“I’m 110% confident – I couldn’t be more confident in something to be honest. I’m not saying that means we’re going to go out already in season 10 and blow everybody’s doors off but I’m confident in the project, the plans, what the future holds and that it’s going to be a good place to be.”
Oliver Rowland’s return to the Nissan Formula E team ahead of the 2023-24 season is something of a homecoming for the Briton, and one which has filled him with renewed confidence.
Rewind nearly six months and the 2015 Formula Renault 3.5 champion was without a drive, having amicably split with Mahindra mid-season after a lacklustre run of form, and his Formula E future was in doubt. But amidst all the speculation, there was never any doubt in Rowland’s mind about returning to the team with which he enjoyed three seasons of relative success.
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“From my perspective, it was somewhere that I wanted to go,” Rowland exclusively tells Autosport. “I’d had a very good first experience with the team, I’d been there since I was a rookie. I knew some of the people still within the team, I had a good relationship with a lot of them and I trusted in what they did so for me, it was a no-brainer given the position that I found myself in.”
Nissan is the team that gave Rowland his Formula E break, offering him a full-time contract in 2018 after he made a one-off appearance, ironically for Mahindra, the season before. Over the following three years five podiums followed, including his sole Formula E victory to date in Berlin which helped him to fifth in the 2019-20 drivers’ standings.
But it’s a changed team from when he was last there in 2021, as the Japanese manufacturer ended its collaboration with the DAMS team last season. Rowland had strong connections with the French outfit, not least because he raced for it in Formula 2 where two wins – including the Monaco feature race – meant he finished third in the 2017 standings before his jump into Formula E.
It was a split which seemed inevitable after four seasons under the Nissan name, and dated back to the start of the championship when DAMS operated the team in partnership with Renault, albeit possibly hastened by the death of team co-founder Jean-Paul Driot in 2019.
“I guess there’s an element of sadness,” says Rowland about the loss of the DAMS connection. “The biggest in all of that was obviously Jean-Paul who was extremely influential in my career and the collaboration between Nissan and DAMS – for sure he’s missed from a personal perspective, from a team’s perspective. But even when I was there before it was sort of on the cards that it was probably what needed to happen in order to move the whole team forward.”
The split has coincided with a factory move for the team, which has relocated from its Le Mans base into Paris as part of an expansion to its Formula E efforts. The potential for the future is one of the reasons Rowland was keen to return, even if that meant splitting with his previous employers halfway through a season.
“In Formula E if you’re not competitive for two or three seasons then you’re completely forgotten,” says Rowland. “So while I still had that element of respect on the table and interest from other teams it didn’t make sense to continue to that point where no one really wants you anymore. It was important to make that move quickly and early.”
"I was promised certain things for Gen3 in terms of performance development and honestly none of that really happened" Oliver Rowland on his time with Mahindra
The split with Mahindra came just as the championship passed its halfway point at the Monaco E-Prix. It was perhaps telling that during that race Rowland was noticeably aggressive, making up early positions before running into the back of another driver which injured his hands. It was a sign of his frustration at having only registered two points finishes from seven races prior to that, while the season before only fared slightly better – one podium going his way in the final round at Seoul.
Rowland concedes that the lack of results meant “I started probably behaving not always in the correct way because I was frustrated, and I knew it was a critical part of my career”.
Including last year’s part-time campaign, Rowland has spent five seasons in the all-electric championship – three with Nissan, two with Mahindra – which has yielded only six podiums, including his one victory. At the age of 31 and having spent several seasons in the championship, Rowland is aware that he needs to start delivering consistent results and have a stable platform from which to build if he wishes to fight for titles.
A solid foundation is something he feels was missing from his time at Mahindra, not helped by a management restructure with ex-FIA man Frederic Bertrand joining in November 2022 – just prior to the debut of the Gen3 machine.
“I was promised certain things for Gen3 in terms of performance development and honestly none of that really happened,” says Rowland. “The development of the Gen3 car was a long way behind, it became increasingly frustrating losing good people, finding some good people, losing them again.
“There were no building blocks let’s say, things were moving in a good direction, but then it would be a positive followed by a negative. And honestly as a driver at some point you need to trust in what’s happening around you and I lost that trust.”
Although Nissan finished only seventh in the teams’ standings last term, one place ahead of customer team McLaren, more encouraging was its late-season form, with Norman Nato – now an Andretti Global driver – securing six points finishes on the bounce which included a podium in Rome.
It’s a positive platform from which to build, with Sacha Fenestraz remaining at the team for his sophomore season having impressed with his speed during his first year of Formula E. Alongside Rowland, they make for an exciting pairing that could spring some surprises in the upcoming campaign. And in an environment where he feels he has the trust of his team and the building blocks for success, Rowland expects to be able to get the most out of himself.
“Regardless of the situation I’ve always given 100% when the helmet was on, when I was at the factory in terms of feedback, wanting to win and desire to win,” says Rowland. “But I think there’s an element always within a driver’s mental well-being, if they’re happy and they’re confident and they’re feeling good with their surroundings then they perform at a higher level. I think it’s the same in any sport. When you’re frustrated, angry, you tend to probably overdrive, more incidents, more mistakes.
“Going into this fresh I have very good vibes. The future plans and some of the development stuff I’m happy with what they’re doing, and it fills me with quite a lot of confidence.”
