Formula E 2025 season review: Nissan leads the charge

Affectionately known as ‘Sniffer’, Sam has become a fixture of the international race scene with a penchant for FE

When Brit driver Oliver Rowland took the chequered flag in fourth position at Berlin Tempelhof last July, it gave some closure to a motor sport odyssey forged in challenging initial circumstances.

His father, Dave, died suddenly in 2010, when Rowland was just 18 years old. Naturally, at such a tender age, his world was turned upside down.

These times definitely contributed to some wayward experiences in the junior formulas. Professional doubts started to creep into his make-up. Another mentor was lost too, when karting guru Martin Hines died in 2011. That’s where Derek Warwick entered Rowland’s life. The introduction was memorable.

“I was standing at Stowe on his first lap in the [MSV] F2 car in the wet [for the 2011 McLaren Autosport BRDC Young Driver Award evaluation], and I remember turning around to Jason Plato and saying, ‘Who’s that?’” recalls ex-Formula 1 veteran and 1992 Le Mans 24 Hours winner Warwick.

“He was phenomenal, I mean really unbelievable. And he made an instant impression on me. He was clearly immensely talented, a bit disorganised and carrying a bit of weight at the time, but I liked him straight away.”

Facing pressure from the Racing Steps Foundation, which had backed him since 2009 and enabled him to make his way up the Formula Renault ladder, a judgement day of sorts was arriving. “After the second year of Racing Steps, they wanted to kick him out of the programme,” continues Warwick. “He came to Jersey [where Warwick has a home] and we spent quite a bit of time together, talking things through, playing squash, doing fitness stuff, so that I could show him what was needed in order to be a professional.”

Rowland galvanised that advice and moulded himself into a world champion. It took a bit of fate to ensure it though… In October 2018, Alexander Albon, newly recruited to the Nissan Formula E team, was called up at the last minute to the Toro Rosso F1 squad. The late Jean-Paul Driot, boss of the Nissan operation, called Rowland and the seat was his overnight.

That chance was taken and, after a few fallow years with Mahindra from 2021 to 2023, Rowland bounced back spectacularly in his second spell with Nissan starting from January 2024.

He sealed his Formula E title in 2025 with a front-end-of-the-season flourish that resulted in four accomplished wins at Mexico City, Jeddah, Monaco and Tokyo to win the title with two races to spare. And the way he did it was typically Rowland. Where the vast majority of teams and drivers work on a collegiate calling-of -races plan, Rowland takes charge and makes many of the key strategy decisions himself.

It paid off, with 133 of his 184 points coming in the first half of the season, at which point his rivals were essentially still asleep. For Rowland it was justification for his return to Nissan.

“I wouldn’t say I knew this was going to happen, but it was what I would hope for,” reflects Rowland. “And Tommaso [Volpe, Nissan team boss] and Dorian [Boisdron, team director] did know that this was going to happen and they never stopped pushing.

“Tommaso told me, ‘Come join us, we believe in you. We’ve got a plan: our car won’t be very good next year, but the year after, we’ll win.’”

While 2025 was Rowland’s year, there was another plotline that captured the imagination almost as much, and it involved one of the new champion’s team-mates.
Sébastien Buemi was once the benchmark in Formula E, taking the 2015-16 title and accruing 13 ePrix wins along the way. But by the start of the 2025 season Buemi’s star was faded and waning at Envision Racing. There had been no victory since his last for Nissan at the 2019 New York City ePrix, and his time at Envision had shown only flashes of his potential, while in 2023 he was soundly between by team-mate Nick Cassidy.

Murmurings had started to echo around the paddock that 2025 might be his final season in the all-electric world championship. Then came Monaco.
Buemi had already provided a couple of promising performances but no results of note. Heading to the principality in early May, Buemi was 19th of the 22 drivers, with just six points to his name. But in the second ePrix on the Sunday in Monaco he wound back the clock, forcing his way to the front amid treacherous conditions and then pulling away from the opposition to win at a relative canter.

As is traditional in Formula E now, Buemi slipped passed the security at the famous Piscine and climbed up to the high board, jumping off with a mixture of terror and relish. In doing so, the Swiss veteran helped to eradicate the depths of despair and laid down a buoyancy for which he was able to secure two more podiums and end the season in a much more positive frame of mind.

Another Formula E champion, António Félix da Costa, was also having a rebirth of sorts but only after taking drastic action. After a coruscating three seasons at Porsche that saw triumph and tumult in equal measure, the charismatic Portuguese elected to leave the marque at season’s end.

This was a saga unconfined, one that felt soap opera-esque in its narrative peaks and bewildering troughs. Why it was this way was put down to a clash of cultures upon driver and team. It was stark stuff.

The genesis of it had its roots back in late 2023 when da Costa was told that his parallel endurance racing activity would come, temporarily as it turned out, to an end. This upset da Costa hugely and helped fire a mistrust between himself and the senior ranks of Porsche. It never healed, especially after a poor start to the 2024 season and then a secret test Porsche had organised for Nico Müller, who has replaced da Costa for 2025-26.

While da Costa’s roller-coaster at Porsche was ridden personally, Jaguar’s 2025 was a collective exercise in hanging on for dear life before cresting a considerable rise and dominating the second half of the season. Poor reliability and a lack of pace in the first half was tamed for the final eight races, with Cassidy scoring four wins in the final tranche of races to go from 13th at the Tokyo ePrix in May to the runner-up spot at the London finale just 10 weeks later.

“It was a remarkable turnaround for Jaguar but too late for Cassidy”

This was a remarkable turnaround but came too late for Cassidy, perhaps the overall benchmark Gen3 performer, who had given notice of leaving the team earlier in the season to take up a drive at Stellantis Motorsport. Here, he joins Jean-Éric Vergne as Citroën re-enters global competition.

Formula E has just entered its final Gen3 campaign with the São Paulo season opener. And the pre-season test, which took place at Valencia in October, indicated that it will be the closest ever contest for the series.

At the end of 2026, Gen4 will come, and a group manufacturer test has already evidenced that potentially this could be a true game-changer [see Hot Wheels, January]. The 600kW of available power, permanent four-wheel drive and new racier rubber from Bridgestone will be a part of the cocktail that should persuade more natural detractors that electric racing’s bite can outweigh its naturally neutered bark.

Formula E 2025 table

Where the drivers and teams ended the year…