Report: Will Stellantis buy the McLaren Formula E team? Saudi Arabia also interested

It was the big news before the Monaco E-Prix: McLaren is withdrawing from Formula E at the end of the season and is looking for a buyer for its team. Two options are now crystallising: the Dutch Stellantis Group could buy the team and turn it into its works team. However, a further investment from Saudi Arabia via the public limited company NEOM is also conceivable.

As reported by Motorsport Week, NEOM - currently already the team's title sponsor - is rumoured to be interested in buying the team. The public limited company, which is 100 per cent owned by the Saudi fund PIF (Public Investment Fund), is carrying out a major housing development project in north-west Saudi Arabia, which includes the construction of the planned city "The Line".

Another interested party for the team is said to be the Stellantis automotive group, which currently competes in Formula E with the DS Automobiles and Maserati brands. Stellantis has cooperated with the Virgin Racing (now Envision) and Techeetah teams in the past and is currently working with the two long-standing Formula E teams MSG Racing (formerly Venturi) and Penske (formerly Dragon Racing). However, the acquisition of the McLaren team would mean that the Group could field a team itself for the first time.

It is not yet clear under which Stellantis brand the team could run. According to reports, the Opel brand will enter Formula E at the start of the Gen4 era, and Opel CEO Florian Huettl was already on site at the Monaco E-Prix. The most likely scenario is that Stellantis could withdraw the Maserati brand from Formula E. However, there have also been rumours in the paddock for some time that the DS Automobiles brand could disappear from the racing series after the coming season. There would be plenty of potential replacements at Stellantis: Abarth, Alfa Romeo and Citroen are three brands that have all been mentioned in this context.

Dodds: "It’s not like there’s not a list of potential brands"

Formula E CEO Jeff Dodds is optimistic, however, that team principal Ian James will succeed in finding a buyer for the team: "I had 24 hours of (thinking), 'this is a really crap message', and then I move into, 'okay, so what’s our opportunity? Who would be amazing brands to bring into the championship?'," the Briton told Motorsport Week. "I think there’s interest from automotive brands, there’s interest from consumer brands, and there’s interest from digital brands. It’s not like there’s not a list of potential brands."

A consumer brand as a team in Formula E? Dodds finds a fitting example from Formula 1: "And we all forget, we all look at Red Bull now as a racing brand," he explains. "Yes. But of course they didn’t come in as a racing brand. They came in as a consumer brand. So, you know, if there was a big consumer brand that was interested in doing a deal with them, I think we’d be super happy as a championship to have a big name consumer brand on the grid."

Before the name of a new brand emerges in Formula E, however, the rest of the 2024-25 Formula E season is still to come. Next weekend is the halfway point of the season with races eight and nine in the Japanese capital Tokyo.