All-rounder Rowland keeping Nissan in Formula E title chase

Oliver Rowland says he’s enjoying playing an underdog role in this year’s Formula E championship, as he challenges the Jaguar and Porsche runners for the title.

Rowland’s Nissan package is seen as being inferior to the pace-setting Jaguars and Porsches — Porsche won the championship with customer team Andretti last year as Jaguar won the most races with its factory team and customer outfit Envision Racing. This year is a similar story, Porsche and Jaguar heading the new-for-2024 manufacturers’ trophy, but in the drivers’ standings, Rowland is in the thick of the fight, and was even leading the points until he lost a certain race win last Sunday at Misano with less than a lap to go.

“I don’t think I ever expected to be in the position that I’m in at the moment,” Rowland told select media that included RACER. “But it’s been a welcome surprise, let’s say, and something that I’m actually relishing and enjoying.

“I guess that I’m enjoying the kind of underdog fight. I think nobody really expected anybody other than the probably the Porsches (and) the Jaguars to be able to challenge for the championship this year or race wins, so for us to be kind of in the mix and consistently performing is very positive.”

Rowland, like championship leader Pascal Wehrlein, has two poles to his name this year, while Jake Hughes’ top qualifying performance on Sunday for Nissan customer McLaren means that the Japanese manufacturer’s powertrain has the most poles so far. But in races, the Porsche has been the class of the field thanks to its superior efficiency, which has enabled it to overhaul poor qualifying performances and score two wins for Wehrlein, another for Andretti’s Jake Dennis, and a fourth for Antonio Felix da Costa that was later rescinded and handed to Rowland.