In another life, 2023 Formula 2 champion Theo Pourchaire could have just finished his first week of testing as a Formula 1 race driver at Sakhir or be preparing for his first full IndyCar season starting in St Petersburg today.
Instead both those series are kicking off without him - his McLaren IndyCar seat lost to Nolan Siegel after just five starts, and the Sauber team Pourchaire had been affiliated with for six years turning to his F2 champion successor Gabriel Bortoleto instead when it wanted a 2025 race driver.
But Pourchaire has been active in another FIA world championship paddock lately.
Formula E’s extra free practice sessions for rookies on the Thursday ahead of its Jeddah debut last month was pretty low-key, but there’s a high likelihood that a few of its participants will get future race seats in the series.
One of those is Pourchaire. He feels much more genuinely interested in starting a Formula E career than at any other time in his career to date, and certainly more than his F2 championship winner predecessor Felipe Drugovich.
They share a Formula E similarity in that both have had tested opportunities with Maserati MSG - Drugovich in three rookie sessions across 2023 and ‘24.
But while the Brazilian continues his reserve role at the Aston Martin F1 team this year, Pourchaire’s more liberated status away from F1 now feels like a natural springboard slap bang on to the radars of Formula E teams for 2026.
With ultra-experienced hands such as Sebastien Buemi, Robin Frijns, Sam Bird, Lucas di Grassi and Edoardo Mortara all feeling as though they are coming to the end of their Formula E careers soon, Pourchaire could be a headline name that fills out a fresh generation started by fellow recent F1 ladder to Formula E converts Taylor Barnard and Zane Maloney.
And any 2026 Formula E deal for Pourchaire would likely begin in 2025, because pre-season testing and the first Gen4 car manufacturer testing will be happening from this September onwards.
Pourchaire had some small amount of experience in Formula E anyway prior to Jeddah, as he was a preferred test driver for Spark Racing Technologies when the same process was being run through for independent Gen3 testing back in early 2022.
Indeed, he was at the wheel during the infamous test at Calafat in Spain in February ’22 when he left the circuit and ended a wild ride atop a sand bank some distance off the track!
After his taster session in Jeddah this February, in which he set the fourth quickest time after Kush Maini (Mahindra), Gabriele Mini (Nissan) and Mikkel Jensen (Kiro), Pourchaire was certainly keeping his side of the enthusiasm bargain over a potential future deal to race somewhere in Formula E.
“Because it's my first time, well almost my first time in a Formula E car, they were listening to me, all the engineers, drivers, because they will drive [in Jeddah] for the first time in a few minutes,” Pourchaire told The Race that evening.
“We tried some target laps as well for the race, which is important. I tried some start procedures, things like that, so it was really good.
“My goal is to be a full-time racing driver, and I’d love to do that. The adrenaline that this session gave me, I'm just saying to myself ‘I want to be here’ and ‘I want to race’.
“I want to fight with other competitive drivers on track and enjoy it. And I really, really enjoyed this session - driving at the limit, finding the limits, working with the engineers, giving me advice, pushing me.”
There was no dumbing down of his approach to the session just because it was for rookies. Pourchaire is intelligent enough to know that getting a seat requires a strong work ethic and an immediate technical agility, just as Nick Cassidy, Nico Mueller and Nyck de Vries showed in their rookie sessions between 2017 and 2020. All turned those brief chances into future Formula E race seats and in De Vries’ case, a world championship title.
“Even if it's rookie sessions, we're here to give our best every time,” added Pourchaire.
“I really, really, really enjoyed it. I hope I can find some help and find some people pushing me towards reaching this dream.
“It's a world championship, an FIA world championship with a lot of manufacturers, so if a door can open in the future in Formula E, for sure I would be there taking the opportunity.
“So, let’s see what the future holds. I'm now good with the Stellantis family, let's say. And it’s very much an amazing opportunity.
“I'm a racing driver that loves racing, keeping smiling all the time, but for sure when you stay a long time as a reserve and driving simulators, things like that, it's not as good as racing on track.”
Pourchaire has a Peugeot World Endurance Championship reserve role this season, and said “normally there will be a racing programme that will be announced soon, hopefully thanks to the help of Peugeot and the Stellantis Group. They are helping me a lot, finding opportunities and they are working on it”.
Peugeot and Stellantis do have a WEC and Formula E clash to resolve in July, when their respective Interlagos and Berlin rounds overlap. But though both DS Penske FE driver Jean-Eric Vergne and Maserati MSG’s Stoffel Vandoorne will skip Peugeot WEC duties that weekend, Peugeot will solve that by dropping to two drivers per car rather than calling Pourchaire up.
Much more likely for his 2025 racing calendar is a European Le Mans Series and Le Mans 24 Hours programme with an LMP2 team, something which should be a perfect warm-up for a Hypercar promotion in 2026, potentially with Peugeot.
But either instead of or alongside that, Formula E now sounds like something Pourchaire is very serious about.
“Formula E is very interesting,” he said. “It's a little bit underestimated, unfortunately, and more drivers should explore this opportunity.
“It's a world championship, a mega-competitive championship, and you have a lot of fun driving these cars.”
That fun could become much more permanent for Pourchaire quite soon. This year there are several experienced Formula E drivers that could be moving on after lengthy careers in the series. It’s unlikely all of Buemi, Frijns, Bird, di Grassi, Mortara and Norman Nato will still be involved when Formula E starts its Gen4 era.
McLaren’s 20-year-old rookie Barnard sitting second in the championship right now with three podiums from four races is beyond even the Jake Dennis effect of 2021 - when the then 25-year-old finished third in the series as a rookie.
With a strong package beneath him, Barnard’s results are starting to actually change the deep-rooted outlook in Formula E that experience trumps all.
That could play very well indeed into Pourchaire’s hands for 2026 and beyond.
