Jake Hughes is embarking on a fresh challenge in Formula E next year as he signs with Maserati.
The Brit spent the last two season with McLaren in the all-electric series where he struggled to find consistent results with the team’s Nissan powertrain.
Hughes joined Formula E in the 2022/23 season coming off the back of experience in categories such as GP3 and Formula 3. In 2022, the Brit competed in the first 16 races of Formula 2 and acted as the simulator driver for Mercedes and Aston Martin in Formula 1.
The Birmingham-born driver will partner Season Eight champion Stoffel Vandoorne at Maserati, who is joining from DS Penske. Sources suggest that McLaren found it easy to let Hughes leave for the Monegasque outfit, and the 30-year-old is looking to turn a corner in FE with a familiar face at the team.
Jake Hughes reunites with Pierre-Paul Fery who ‘saved his career’ back in his Formula 3 days
Hughes topped the second practice session in Madrid on Wednesday in pre-season testing for Season 11 with the Gen3 Evo car. The Brit finished ahead of Andretti’s Jake Dennis by just a few hundredths of a second, with Dan Ticktum for Kiro Race Co coming in third.
Speaking after the session on FE’s official Instagram account, Hughes discussed his race engineer Pierre-Paul Fery, whom he worked with previously at Hitech in F3.
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Together, the pair recorded Hughes’ best finish at the Macau Grand Prix in 2018 with fourth, and the 30-year-old ‘owes a lot’ to his engineer as he claims that result saved his career.
“He’s been at the team the last two years, I think. So, he ran Jehan [Daruvala] last year,” he said.
“But I worked with him in the past, in Hitech in 2018 in Formula 3. He ran me in Macau, I got my best finish ever in Macau with him.
“So, I always joke with him now that actually, that weekend probably saved my career. And actually, I can probably trace back my Formula E career to that race I did with him in Macau. So, I owe a lot to him in that respect and yeah, he doesn’t let me forget it either!”
Jake Hughes scored his first Formula E podium with McLaren last season
Hughes and Maserati will be hoping for better fortunes in Season 11 and they both struggled for results in 2023/24.
The Brit finished 14th in the standings with McLaren last season with just five points finishes all year. Among those was his first podium in FE, as he finished second in the second ePrix in Shanghai.
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Hughes scored the same amount of points as he did in his debut season the year prior, despite finishing in the points on three fewer occasions.
The 30-year-old will head into his third year in FE in 2024/25 and he will be keen to score more points as he proved he can fight towards the front of the grid.
Maserati finished below McLaren in the Teams’ Championship last year in eighth, but with Vandoorne and Hughes as an all-new line-up, the team have what they need to push further up the field.