Nissan hitting its stride as FE hits Japan

As the ABB Formula E World Championship hits the midway point of its season, things are mostly going to plan for Nissan.

No matter what happens in the first race of the weekend in Tokyo, Oliver Rowland will maintain his championship lead, with a very good chance he’ll keep ahold of it come the end of the weekend as well, with him arriving in the Japanese capital with a 48-point buffer and a maximum of 58 on offer over the course of both races.

“The team has been briefed since the beginning of the season that Season 11 for us was the first season where we wanted to attack the championship,” said Nissan team principal Tommaso Volpe. “So they have been in a status of mind, very focused, since the first race.

Things look fine on Rowland’s side of the garage, but Volpe says the team isn’t taking things for granted, pointing at the races in Sao Paulo and Miami where penalties took away chances of big points scores

“They can see that it is very easy to not score points as soon as you do something wrong,” he said. “This obviously happened in Sao Paulo, in Miami, so even if you are prepared to fight for the championship, it is very easy to make mistakes and not to perform. So this is always a warning that will hopefully keep them focused.”

While Nissan leads the drivers’ championship with Rowland and the manufacturers' championship with the help of customer team NEOM McLaren, it sits second in teams’ points. Nato languishes in 19th in the standings, a position that doesn't tell the full story, with a pole in Miami then a win on the road there – later taken away by a cruel penalty for not using up his Attack Mode thanks to a red flag giving him insufficient time to do so – proving he has what it takes to compete at the sharp end.

Despite lacking behind Rowland, Nato has been given Volpe’s vote of confidence that he can still turn his season around.

“It's very important – if Norman had half of the points of Oliver, we would be leading the teams’ championship by a big margin,” he said. “So of course, it's not a secret that we are putting attention on it, but we know what happened in the different races. So I still have confidence in Norman to come back stronger.

“He could have had a very strong result in Miami, so we were a little bit unfortunate there. In other races there were some mistakes in the garage, some mistakes from his end, so things haven't gone perfectly well very often. So we are trying to work on it to avoid these mistakes repeating, because it’s absolutely crucial to have both drivers scoring strong points in the team.”