Great Britain’s Oliver Rowland has won his maiden Formula E world championship, driving for Nissan at the Berlin E-Prix. Rowland sealed the title by taking fourth place in the second of two races at the penultimate meeting of the all-electric series’ season at Tempelhof airport.
Rowland was reduced to tears on his in-lap after starting eighth on the grid in a hugely competitive race. The lead changed hands 16 times, including Rowland taking to the front, in what might be considered the race of the year in the sport’s 11th season and which represents the first time Nissan have taken the drivers’ title in Formula E.
“Daddy, you’re the world champion!” Rowland’s four-year-old daughter, Harper, exclaimed proudly to him over the team radio as the 32-year-old from Barnsley returned to the pits.
The championship is the first of Rowland’s career in his seventh season in Formula E. He has seen off a strong challenge from the Porsche of the former Formula One driver Pascal Wehrlein, the defending champion, but Rowland has been the dominant driver in the series this year to achieve a career high.
“I was already an emotional mess when that came on,” Rowland said of his daughter’s message. “We are a team; my wife, my daughter. We have another one on the way and we go through the emotions together..”
This win comes only two years after Rowland was disenchanted with the performance of his Mahindra team, so much so that he left them midway through the season and considered leaving the sport altogether. “There was a point where I was not very interested in continuing,” he said. “I wasn’t enjoying myself, I found myself not wanting to get on flights to come to races. That was a problem.
“I took a big risk to pull out halfway through the season, from a good contract. I had nothing on the table ready for me to sign. I took a big risk but I knew I needed something different.”
Rowland managed to secure a return to Nissan and this season has taken four wins and seven podiums for the team, enough to ensure he could close the championship out with two races remaining, at the season finale in London at the end of this month.
Sunday’s race was impressively won by Jaguar’s Nick Cassidy from 21st on the grid. But Rowland pulled out an equally excellent recovery. He had struggled in Saturday’s first race of the weekend at Tempelhof, taking a five-place grid penalty after causing a collision which also forced his retirement, his first of the season
Wehrlein started from pole and Rowland needed to outscore him by 11 points, an unlikely prospect at the start. Wehrlein duly led in the early stages, looking in every position to take the fight to the final meeting. However, he went backwards in the second half of the race, stymied by his energy strategy, and finished outside the points.
Rowland began his career in Formula Renault before moving up to GP2. He won the chance for a test with the Red Bull F1 team and was taken on as part of the Renault young driver programme, becoming their development driver in 2017. He became a junior driver for Williams in 2018 and completed a full test of their car at Hungary that year.
Wanting to continue racing, he took his first full-time drive in Formula E with the Nissan team in the 2018-19 season. He then spent two seasons with Mahindra between 2021 and 2023 before what has turned out to be an enormously successful return with Nissan.
