Jake Hughes will leave the McLaren Formula E team and is expected to conclude a move to the Maserati MSG squad next season.
The Race understands that Hughes privately told both senior team members and also his side of the McLaren garage in London last weekend that he would be moving on from the team after failing to reach an agreement to get a new deal.
This triggered accepting an offer from Maserati recently, where Hughes will make his public debut for the team at the pre-season Valencia test week in November.
He is expected to be confirmed as leaving McLaren and then joining Maserati MSG later this month.
Speaking to The Race in London last week, Hughes wouldn’t comment directly on his future but did say that McLaren had “made me into the racing driver I am.
“I’m a much better racing driver than I ever have been and that’s very much down to the team I’m in.
“I believe in the project and I believe that the team will be successful, and then for me you’re always trying to perform well and to the maximum of your ability and if you do that you’ll hopefully be in a position where you're thought of well up and down the pitlane.
“And that doesn’t mean things change or things stay the same but it means you’re doing something good. You’re on the path to something successful.
“So, from my side I’m not really looking at it from any other point other than keep doing what I’m doing in the racing car and the rest will sort itself out.”
Maserati MSG is expected to have a completely fresh line-up next season after Maximilian Guenther signed with DS Penske, and Jehan Daruvala will be surplus to requirements after a season in which he took just two points scoring results with a highlight of seventh place at the second Berlin E-Prix in May.
Outgoing DS Penske driver Stoffel Vandoorne is favourite for the other Maserati MSG seat alongside Hughes.
Who Will Replace Hughes at McLaren?
There will be paddock-wide surprise that McLaren has allowed Hughes to leave after two impressive campaigns since joining Formula E as a race driver.
Prior to that Hughes had been seconded to the Venturi team as a reserve and development driver in 2020 to gain experience in the all-electric series, before he filled out a similar role at Mercedes - the team McLaren acquired to join FE - from 2021 to 2022.
He got his chance to race when Mercedes EQ metamorphosed into NEOM McLaren at the end of 2022, partnering Rene Rast, who he outscored in a rookie season that also featured two pole positions and eight points scoring positions.
This season the 30-year-old has had a similar season, claiming two poles and a podium finish at Shanghai in a campaign where he's performed strongly against his more experienced team-mate Sam Bird, who joined the team from Jaguar at the end of 2023.
Hughes’ departure from the team is expected to offer current test and reserve driver Taylor Barnard an opportunity to become a full-time driver after he scored points in two of his three substitute appearances earlier this season.
Barnard filled in for the injured Bird at Monaco and Berlin, finishing 10th eighth in the latter two races.
This piqued McLaren’s interest in the teenager, who is believed to have an option on his services for racing as part of his deal with the team.
Currently racing in F2, Barnard is the favourite to replace Hughes, essentially mirroring the deal in which Hughes entered the grid and generally flourished last year.
Speaking to The Race about future driver plans early in the London event, McLaren team principal Ian James said Hughes “had been such an instrumental part of this team throughout its history.
“He's been a huge part of its success as well. I want to make sure that we go out of London this weekend on a high and using that momentum to carry us forward. I met with Jake earlier and we discussed exactly that and said ‘listen, we're not even going to talk about the future.’
“We're not going to talk about what's coming beyond Sunday.”