Ever since winning the 2022 Formula 2 championship, one name has been linked with almost every top-level seat in the world of motorsport. But while Felipe Drugovich is highly-regarded – evidenced by his three-year relationship with the Aston Martin Formula 1 team since that title triumph – the Brazilian has bided his time when it comes to making the next move.
Although he’s made a handful of sports car appearances in the European Le Mans series, IMSA, and the FIA World Endurance Championship in that time, the majority of the last three seasons have been spent on the sidelines as Aston Martin’s test and reserve driver. He’s now settled on a return to full-time racing, joining Andretti’s Formula E team in a multi-year deal.
It’s a move that’s quietly been in the works for two years, one that Drugovich wanted to time right – ultimately, missing what he’s made to do helped him finally make the decision.
“It’s a pretty cool story,” Drugovich tells RACER. “We started back in 2023 when I was just champion from Formula 2, and then I got approached by the team, and I thought it was not the right time to make the move back then.
“I think since then, over time, I was missing racing more and more. I was just missing it so much, and I really wanted to get back racing at some point in any category.”
Drugovich made his first Formula E starts in Berlin earlier this year (main image), filling in for Nyck de Vries at Mahindra while he had a WEC clash. While Drugovich could have potentially gone to any number of high-profile series, it was that weekend that helped him decide Formula E was for him, declaring it “a big factor in the decision, for sure”. That debut came around the same time Andretti came knocking again.
“I had the race in Berlin, and it was really useful to actually know that I wanted to do it,” he says. “I only did endurance races, and I was missing my own team, my own engineer, my own car, I was missing that feeling. Not that I don’t like the sharing in endurance [racing], but I think I was used to that since I was a small kid.
“I was really missing that feeling, but I was still not completely sure about Formula E, if I would like it or not, because it’s obviously very, very different from other categories. I got the call to do the race, and I think everything came together, and I really liked it. I really enjoyed it. And then I got the call, also from Andretti, and I was like, ‘Okay, this is pretty cool, we can crack on.’”
That desire to go racing again was also key in Andretti’s decision to sign Drugovich, according to Andretti Formula E team principal Roger Griffiths.
“It was very evident that he wanted to do this, and that was something that was key to me,” he tells RACER. “One or two other people we talked to, we got the impression that they would do Formula E, but it wasn’t necessarily their first choice.
“But I think in his case, he wanted to be back racing. He’s done an awful lot of work for Aston Martin, a lot of very valuable work for them, but he wasn’t racing. He’d had a handful of races, and I think he just wanted a proper program.
“We had a good conversation with Aston Martin. They’ve been very, very supportive of it, super-keen, very, very high on Felipe in terms of his abilities as a driver, so they were just super-pleased to see him get this opportunity.
“In every conversation that I’ve had with him, you can just tell he’s excited about having a racing calendar in front of him and not standing in the back of the garage watching two other people drive the car that he would really rather be driving. He just wants to get going.”
Drugovich hasn’t even driven the car yet, but his desire to get going has already been evident.
“He was in last week doing the seat fit and just getting into that rhythm of all the normal racing protocol stuff that you have to do to get ready for the season,” says Griffiths. “It’s the first time I’ve seen a driver not complain about having to do some media stuff and photo shoots and things like that, because he was just like, ‘yeah, I’m going racing’.
“So it’s been really, really encouraging to see the motivation he’s got.
“He’s a driver that’s been away from it. Perhaps he’s not sort of jaded with some of the aspects you know. If you listen to some of the drivers up and down the pit lane, sometimes you wonder why they do it because they always just sound like they’re worn out. And you’re like, ‘this has got to be the best job in the world’.
“But I think he’s just excited to get going. It’s an opportunity for him that he’s not had before.”
While Drugovich enters the coming Formula E season as a rookie, he’s not completely green to the series. Aside from those two races in Berlin, he’s also taken part in rookie tests for Maserati MSG Racing in Berlin in 2023 and ’24, and the rookie free practice session at the 2023 Rome E-Prix. Nevertheless, he’s under no illusion of the task he faces getting up to speed.
“It’s obviously something that we really need to study before,” he says. “It’s very different from any other category. It’s just reading the races after the start, how the race is going, how the rhythm of the race is going, if people are going fast or they’re slow, they’re saving more than you, or not. Those things are something that you really need to learn, and it takes a lot of time to learn that.
“So those are things that I know are going to be difficult to understand, and I know it’s going to take some time. But I think it’s also pretty cool at the same time, it’s not just being fast, it’s also really being able to read races and also have a lot of mental capacity all at all times on the race track.
“It’s something that really made me think about it. It was pretty cool to do that in Berlin, and I really liked it.”
Griffiths added: “Obviously, Formula E isn’t completely new to him, but he only knows one or two of the tracks from an FE perspective. For sure, he’s familiar with a few, just from what he’s done in the past, but it’s going to be a pretty steep learning curve for him.
“But we’ve got the right people around him. He’s got a super, great teammate with Jake. I think Jake is very excited about Felipe joining the team. So we’re really looking forward to getting to Valencia [for pre-season testing] and seeing how he goes.”
In partnering with 2022-23 champion Jake Dennis, Drugovich feels he has the ideal driver beside him to learn from, and together they can be a partnership that can move the Andretti name back to the front of Formula E after a couple of lean seasons.
“It’s gonna be cool,” he says. “I think he’s the right guy to be next to me and learn. He’s obviously done so much for the category and so much for the team, and it’s well settled in Formula E.
“I think he’s the right guy to be sharing with. He knows how to read races really well, and that’s probably the thing that I would need to do the best to be able to one day compete with him at his level, or even better.
“I don’t know how that’s going to take, how much that’s going to take, but ultimately that’s something that I’m gonna be looking for, you know – just learning as much as I can. I feel one day, I can be fighting for victories with him for the team.”
The key to that future success will be learning, something Drugovich believes will bring him long-term success if he manages his rookie season in the right way.
“[I’m looking forward to] learning as much as I can,” he says. “This is quite a big challenge … I think I need to go quite easy on it, trying to learn as much as I can, race-by-race, and I think that’s what’s going to bring me the results.
“Obviously, the goal is to one day win the championship. I know that’s probably quite far, but hopefully we can shorten that period of time as much as I can, just by being easy and light on my workflow, and just trying to learn as much as I can.
“The most important thing is to enjoy. I stayed outside of this world for many years and to be back at it is a privilege, so I need to really enjoy it.”