It should not be underestimated just how much his fifth place at Berlin earlier this month could be a trigger for Norman Nato to get major results in the second half of the present Formula E season.
The Nissan driver went on an awful run of results from Shanghai last June to the Madrid EPrix in March. That wasn’t to say he was shunting it in every race and making mistake after mistake, he very much wasn’t. But what was happening was that through a series of misfortunes, missteps and miscommunication, he and his side of the garage just wasn’t bringing home the bacon.
If you were being harsh you could say it cost Nissan the teams title last season. There is factual basis in that, but the context behind it was not the sole responsibility of the man in the cockpit himself.
To understand Nato’s relatively poor 2025 compared to his champion teammate Oliver Rowland, you have to go back to September 2024. That was when Nato was drafted back into the team that he left in the summer of 2023.
Back then Nato was having a solid season and entered the Rome EPrix with 23 points, eight fewer than his rookie teammate Sacha Fenestraz. He left Rome 24 points better off and 15 ahead of the Franco-Argentinian. But there was already a feeling that Nato would be the one to vacate his seat in what was still only his second ever season as a Formula E driver.
Ironically, a year after that Nato replaced Fenestraz, after the pace and results inspired wrecking-ball of Oliver Rowland blew his way back in to the team. Nato’s appointment second time around was pretty late and after a bruising season up against Jake Dennis at Andretti he was back but relatively underprepared.
The Gen3Evo package was a much different animal in overall strategy and systems management for any driver to adapt to, let alone one who had gone from Venturi to Jaguar to Nissan to Andretti and back to Nissan in as many years.
That’s the context for Nato’s poor points haul in 2025 compared to Rowland’s. But, as well, it has to be said that the champion was able to extricate better results much more effectively, something which Nato appreciates himself.
“The guy has been like impressive last season, honestly I was next to him and of course the car and the package and everything was good but it’s a full credit to him that honestly like the races he’s done he was constantly in front in qualifying,” Nato tells FEN.
But this season, while Nato has appeared much more on the front foot, particularly in qualifying where currently its stands at 5-3 in Nato’s favour, it has been far from easy inside the team
“This year for some reason as a team I would say it’s a bit more difficult,” said Nato.
“We had some movement inside of the team, which obviously, it’s a sport where we’re talking about a half a tenth or a tenth. All these small details especially in the year, in the last year of the Gen 3.5 everyone is at his best and I would say these small details actually impact us a little bit more than what we expected.
“On the personal side I made quite a good step in terms of qualifying pace, which I was okay with last year I would say. I had some good qualifying but was much more up and down, where I’ve found quite a lot of consistency this season in qualifying by knowing the team, knowing the car I’m driving and communication with my team.”
Nato’s Progress at Nissan Take Two
Two aspects that many are not considering with Nissan this year is the loss of any transferable data from a customer team after the demise of McLaren. The second is that the team lost several key technical figures, including technical director Theo Gouzin, who left for Jaguar last year.
These are being slowly replaced but it’s been a process that has maybe had a bit of lag in terms of helping Rowland and Nato be fully armed for a title defence this season.
But Nato’s fighting fifth in Berlin, in which he clearly helped a fresher tyre shod Rowland achieve a strong second place, is significant. Heading to Monaco this weekend, where he qualified a brilliant third in 2023 with Nissan, Nato has the feeling of a driver who is freed up to deliver.
He will also continue development testing the Gen4 Nissan, starting with a test at the end of May. He feels that this slightly hidden aspect of his role is a crucial one for his all-round squad ethic.
“You need to have drivers who also push your team in the right direction with the right attitude and this kind of thing it’s to me like always took it as important as being fast in the car,” he said.
“You can be the fastest guy in the car but if you can’t develop a car then you will be nowhere right, so that’s why like for me WEC now is also a very high level as well. If you look at WEC the amount of drivers names you’re having in manufacturers it’s very impressive.
“Formula E it’s also very technically dynamic. The best example is that so many engineers or drivers now from Formula E are slowly going to work in F1 again. F1, they start to try to take a lot of Formula E people, for development in my case it is the same (with Ferrari).
“Actually, I was in Ferrari last week and I started to see faces from the Formula E paddock that I know, and the same in WEC. You go in WEC there’s one of my engineers for example from Nissan now in WEC too.
“So, it just shows you that if all the big championships are coming to take people in this championship everyone starts to be aware that yes the level we are having now is super high.”
