Four seasons into the GEN3 era, Nissan Formula E Team exited it the same way it entered most of Season 12: grinding for points from the midfield. The London double-header closed the 2025/26 ABB FIA Formula E World Championship with both Oliver Rowland and Norman Nato in the top 10 on Sunday, a result that didn’t change the final standings much but at least gave the team something clean to close on.
Nissan finished sixth in the Teams’ Championship. Rowland ended fourth in the Drivers’ standings, the same position he held heading into the weekend. Nato is classified 19th. Nissan sits fifth in the Manufacturers’ Championship.
The racing itself followed a familiar pattern. Both drivers struggled in qualifying across the weekend, with neither advancing through the Duels format in Saturday’s Round 16. Rowland started 13th, had his strategy undercut by a poorly timed Full Course Yellow, then charged late to recover to 10th and pick up the bonus point for fastest lap. Nato gained ground off the start before contact from another driver caused a puncture, eventually dropping him to 15th.
Sunday’s Round 17 was tougher out of the box. A technical problem prevented Nato from posting a qualifying lap, leaving him 19th on the grid. Rowland qualified 17th. The team elected to bank energy early in the race rather than fight from the back immediately, deploying Attack Mode later once the field had sorted itself. The patience paid off in the closing stages. Rowland moved through traffic to finish ninth with another fastest lap bonus point. Nato crossed 10th, his best result of the weekend and a clean note to close out his time with the team.
The London double-header capped a Season 12 that had real highs, particularly a win in Monaco and podiums in São Paulo, Mexico City, Jeddah, and Berlin for Rowland, with Nato adding a fifth-place finish in Berlin. Against that, a troubled stretch in China dragged consistency down and cost the team in the championship. Rowland entered London 14 points behind the championship leader, which made the grid penalties from qualifying all the more costly. He needed clean Saturday and Sunday results to stay in contention; he got neither from qualifying.
Team principal Tommaso Volpe acknowledged the inconsistency directly. Over the four-season GEN3 run, though, the ledger reads better: 21 podiums, seven wins, and the Season 11 Drivers’ World Championship with Rowland, who took four victories and three pole positions that year before wrapping the title with two races to spare.
Nato’s departure from the team was confirmed through the weekend, with his race-day comments reading as a farewell. He took Nissan Formula E Team’s first podium in Season 9 and drove for the squad in three of the four GEN3 seasons. His replacement for GEN4 has not been announced.
The GEN4 car itself is the bigger story heading out of London. Nissan was the first manufacturer to commit to the GEN4 era, signing on through 2030, and development of the new challenger is now the team’s primary focus. Season 13 pre-season testing is scheduled for November, with the new regulations bringing significant changes to the car’s architecture compared to GEN3 hardware.
Rowland, who has now finished in the top four of the Drivers’ Championship for three consecutive seasons, framed GEN4 as the next step rather than a fresh start. Given what Nissan built across the GEN3 years, that framing is reasonable. Whether the new car delivers on it is a question London couldn’t answer.
Source: Nissan. Images courtesy of Nissan.
