Oliver Rowland has three podiums in five races this season. That sounds comfortable until you hear him admit Nissan isn’t the fastest car in the field.
The reigning Formula E Drivers’ World Champion heads to Madrid this weekend for Round 6 of the 2025/26 championship, where the series will race at Jarama for the first time. It marks Formula E’s return to Spain and, more pointedly, the first E-Prix on Spanish soil with actual fans in attendance. The 2021 Valencia race ran behind closed doors, a pandemic-era ghost event most would rather forget.
Madrid becomes the 35th city to host an E-Prix, and the full 3.934-kilometer Grand Prix layout at Jarama — with a chicane bolted onto the pit straight — is a different animal from the tight street circuits that define most of the calendar. High-speed corners, elevation changes, and limited overtaking zones make this a track where qualifying position could be everything.
Rowland knows it. Our one-lap speed hasn’t been where it needs to be this season,” the Brit said, an unusually candid admission from a defending champion. He won last year’s title with four victories, seven podiums, and three poles, wrapping things up with two rounds to spare.
This season has been scrappier. Three podiums but no wins through five rounds — a champion collecting points through consistency rather than dominance.
His teammate Norman Nato has been quick on Saturdays but hasn’t converted qualifying pace into race results. Nato himself flagged the difficulty: “It’s about putting it all together in the race to ensure we collect some valuable championship points.” Neither driver has actually raced at Jarama.
The weekend introduces a wrinkle that could scramble the order. Pit Boost — a 10% energy top-up delivered mid-race via the pit lane — makes its debut in a single-header event. That reduces Attack Mode to just one six-minute activation, compressing the strategic window and placing enormous weight on when teams choose to pit and when they deploy their boosted energy.
Get it wrong, and grid position becomes nearly impossible to recover.
Team principal Tommaso Volpe framed the weekend around a single word: consistency. “It’s been positive to have scored three podiums in five races, but our goal now is to find more consistency,” he said. That’s the diplomatic version of acknowledging that Nissan has been good enough to stand on the podium but not sharp enough to stand on the top step.
Sunday brings the Season 12 Rookie Test, with Nissan handing its car to reserve driver Abbi Pulling and Alpine’s Victor Martins for six hours of running. Nissan was the first manufacturer to commit to Formula E’s GEN4 era through 2030, and every session feeds the development pipeline connecting racetrack to road.
The broader picture for Nissan in Formula E remains one of deep investment from a company navigating turbulent financial waters elsewhere. The Japanese automaker acquired its race team outright in 2022 and has doubled down on electric racing as a technology lab for its push toward carbon neutrality by 2050.
Lights go out Saturday at 15:05 local time. Rowland will line up knowing that defending a championship with raw pace that isn’t quite there yet requires something harder than speed — discipline, tire management, and a perfect read on when to hit the pit lane for that 10% jolt of energy. Three podiums in five races is solid. But solid doesn’t win titles twice.
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