Norman Nato is set to retain his seat alongside newly-crowned Formula E world champion Oliver Rowland at Nissan next season, The Race has learned.
The 33-year-old is set to be officially confirmed for the 2025-26 season next week after the conclusion of the current campaign in London.
The Race understands that a decision to offer Nato a new deal has been rubberstamped internally and comes after Nato recently won the World Endurance Championship's 6 Hours of Sao Paulo on a weekend when he had to vacate his Formula E seat in favour Sergio Sette Camara due to a clash between calendars.
Sette Camara showed well in the second of the double-headers at Tempelhof where he took two points for a ninth-place finish. The Brazilian is believed to have been briefly under consideration for a drive next season but Nato is understood to have been told prior to this weekend’s races at London ExCeL that he will retain his seat.
In his second spell at Nissan, after an initial run in the 2023 season, Nato has had a poor points return in his 12 races to date compared to team-mate Rowland, who has outscored him so far by 184 points to 19.
Nato was in line to score a second Formula E win at the Homestead race in April but was penalised along with several other drivers for running out of green flag racing time to complete his mandatory attack mode boost.
Talking to The Race in London on Thursday, Nissan boss Tommaso Volpe would not confirm that a decision had yet been taken - simply saying that "we are relaxed because we are in a privileged position to have some good options".
"Whether we go for continuity or pure performance in the short-term or long-term view, whether one of these criteria will be the priority, we will decide next Monday morning or Tuesday," he said.
Nato was more expansive, although he would not confirm if he had a new deal with the team.
He said he wanted to continue with Nissan, adding: "Because I really appreciated the fact that after season nine [2023], the way it's been done, I really appreciated after that they came back to me and said 'OK whether we did a mistake or not, the reality is that today, we would like to work again with you. Are you motivated to do that?'"
Nissan dropped Nato at the end of 2023 season when it opted to keep team-mate Sacha Fenestraz instead of him alongside Rowland. But it then ousted Fenestraz at the end of the following season after a poor campaign relative to Rowland and brought Nato back in his place.
Nato by that stage had signed a deal to race for the Cadillac Hertz Team Jota squad in the WEC and therefore that campaign took priority, resulting in Nato racing at Interlagos rather than Berlin - something which Nato acknowledged by saying that “they [Nissan] knew I was committed in WEC” and it was “also like a big decision for them to accept for me to leave, to not actually do those two races".
Nato added that he had one target, which was “to help the team as much as possible".
"I have a long-term contract in WEC and it's been pretty clear with Nissan, when we discussed last year, let's do only a one-year contract, and then we will see.”
Has Nato done enough?
On paper, in black and white and without proper context, 19 points from 12 races does not look nearly enough for Nissan to continue with Nato. Such a paltry points tally, though, only tells a small part of the story, even if it's been an inarguably disappointing season for the Frenchman in what is at least the joint-strongest all-round package on the grid.
The former Venturi and Andretti driver has had several episodes of genuine misfortune this season, notably at Homestead but also in Sao Paulo in the first race where he made it into the duel phase of qualifying, led the race but was then penalised for a power spike on his car as the race restarted after a safety car period.
On his day Nato has proven strong - and he has outpaced Rowland in a number of free practice sessions this season. But when it has counted, in the races, he has - via a mixture of poor luck, some team errors and a few of his own - been unable to match his champion team-mate or come particularly close to doing so.
A massive caveat over the whole season is that Nato has not been the only one whose pace and potential has gone unrewarded. Until the last round in Berlin, Jaguar driver Mitch Evans had just six points more than Nato after failing to score in 11 of the 12 rounds held prior to the Tempelhof double-headers.
Likewise, Robin Frijns has two points fewer than Nato - but has been quick for several races only to be relegated out of big points-scoring positions via a variety of incidents, one including a bizarre retirement in Berlin whereby his fire extinguisher was triggered after rubber debris punched into the emergency housing on his Envision Jaguar.
Such oddities seem to happen over and over again in Formula E, where quite often randomness rules. Nato has been in that bracket, although not to that extreme, but his team has clearly seen enough of his driving capability with the Gen3 Evo - and his strong and reliable team player ethic is perhaps a strong foil to Rowland’s approach, which often relies on making his own judgement calls in races.
