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November 14, 2025 — Australian mining titan Fortescue has acquired the Penske Formula E team, securing Australia's first entry in the all-electric FIA Formula E World Championship. The outfit will be rebranded as Fortescue Zero, placing billionaire founder Andrew "Twiggy" Forrest's electrification push directly on the motorsport map. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
A deal years in the making
Fortescue insists the purchase is less a leap into the unknown than a continuation of what it already does. Fortescue Zero, named after the company's net-zero ambitions, has operated inside Formula E for years as a technology partner, supplying and developing battery and energy-management systems behind the scenes. Taking ownership of a team turns that support role into a starring one.
The team is one of Formula E's founding outfits. It began life as Dragon Racing, the American squad created by Jay Penske's motorsport organization, and later entered a partnership with French carmaker DS Automobiles to race under the DS Penske banner. Over the years it has employed some of the series' most respected drivers, including two-time champion Jean-Éric Vergne and race-winner Maximilian Günther, and it has scored victories across multiple generations of Formula E machinery.
Now the DS chapter closes, and an Australian chapter opens. For American racing audiences, the change carries symbolic weight: the Penske surname has been tied to open-wheel and NASCAR success for decades, and the Formula E wing of that empire is moving into Australian hands.
The engineer's pedigree
Few team owners can claim to have built the equipment their cars depend on. Fortescue Zero's lineage is a notable wrinkle: the unit is the rebranded Williams Advanced Engineering (WAE), which Fortescue purchased in 2022. WAE was a foundational supplier to Formula E, delivering the battery packs that powered cars in the championship's early seasons and continuing to develop the technology as the series matured.
That industrial history matters inside Fortescue. The company operates massive iron ore mines in Western Australia, with an enormous fleet of haul trucks, excavators and support vehicles that have historically burned diesel. Electrifying equipment of that size demands more than off-the-shelf car parts; it requires energy systems built to survive extreme heat, dust, vibration and brutal duty cycles — conditions not unlike those of a race weekend. Fortescue Zero's fast-charging hardware is already part of that rollout, giving the race program a direct line to real-world deployments.
Travis Hester, Fortescue Zero's chief technology officer for electromobility, put the logic plainly. Motorsport forces engineers to refine battery, software and hardware at the limits of performance and efficiency, he said, and the same technologies are then applied across Fortescue's mining and energy operations, as well as its automotive and defense customers.
Fortescue Energy and Growth CEO Gus Pichot went further, arguing that motorsport has already accelerated the miner's decarbonization. Without racing as an incubator and proving ground, he said, Fortescue would not be as far along on its emissions-cutting journey — a bold claim from a company better known for digging iron ore than for turning laps.
Green intentions, and the skepticism around them
Mining decarbonization is a crowded field. Rivals BHP and Rio Tinto are also testing battery-electric haulage systems, and all three giants regularly appear in media debates about whether green initiatives are substantive or performative. Fortescue, the most outspoken of the trio, attracts more than its share of the criticism.
The Formula E team gives Fortescue a visible answer to that skepticism. Racing produces hard data, stopwatch results and public failure, all of which tend to be persuasive in the mining world. If Fortescue Zero's battery technology can stand up to a grueling Formula E weekend, the logic goes, it can handle an afternoon shift in the Pilbara.
Racing into the GEN4 era
Timing works in Fortescue's favor. Formula E is preparing to introduce GEN4, its fourth-generation race car, with peak power rising to around 600 kW and rapid-charging capability of roughly 350 kW. It is a technical reset designed to make races faster and more strategically complex, with energy management expected to play a decisive role in results.
Fortescue Zero has locked in one of the strongest technical packages available for that era: a Jaguar GEN4 powertrain. Jaguar TCS Racing has been a benchmark team in recent Formula E campaigns, and customer squads have also thrived on the same hardware — Envision Racing claimed the teams' title in Season 9 with Jaguar power, proof that the package travels well.
The American angle
Formula E has been courting US audiences with growing attention. The 2025 calendar added a Miami doubleheader at Homestead-Miami Speedway, and the series has a history of street races in Long Beach and Brooklyn. Race organizers view the US as a critical growth market as electric vehicles enter the cultural mainstream.
For American fans, the Penske name adds an emotional layer. The Formula E squad is Jay Penske's operation, separate from Roger Penske's Team Penske empire, but the surname still evokes decades of motorsport glory. Handing that entry to an Australian mining giant reshapes the grid's narrative: a founding American team becomes the showpiece for a global industrial decarbonization strategy.
Forrest's green gamble
Andrew "Twiggy" Forrest has spent the better part of a decade positioning himself as the mining industry's most aggressive climate advocate. He has poured money into green hydrogen, solar and battery ventures, occasionally straining investor patience, and he rarely misses a chance to push governments and industries toward faster emissions cuts. His critics call it grandstanding; his supporters call it leadership.
Formula E offers him something other ventures cannot: a global stage with millions of viewers, a direct technological testbed, and a brand name — Fortescue Zero — that already carries his net-zero message into every corner of the sport. The racer in him — and Australian media have long noted that Forrest enjoys a contest — will also appreciate the simplest fact of all: this is a sport where winning matters.
The road ahead
Fortescue Zero's rebranding will take shape gradually. Livery, driver lineup and sponsorship details remain under wraps, though the Jaguar powertrain arrangement is already locked in and engineering work is underway. The Formula E paddock is small enough that a new owner with deep pockets and a serious engineering arm does not go unnoticed.
Whether Forrest's team wins races is an open question, and the paddock will be watching how quickly an industrial supplier turned team owner learns the rhythms of the championship. But for the Australian mining sector, the signal is clear: the road to a low-carbon future runs through the race track, and Fortescue intends to drive it — literally.
