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Maximilian Guenther will replace Stoffel Vandoorne at the DS Penske Formula E team next season, with Vandoorne likely to head the other way to race for Stellantis’ Maserati MSG brand.

Race can reveal that 27-year-old Guenther has a multi-year contract confirmed with DS Penske and will rejoin the man who first signed him to the FE deal when he ran the Dragon team, Jay Penske.

Gunther, who won the Tokyo E-Prix in March with the Maserati MSG, has been testing the DS Gen3 Evo test and development car as part of his role with Maserati recently. He will begin further testing in the coming weeks, this time as a teammate to veteran DS driver Jean-Eric Vergne.

Gunther is understood to have informed senior team members at Maserati MSG of his change ahead of last weekend’s London E-Prix final, with the deal agreed long before the end of the season.

Vandoorne could be the replacement for Guenther at the Maserati MSG team, who has known for several weeks that his two-year tenure with the DS Penske team would end after the London races.

The 2022 Formula E world champion was talking to several teams as recently as earlier this month, including Jaguar’s Envision Racing, but Maserati is offering the possibility of staying under the Stellantis brand, with which he also competes in the World Endurance Championship for Peugeot.

However, Vandoorne is still understood to have a move to Envision, having held talks with it in London last weekend.

Current Maserati MSG driver Jehan Daruvala is still under contract with the team and has the option to stay, although that is highly unlikely at the moment. He could instead be retained as a reserve and development driver.

This means that Maserati is expected to announce an all-new driver line-up for the 2024-25 season, which kicks off in Sao Paulo in early December.

The MSG component of the Maserati team is known to have evaluated several drivers, including current McLaren driver Jake Hughes.

Deputy team principal Cyril Blais recently told The Race that the Maserati MSG team was evaluating several drivers for next season, saying: “The market is volatile, so we have to look at all possibilities.”

Plais said 2024 would be a “difficult year for many reasons” for the Maserati MSG team, which finished only eighth in the teams’ championship – taking 73 of the 81 points through Guenther.

“We managed to stay up but next season we need to strengthen the squad in depth and try to make some leaps forward.”

Formula E’s new odd couple

The two-time Formula E champion duo of Guenther and Vergne will form a strong line-up for DS Penske as they aim to return to the winners’ circle for the first time in nearly two years when they begin their 2024-25 campaign.

The Franco-American alliance claimed its only win at the Hyderabad E-Prix in February 2023, and despite being consistently in the top six and an occasional podium finisher, it never looked like it could challenge the Porsche and Jaguar-powered cars at the top.

This was helped by the appointment of former Jaguar technical director Phil Charles earlier this year, with the British engineer having significantly changed the structure and dynamics of the team since joining.

The policy came as a shock in many quarters with some in the team openly opposing the change in direction for a team that has its roots in two former entities – DS Techeetah and Dragon Racing.

The two companies merged at the end of 2022 at the start of the Gen3 era, a time when everyone felt that the best elements of each – the dying Techeetah side of that entry and Jay Penske’s continued commitment to Formula E – had effectively merged.

Although Guenther only drove 10 races with the Dragon team in the 2018-19 season, Penske maintained a good relationship with him, and chose to dump Vandoorne to make way for a deal that is expected to last for at least two seasons.

The German now playing alongside Werni will form an interesting partnership as they are two completely different characters.

A smart professional who has often outperformed his teammates in Formula E and remains the only double champion in a decade, Vergne is known for his highly methodical and driven work ethic in helping to develop the cars and push the teams forward.

Guenther is generally considered less outspoken, although those who have worked closely with him describe a driver who has gained trust and direction within his teams in recent years.

His highlights – two wins and four other podium finishes during his two seasons with the Maserati MSG team – were impressive, but a slow, accident-prone start to 2023 and some tough races this season have not entirely negated his reputation as a sometimes inconsistent driver.

Although that may be a harsh conclusion when compared to the full challenge of Formula E racing, the extremely demanding sporting format and the fact that the Maserati MSG team has gone through many changes within its organisation since switching from Venturi at the end of 2022.