Andretti newcomer Felipe Drugovich: "To win a championship in Formula E would be the ultimate goal"

After his successful Formula E debut in Berlin, Felipe Drugovich has been given a regular cockpit at Andretti alongside Jake Dennis for the coming season. The 2022 Formula 2 champion will therefore succeed Nico Müller, who left the team at the end of the season. Drugovich still has around two months until his first race for Andretti - in his native Brazil of all places.

"(The contract with Andretti) is something that took some weight off my shoulders," said Drugovich in a media round to which e-Formula.news was also invited. "I've been really enjoying this since I've known that I'm going to be racing full-time. Just before the championship, you got those butterflies in the belly and you are like, how is this going to be? I'm doing everything that I can to prepare the test."

"Iit's something that I've done since little kid to Formula 2," he adds. "And then that stopped. It's really strange, a strange feeling. I don't like that, to not have this objective throughout the year. And now having it again, makes all the work worth again. And that's really cool."

"Every week I'm flying to the UK"

Preparing for his debut as a regular driver in December takes up a very large part of his diary, although he is still a reserve driver for Aston Martin in Formula 1 at the same time. "Basically, I think every week I'm flying to the UK to do one or two simulator days and just prep days for next year," Drugovich continues. "It's pretty exciting seeing the team consistently and trying to be a little bit better every day and prepare as much as we can."

"Then we have the pre-season testing," he adds. "That's when we're really going to know what the actual objectives and targets are for the first race of the year and what we need to focus on. But until then, it's a lot of emphasis on simulator driving, me just getting acquainted with the team and all the systems that are also different. I've gone from other systems to Porsche systems that we use in Andretti. It's a lot of stuff to learn, those are the main things that we focus on in the simulator."

Formula E "is a long-term goal for me"

He sees Formula E as a long-term project, even if his contract is initially only for season 12, he continues: "At the moment all I can say is it's one year. There is an option for other years, but it's something that we are actually looking to see if it's going to be a good year or not. It's a long-term goal for me."

He is particularly looking forward to the next generation of cars: "Gen 4 is actually very attractive," he explains. "It's probably going to be quite fast around Monaco and you can actually compare it laptimes with F2. I think it's going to get close to or even faster than F2. So, it's going to be pretty cool. and hopefully (in season 13) I'll be there and many more years to come. So hopefully I'll get there for way, way more."

The Brazilian has no shortage of ambitions: "To win a championship in Formula E, that would be the ultimate goal. I know it will take a while, but I think I have to try to learn as much as possible. That would the goal one day, I hope, as soon as possible to fight for the championship."