“To be honest, we needed a win.”
Tommaso Volpe wasn’t just stating the obvious as he watched his star driver ‘Barnsley bomb’ his way into the famous Monaco Piscine a few weeks ago. Exactly 365 days prior to Rowland’s excellent second win on the Monegasque streets, Volpe and Nissan were on top of the world. Rowland couldn’t stop winning. Except, he and they then did.
The end of Rowland’s title winning season was in fact poor. But not as poor as the whole team, with Norman Nato scoring just 10 of his 21-point total in the second half of the campaign.
Something wasn’t quite right at Nissan, with an incredible juxtaposition of Rowland celebrating the title at Berlin and then the team fading from team’s title protagonists to lowly fourth place finishers as Jaguar beat them to second in London and even Mahindra got within striking distance.
As Rowland captured his title in Berlin, behind the scenes the mood was not entirely celebratory. Missing from the team was its technical director Theophile Gouzin, who had been poached by Jaguar. He was immediately placed on gardening leave, and he was not welcome in Berlin to see Rowland lift the title in the package he had been instrumental in designing.
Others also left the team, and it was clear a kind of rebuilding needed to occur. The present season could hardly have started any worse as Rowland clouted Nato in Sao Paulo. In typical fashion the Brit came out better and took a strong second place behind Jake Dennis’ Andretti Porsche.
“This season, if I have to be honest, we are not 100% happy,” Volpe told Formula E Notebook in Monaco.
“We are not as solid as we were last year, at least up to Tokyo. It’s something we still need to work on because the competition this season is so much stronger. You have so many more teams and drivers that can win a race and they can set pole positions.
“We still have a lot to do to be able to fight for the championship. There is a big gap with the top teams in terms of points. It’s not over yet, of course, but if we really want to be credible contenders for the team championship, we really need to turn around the season and to come back super solid in many areas where we are not at the top yet.”
Whether Nissan can become contenders in the teams’ title is up for debate, but history suggests it won’t be in the inevitable Porche v Jaguar fight come London. 88 points is not insurmountable, but it feels unlikely as Jaguar has out-scored Nissan in six of the 10 races so far, and that from a team that saw its cars taken out of contention at the first two races.
Against Porsche its similar with Porsche 5-4 up, and each not scoring any points in the first Monaco round. But Nissan v Mahindra also tells a story as the Indian manufacturer has a 6-3 advantage across the season on points against Nissan, with the second Jeddah race a draw as they scored 15 points each.
With the Stellantis teams and Andretti scoring erratically and Envision consistent but not big points gatherers this season seemingly, it already feels like a Porsche v Jaguar v Nissan v Mahindra fight for the title, with most people’s betting forecasts on a straight Jaguar v Porsche scrap for honours in London this August.
The much-needed win for Nissan and Volpe at Monaco needs to open some early 2025 style floodgates for more victories in addition to both cars scoring points if a full recouperation of form in the final Gen3 season is to be validated for Formula E’s only full Japanese manufacturer this time around.
