Panasonic Jaguar Racing will have a new driver in the car, when the 6th season of ABB FIA Formula E Championship starts in November.
30 year-old James Calado will team up with Mitch Evans, and thereby replace Alexander Lynn, who took over the seat halfway through the previous season, after Nelson Piquet Jr. left the team.
This will be the fourth season for Jaguar in the Formula E series, but they are still lacking some major results, other than a single podium in their second season, and a single win in their third – both coming from Mitch Evans.
Calado has a background in single-seaters, where he made it all the way to GP2, before that path ended for him. He was picked up by AF Corse, and has since then won the FIA World Endurance Championship GTE title in 2017, and winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2019, in a Ferrari 488 GTE.
The contract with Calado is really interesting, since another driver at AF Corse, his fellow countryman Sam Bird, had to skip the FIA WEC, due to date clashes between the two series. With Calado signing a contract with Jaguar now can mean one of two things – either Jaguar willing to let him miss two rounds, or changes to the schedule, to make it all work out. Everything points towards the latter at the moment.
The ABB FIA Formula E Championship 2019/20 starts, with the current calendar in mind, on 22-23 November in Diriyah, Saudi Arabien.