own form.
Since that time da Costa has gone on an epic run of four wins and become an outside championship challenger, scoring 126 points since the Monaco E-Prix in April compared to fellow title protagonist and team-mate Pascal Wehrlein’s 66.
It currently appears that Porsche is now the favourite to secure Mueller’s services for a future programme which could include an initial placement at customer Andretti for 2025.
Porsche and Andretti had a similar arrangement with Andre Lotterer in 2023 when he partnered Dennis, while also racing in the WEC for the Porsche Penske squad.
That deal involved a commercial and engineering element to it, with Lotterer taking his long-time engineer Fabrice Roussel over to Andretti with him for the season.
Lotterer’s replacement, Norman Nato, has a one-year deal with Andretti, a plan that is likely to have an option on his services for next season. Nato’s manager Tiago Monteiro is known to be speaking to other teams, as well as Andretti, for 2025.
The Race says
Mueller, so often emasculated in Formula E by a recalcitrant Dragon Penske offering across 2019-21 and then by Mahindra’s difficulties in the first season of Gen3 in 2023, has blossomed into a surprise hero of the 2024 season.
Fourth, fifth and sixth place finishes across the Misano and Portland double-headers all came to him on merit. These are remarkable results in the context of a Mahindra car that has needed serious work from when it made its debut in 2023.
It should have been more as well. Mueller was about to execute the shock result of the season in the second Misano race when he exited the final corner in third position, only to hit ‘the energy wall’ and just miss out on a podium to Nick Cassidy’s Jaguar.
It was around this time that Mueller is believed to have had serious discussions with Porsche after testing its development car in Spain a few weeks before.
When The Race found out about the run and published a story that fanned the flames of da Costa’s difficulties with some elements of the team, it seemed possible that Mueller would be on his way to Weissach sooner rather than later.
But this is a complex situation because of Mueller’s multiple offers from other Formula E teams and also a variety of options in the WEC, where he currently competes with Peugeot.
There is no official acknowledgement from Porsche on its interest in Mueller, indeed a team statement given to The Race last week just emphasised that Wehrlein and da Costa are “both contracted to us as Porsche works drivers” and that any 2025 driver announcement would come “at a later stage and for the time being not comment on any further speculation. As we are in the mix for all three titles, we are fully focused on the London E-Prix next week”.
It was Porsche Formula E director, Florian Modlinger, who contacted Mueller in March to try him out in the test and development car. The two had previously worked closely together at the Abt DTM team over 2018-20.
Mueller’s March test was a move which naturally went down badly with da Costa. It was that and other issues that opened a crack in da Costa and Porsche’s relationship like a fast-moving fissure. Some trust and respect was lost and for a time threatened the planned third season of his contract for 2025.
Remarkably, now both da Costa and Mueller could be driving Porsche Formula E cars next season. But Porsche's longer-term factory future for the Gen4 era in 2026 and beyond looks like it might be built around Wehrlein and Mueller.
