Oliver Rowland needs 15 points worth of luck, pace, or both. The defending Formula E Drivers’ Champion heads to the Season 12 London finale fourth in the standings, 14 points behind the leader, with two races remaining at the ExCeL Centre circuit on August 14–16.
Nissan arrives with momentum it can use. Norman Nato charged through the field in Sunday’s Tokyo race to finish sixth, and Rowland banked points on both days at the team’s home event. Points have been the story of the second half of Nissan’s season: consistent enough to stay in the fight, not quite enough to lead it.
The circuit does the team no obvious favors. At 2.09 kilometers, London’s ExCeL layout is the shortest and one of the narrowest tracks on the Season 12 calendar. The lap opens inside the exhibition hall, where the surface is smooth and grip is predictable, before spitting cars outside onto a bumpy, low-grip section. Overtaking is genuinely difficult, which concentrates pressure on qualifying. Rowland acknowledged the track’s history with his team is mixed. “Historically London hasn’t been our best track,” he said, though he also noted the low-grip conditions make qualifying a particular challenge worth attacking. Nato was blunt about the implication: start near the front or spend the afternoon stuck in traffic.
Rowland won at London in 2024, so the circuit is not entirely hostile territory. Nato has scored points on each of his last three visits. The season has delivered more difficult venues for Nissan, and a points finish from both drivers on each of the two days would build real pressure on the championship leader.
Saturday’s race adds a strategic layer. Round 16 features Formula E’s mandatory Pit Boost stop, a format element that shuffles timing strategies and can compress or expand gaps in ways the standard format does not. Sunday reverts to the traditional structure. Two formats in two days, on a circuit where qualifying position matters more than almost anywhere else on the calendar, means Nissan’s engineers carry as much responsibility as its drivers this weekend.
The weekend also closes a chapter. London has hosted the Formula E season finale throughout the GEN3 era, and this double-header ends it. Nissan has been present for all four GEN3 seasons and committed to GEN4 before any other manufacturer, signing on in March 2024 for a program running through 2030. The company won the Drivers’ Championship in Season 11 with Rowland, who took four victories and seven podiums that year before wrapping the title with two rounds to spare. A second consecutive title would be a sharper achievement: the field has closed around Nissan this season, and winning it from fourth with 14 points down would carry more weight than the comfortable Season 11 margin.
Season 11 ended badly at this same circuit. Nato scored points on Saturday, but Rowland was forced to retire on Sunday after an incident ended his race. The team finished third in the Teams’ Championship that year, its best result since taking full ownership of the program. London has given Nissan painful endings before. This time the title is still mathematically reachable, which is a different problem to have.
Fourteen points over two races. In Formula E, that is close enough to feel possible and far enough to require everything to go right.
Source: Nissan. Images courtesy of Nissan.
