Nick Cassidy: “Things should be much better in 2027 with the Evo package”

Nick Cassidy will be taking to the high-speed Monza circuit on Sunday almost as a ‘rookie’: ‘I’ve only driven here once, in a GT car in the WEC back in 2022,’ he explains. Nevertheless, he has set his sights high for a positive end to the season: seventh place in the second race at Spa-Francorchamps brought his only points so far. Things should finally start looking up again for Peugeot at Monza.

“Yes, it hasn’t been an easy year,” admits the 32-year-old, “we’ve made mistakes, and I’m not excluding myself from that. Every little mistake has an immediate impact. We’ve had a few races where we suddenly found ourselves a lap down. And given how closely contested the WEC is at the moment, that effectively means your race is more or less over. We could certainly have done a few things better. But I’m convinced we’ll come back stronger.”

It’s clear to everyone that 2027 has to go better for the French team. “That’s why we’ve been working hard on improvements that should come to fruition in 2027 with the Evo kit. That should make us faster. But of course, we don’t yet know how much of an impact the new package will have.” There’ll be plenty of testing over the winter, including a day’s testing before Christmas. And with his second role in the Formula E World Championship, Nick is working full-time. Still to come in November is the general pre-season Formula E test at Jarama, marking the debut of the Gen4 cars. Like all his colleagues, he doesn’t know whether the season opener in Jeddah will go ahead as planned on 18–19 December or be cancelled: “That’s not in our hands.”

Cassidy hasn’t yet finalised where he’ll be spending Christmas either; all he knows is this: “A holiday back home in New Zealand isn’t going to be possible. I’ll probably stay in Monaco.” He’s delighted that, in a sense, he’ll once again be a ‘team-mate’ to his former Jaguar partner Mitch Evans in the new FE season (Evans’ Opel team and Cassidy’s Citroën team both run on Stellantis powertrains): “We’ll work well together on development. Mitch will settle into the new environment quickly. I can offer him some support, as I made the switch from Jaguar to Stellantis a year earlier.”

Topic of the week

World Champion Kimi Antonelli: record-breaker, heart-breaker, the Tifosi’s dream

With his third-place finish at the Mexican Grand Prix, Kimi Antonelli has become the youngest of the 36 Formula 1 world champions to date. The 20-year-old Italian is on a record-breaking run. The Tifosi are dreaming of Antonelli in a Ferrari.

Mathias Brunner

Read More