Formula E has raced in Tokyo twice before. It has never done it after dark. That changes this weekend, when Rounds 14 and 15 of the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship run under the lights on Saturday July 25 and Sunday July 26, the first night races in the series’ history.
For Nissan Formula E Team, the stakes are higher than the novelty. Reigning champion Oliver Rowland arrives in Tokyo sitting third in the Season 12 drivers’ standings, with six podiums and one victory on the year. The penultimate weekend of the season means every point from here narrows or closes the gap to the top.
Rowland’s Tokyo record is difficult to argue with. He has started all three E-Prix at the 2.582-kilometer, 18-turn Tokyo Street Circuit from pole position, winning once and collecting two additional podiums. The circuit, which rings the Tokyo International Exhibition Centre on an anti-clockwise layout mixing long straights with tight technical sections, has suited him. Whether the night conditions shuffle the order is the more interesting question heading into qualifying. Reserve and development driver Sam Bird noted that cooler track temperatures under the lights could keep tires in their optimal window for longer, a variable that could scramble strategy for teams that have read the circuit one way in daylight conditions.
Strategy is already complicated this weekend by the format split. Saturday’s race carries Formula E’s mandatory Pit Boost stop, requiring teams to plan around a stationary charge window; Sunday reverts to the traditional format. Two structurally different races on the same circuit in 48 hours give engineers almost no margin to set a car up and leave it alone.
Norman Nato, Rowland’s teammate, identified qualifying as the primary lever. Overtaking on the Tokyo layout is difficult, and both drivers flagged track position as the decisive factor. Nato said the team needs to find confidence in the car early in practice, before qualifying determines whether the race is a fight or a chase.
Nissan arrives for this race having absorbed a difficult Shanghai double-header. Team principal Tommaso Volpe said the squad has spent the intervening period analyzing what went wrong and putting corrections in place, though he did not specify what those corrections are. The team enters the weekend as Formula E’s fan-favorite outfit, per the championship’s own annual survey, and will race in a one-off NISMO livery built on grey and black with the brand’s signature red accents and a cherry blossom motif retained from the standard Season 12 scheme. Rowland and Nato will wear matching race suits. It is the team’s final home race in the GEN3 car; Nissan signed on for the GEN4 era, which runs through 2030, before the 2024 Tokyo event, making them the first manufacturer committed to that next chapter.
Since joining Formula E in Season 5, Nissan has accumulated nine wins, 34 podiums, and 13 pole positions across the series. Last season’s title, Rowland’s first, came with four victories, seven podiums, and three poles in a campaign that was effectively decided with two races remaining. Repeating that margin this year would require a significant swing over the final two weekends.
Off the circuit, the team is running a fan activation called The NISMO Pit, built around 1990s Japanese car culture and featuring modified Nissan road cars alongside the Formula E GEN3 Evo in the special Tokyo livery. The pit straight grandstand is sold out for Saturday’s race.
Free Practice 1 runs Friday evening at 19:00 local time (UTC+9). Saturday’s race lights go out at 20:05. Sunday follows the same schedule. Three sessions of practice across the weekend give teams more data than a single-race format, but also more rope to get the setup wrong before qualifying locks in the grid.
Rowland has never qualified off pole in Tokyo. That streak, more than the livery or the fan activation, is what Nissan needs to keep intact.
Source: Nissan. Images courtesy of Nissan.
