Dan Ticktum's career breakout surge onto the Formula E podium and into race victory contention since his Kiro team hooked up with Porsche shows what can happen when a driver who's been stuck in one of the worst cars on a grid is handed one of the best.
The same's about to happen to Ticktum's erstwhile team-mate. It could be career-defining for him too.
On Tuesday Nissan finally announced that its reserve driver Sergio Sette Camara will step into a race seat for July's Berlin double-header when Norman Nato has to prioritise the clashing Interlagos World Endurance Championship event.
That's the opportunity Sette Camara's had his eye on ever since he signed for Nissan last December. Since he did that deal, the team's gone from promising race-winner with its Gen3 car to championship dominator with Nato's team-mate Oliver Rowland in its Gen3 Evo variant.
Sette Camara's spent a career on the periphery. A Formula 2 race-winner, stints in both Red Bull (twice!) and McLaren's junior programmes didn't progress beyond a couple of Formula 1 tests. Potential IndyCar chances didn't come to fruition. Even now in his 2025 European Le Mans Series season he's in a Pro-Am car (though he finished second overall with it in the last round).
Between F2 and the ELMS came Formula E - where right now all he has to show for four full seasons is 22nd - 20th - 20th - 20th in drivers' championships, one front row start and a fourth place.
But it's also much more than that. He destroyed high-profile Formula 1 convert team-mate Antonio Giovinazzi's Formula E career at Dragon Penske in 2022 before it even got started. Though he stumbled against Ticktum initially at what was then ERT the year after, last season he turned the tables and being a point behind Ticktum in the standings didn't tell the real story of intra-team pace - not that the wider world noticed either way as both drivers grappled with a very uncompetitive package.
Sette Camara felt his last-minute ejection from what had by then become the Kiro team on the eve of the 2024-25 season in favour of Porsche-affiliated David Beckmann was "very shady".
That's history. The immediate future is a race weekend in the Nissan that's won four times this season and had three other podiums, and taken Rowland into a 68-point championship lead. And though Sette Camara's in at the deep end in terms of experiencing the 2024-25 Pit Boost/ultra-effective Attack Mode Formula E race format in anger at Berlin Tempelhof, he's had a decent amount of track time in the Nissan development car as well as simulator work. He won't exactly be unprepared.
But he is up against Rowland - the most dominant force Formula E has seen in many years and a proven team-mate destroyer.
Sacha Fenestraz set himself up for a very promising Formula E career in his impressive rookie season with Nissan in 2023 then had that firmly snuffed out last year when Rowland turned up and left him 130 points and 13 championship positions behind. The more experienced Nato's looking even worse in comparison this year (152 points and 18 championship places adrift right now).
Nissan could have a dilemma if Sette Camara excels in Berlin and puts points on the board that Nato's hasn't. It will be tough in the pack-racing maelstrom that Tempelhof will be, but Sette Camara is capable of bringing big points home.
Nato is on a one-year deal with an option thereafter and it is believed that team principal Tommaso Volpe wants to be loyal to him. Yet he has also proved to be ruthless in the past too - such as with Fenestraz last year.
And a big part of the dilemma is that while Nissan looks assured of a drivers' title with Rowland, in reality with the advantage its Gen3 Evo package now has it should take a triple crown, yet it's nip and tuck with Porsche in the teams' and manufacturers' standings.
So even if he's in Rowland's shadow (and it would be extraordinary if he wasn't, given Rowland's current form), Sette Camara could do vital service for Nissan. There's a lot riding on Berlin for both driver and team.
Motorsport's full of drivers who excel against the odds in the midfield, where there's no expectation of consistency or pressure of expectation, then fold when they get a chance in a top team where consistent strong execution is mandatory.
We don't yet know where Sette Camara will end up in that regard. Berlin will be the first time he'll have a hope of going forwards in a Formula E race rather than fighting a frantic rearguard action in a car he's hurled much further up a grid than it should be.
A hefty cohort of Formula E veterans are nearing the end of their time in the series. McLaren's huge success with rookie Taylor Barnard has shown the potential of a youth revolution.
Sette Camara, now 27 and with 66 Formula E race starts, falls somewhere in the middle. Make Berlin count and his longer-term future might look very different to how it does right now.
