Andrew Forrest's Fortescue Zero: A New Era in Electric Racing
Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest didn’t just launch a race car. He lit a fuse under Formula One.
At the unveiling of the fully electric Fortescue Zero GEN4, the Australian mining billionaire framed his new Formula E team as nothing less than a direct challenger to motorsport’s traditional powerhouse.
Formula One, he said, is “noisy, smoky, smelly” — an “old dinosaur” ripe for disruption.
“It sounds like the fossil fuel sector,” Forrest quipped, drawing a sharp line between the sport that made him famous in the paddock and the industry that made him rich.
An Australian first in electric racing
Fortescue Zero arrives with history already attached. It is the first Australian-owned and entered team in Formula E, the all-electric open-wheel series that has spent the past decade pitching itself as the future of top-level motorsport.
The GEN4 car, officially unveiled over the weekend, will carry British drivers Dan Ticktum and Taylor Barnard into a new season that begins in late December and runs into 2027. Jim Wright takes the reins as team principal, tasked with turning Forrest’s bold rhetoric into points, podiums and — if all goes to plan — titles.
Forrest made it clear this isn’t a vanity project. This is a contest he intends to win.
“This is about serious, savage competition,” he said after the covers came off the car. Then came the sting. “There’s only one other competition I’ve seen which is more cutthroat, more deadly, and more dangerous than this sport, and that’s fossil fuel.”
When a mining magnate starts attacking the very sector that built his fortune, people tend to listen.
Jeddah debut for GEN4 era
The new Formula E campaign will open in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where the GEN4 machinery will race in anger for the first time. For Ticktum, the scale of the challenge is obvious — and enticing.
“Launching a new racing outfit is a significant challenge, and that’s exactly what makes it exciting,” he said, underlining the sense of a fresh start for both driver and team.
“This is the world’s first look at who we are. But the real work is well underway, to be ready, push hard and deliver as a team when we begin running on-circuit next week.”
The message is clear: the launch was the show; the real judgement starts when the lights go out.
Australia waits for its home race
For all the noise around Fortescue’s entry, Australian fans still have to watch the series from afar. There is no race in Australia on the current Formula E calendar.
That may not last.
Speculation around a future e‑Prix in Australia has intensified this year, helped significantly by Fortescue’s purchase of the DS Penske racing team and Forrest’s arrival as a heavyweight stakeholder in the paddock.
Formula E CEO Jeff Dodds has already confirmed that the championship is actively exploring options in both Australia and New Zealand, and he openly acknowledges that the landscape has shifted.
“Our connections are obviously better now with Fortescue coming in,” Dodds said earlier this year. “Now that they’re on board, [Andrew Forrest] will certainly have an interest in us racing in Australia.”
The sport wants a foothold in the region. Forrest wants a home race. The pieces are edging closer together.
Two races, one warning
Forrest talks about Fortescue as if it is running in parallel championships. One is measured in laps, points and trophies. The other is far bigger.
“If we lose the climate race it’s over. We’re not going to lose that race.”
That line hangs over everything Fortescue Zero is trying to do. The new team is not just chasing Formula E’s established powers; it is being used as a rolling, high-speed billboard for a broader push away from fossil fuels.
Forrest has thrown down a challenge to Formula One, to his own industry and to the wider motorsport world in a single breath. The GEN4 car will show how fast his team can move on track.
The real question is whether the rest of the sport is willing — or able — to keep up.
