Zane Maloney will miss this weekend’s Formula 2 season finale in Abu Dhabi to make his race debut in the FIA Formula E World Championship’s São Paulo ePrix. Before leaving the F2 paddock for the final time as a competitor, he sat down with Feeder Series to reflect on his six-year junior single-seater career.

By Michael McClure

Zane Maloney is used to spectacular endings. Take last year, when he spun on the final lap of the F2 season in Yas Marina while battling with title contender Frederik Vesti for third. Or the year before, when three F3 feature race wins in a row helped him complete a stunning championship comeback by finishing second in the standings despite being outside the top 10 at mid-season.

This time, however, Maloney is going out in more subdued fashion. He finishes Sunday’s F2 feature race in Qatar ninth after starting 17th in an uncharacteristically quiet recovery drive. In the hours that follow, colleagues and rivals stop by the Rodin Motorsport awning to bid him farewell before he flies to Brazil for the start of the Formula E season – and his professional career – as a driver for the all-electric formula series’ Lola Yamaha Abt team.

Maloney’s departure from F2 concluded his six-year stint in junior single-seaters, the discipline that moulded him. He’d known this day was coming since he was announced at Lola in September. Yet earlier that afternoon, as he and I sit side by side on a golf cart outside the Rodin awning for this interview – his last ever as a junior single-seater driver – Maloney seems no different from his usual calm, upbeat self.

“To be honest, there’s not much emotions,” he says. “It’s, let’s say, an end of an era, but not really because life moves on and I’m still a racing driver in a different series. I’ve only ever done two years in one category and that’s F2, so I’m used to changing series often. But I’m looking forward to the next challenge.

“I’ve enjoyed this challenge and I’ve done the best that I could. Many things could have been done better as well. Many situations could have gone better for us as a team this year as well, but we take it as it comes. I’m happy with the job that we all did.”

In another world, the 21-year-old might have fought for the title; he comfortably led early on after winning both races at the opening round and scoring strongly at the other flyaways. Now, he ends his second full F2 season with 140 points – the same total as his number of junior single-seater race starts – and sits fourth in the standings with one round to go. No matter what happens at this weekend’s season finale in Abu Dhabi, he will finish at least sixth in the points, which will make him the highest-placed driver in the series’ lineage to have missed at least once round since GP2’s fourth-place finisher in 2009, Romain Grosjean.

Maloney has been part of the Formula E paddock since the spring of 2023, when he first tested for the Andretti team in Berlin at the rookie test in May. After making additional appearances in the Rome rookie free practice in July and the 2023–24 pre-season test in October, he became the reserve driver in November 2023, a role he relinquished to F2 rival Jak Crawford after signing for Lola.

“I had an amazing year and a half with Andretti,” Maloney says. “Lots of simulator development. Learned a lot from them as well, such great people in that team.

“What got me the Formula E seat [with Lola] was my performances in F2. Once you’re performing on track, the phone calls will come. In the F1 paddock it’s the same, but it also works differently. There’s a little bit in terms of [being] there at the right time, right place, which is obviously a bit difficult.

“But in terms of the Formula E paddock, it’s very welcoming. I’ve enjoyed every second in it and [there are] some amazing drivers on that grid, just as much as F1.”

Maloney will already have several familiar faces in the paddock besides his new teammate Lucas di Grassi, who is almost twice the Barbadian’s age. Andretti’s lead driver Jake Dennis, the 2022–23 Formula E world champion, is a member of the ADD Management stable that has overseen Maloney’s career since 2020. Kiro driver Dan Ticktum was Maloney’s teammate at the 2023 Macau Grand Prix, while McLaren rookie Taylor Barnard also raced in F2 this year.

“All of the drivers get along which is quite cool. Or most of them!” he adds with a laugh. “That’s quite cool, but the job is on track.”

In many ways, Maloney’s switch to Formula E is the biggest change of his career since he started racing single-seaters in early 2019. A highly rated karting prospect, Maloney made his debut in British F4 with Carlin, following a path trod to great success by fellow ADD driver Lando Norris, winner of what was formerly the MSA Formula Championship in 2015.

Maloney won a single-seater title at the first time of asking in British F4. He got a decent start but truly took off in the third round of the season, winning seven of the nine races from then until the fifth round. Title rival Sebastián Álvarez surged in form and regained the points lead during the final round, but Maloney took the crown in the last race with a victory as Álvarez retired with mechanical trouble.

The title was a confidence booster for the newly 16-year-old driver, but he says that down the road, especially in his 2020 Euroformula Open campaign with Carlin, it also had unintended consequences.

“It wasn’t the best thing to happen in my career,” Maloney admits.

“Mentally, in how to work with engineers, it was a bad thing. I went in the next year with too much confidence, and then when it didn’t go well some weekends, then things would go wrong.

“The only thing I look back on my career is doing that 2020 year was probably not the best thing to do. That set me back a year from where I should have been.”

Maloney finished that Euroformula Open season eighth in the points with only two podiums, a far cry from his frontrunning performances in F4. When he made a sideways move to the FRegional European Championship in 2021, newly merged with Formula Renault Eurocup, Maloney was in the unenviable position of having to learn an entirely different car while being ineligible for rookie status. But the year went better, and Maloney finished fourth with 170 points and seven podiums, the highlight of which was a win at Monaco. He has the date of the victory – 23 May 2021 – tattooed on his left forearm.

Maloney made another step up the ladder to F3 in 2022 and quickly demonstrated pace, taking the fastest lap in his first race at Bahrain and then pole position for the second round in Imola. Spinning and getting stuck on a kerb at a safety car restart in the Imola feature race, however, took him out of contention for his maiden win. It was a costly mistake – one of several he made early on in the season.

That Maloney recovered to second with 134 points, five away from the title, seemed unfathomable considering he had 19 points and sat 14th in the standings at the halfway point of the season. But once he started scoring in feature races, beginning with a fifth place in Austria, he hardly looked back. At the Hungaroring, he took his first podium with second in the feature race, while the next round at Spa brought his first feature race win one day after a spectacular high-speed accident in the sprint race left his car severely damaged. Two more victories in Zandvoort and Monza made him a veritable title protagonist.

“That season was amazing and terrible at the same time,” he recalls. “Obviously, the result is what matters. I finished second, not first. But when I look back at that year, it looks like I just randomly woke up in the last three rounds or the last four rounds, but I was qualifying in the top three from the very beginning until the very end. I was just making very stupid mistakes in the races.

“The car that the team gave me and how we worked together, how we gelled with Trident, was amazing and I should’ve, within myself, been a lot further ahead in terms of points than I was coming into the last four rounds. Regrets – of course. The championship was there to win in every aspect, but in another aspect again, it didn’t change anything for my career moving on.”

Maloney was already destined for F2 by the time the season ended. He made an appearance at Yas Marina in November 2022 with Trident, his final outing with the team, to get familiar with the Dallara F2 2018 car. That preceded his full campaign in 2023 with what was then Rodin Carlin, where he reunited with Matt Ogle, briefly his engineer in Euroformula Open, and other familiar faces from his previous tenure with the team.

Maloney’s rookie season, though, was a challenging one, and he finished only 10th with 96 points. His four podiums all came in feature races, but his overall scoring record – eight races from 25 that awarded points – was bleak.

“Last year, I didn’t perform to my ability. It wasn’t a great year and … mentally, I wasn’t in the right place, in the right mindset. And this year, I think we’ve shown what we could actually do, the potential that actually was there. So I’m happy that I stuck around with them for one more year to trust in them – they trusted in me and we could really do some good performances.”

The statement double win that began Maloney’s 2024 season seemed a sign that he had shed some of his 2023 struggles, and in early rounds, the second-year driver seemed a title favourite. Even as his challenge faded over the course of the European rounds, Maloney – now engineered by Stuart King – shone in moments such as his double podium at the Farnham-based team’s home race in Silverstone or his maiden pole in Monza.

So what changed?

“I’m just more confident within myself as a driver,” Maloney answers. “In the past, mistakes would affect the next race, the next weekend, because you just lose that confidence and you doubt your ability, whereas at this stage of my career, I don’t doubt my ability. I just work very hard with the teams that I’m with to prepare as much as possible.

“I know the mistakes will happen. That happens to everyone. I think the biggest different now to even a year ago is that I have confidence in my ability, and getting professional contracts and being with amazing F1 teams helps with that. And that’s what’s gotten me to this stage.”

Those F1 teams number two, though that wasn’t a figure Maloney aimed to reach so quickly. He joined the Red Bull Junior Team in December 2022, off the back of his F3 season, and raced in the team’s colours as one of six drivers on the 2023 F2 grid supported by the Thai-Austrian energy drinks brand. 

Maloney’s time at Red Bull, however, lasted only a year. He, along with 2023 teammate Enzo Fittipaldi as well as Jak Crawford and Dennis Hauger, all departed the programme over the winter. Maloney later signed for the academy of Switzerland’s Sauber, branded as Stake for sponsorship reasons, over the winter.

“Red Bull is an amazing team who are winning in Formula 1,” he says on reflection. “But it is ruthless, and I knew that when I joined. I didn’t perform to the level that I wanted to, which is why obviously I wasn’t in it [in 2024].

“But then Stake is a little bit different. It’s a team that’s trying to build and trying to get further up the grid in F1 so it’s a bit less ruthless, let’s say. But I enjoyed both years with both teams,” he added. “When you deal with Rodin, Andretti, Stake, Red Bull, you can see a trend, and that’s just amazing, smart people working within them.”

Maloney’s new Formula E team is the product of a partnership of three prominent motorsport organisations: British auto manufacturer Lola, Japanese motors company Yamaha, and German sports car tuning company Abt Sportsline. It is the last of these with the most curious tie to Maloney’s junior career through its longstanding partnership with Audi, which will take over Sauber’s F1 entry from the 2026 season onwards.

When asked if he will stick around with Sauber into 2025, Maloney says he and the team are “still in talks”. His Formula E schedule and commitments will limit what involvement he could have in the F1 paddock, but he’s not ruling out a return.

“The facts are that there’s 20 Formula 1 seats,” Maloney says. “That’s a dream for every child growing up, but the chance of getting there, no matter the results, is very slim for anyone. So you need to look outside of F1, and you need to do that from the beginning of your career.

“From my side, I never did that. I was full focus on Formula 1, but then – when you get a bit more mature, a bit older – you realise it’s out of your control what happens.

“My F1 journey is over for the very near future, but that doesn’t mean anything for the further future. The door will always be open if you’re doing the job on track.

“I think that’s why you see drivers going over to IndyCar, Formula E, because it’s not an end of a dream; it’s just a different path to get to that dream still. And Formula E, it’s a world championship. It’s an amazing championship with manufacturers, amazing drivers, and I think any of the drivers in Formula E could take it to any championship and be good. So I don’t see it as a step down. I see it as just something different and very competitive in its own way.”

Knowing how hard F1 seats are to come by, does Maloney ever wish he’d planned his career differently from the start?

“It’s quite funny because if I didn’t have a seat next year, I would say that, yes,” he replies, “but I’ve gotten a great opportunity. I wouldn’t say I’ve lucked out, because I have performed on the track, but I’ve been fortunate to get this opportunity. No matter what I did in my career up until this moment in terms of focusing on F1 or outside, I’m in the best place that I want to be in the current moment.

“So I don’t have any regrets or anything,” he adds. “Any dreams for the future are not over, and once you’re performing on track … the phone calls come. And that’s all I can really focus on.”

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency