Tokyo Formula E winners and losers

Tokyo's Formula E double-header brought wild weather, another big step towards the title for Oliver Rowland, the end of a very long win drought for Stoffel Vandoorne and Dan Ticktum's greatest FE performances yet.

Sam Smith explains the stories behind all that and picks his winners and losers from another crazy weekend.

Winner: Oliver Rowland

At the back of the Tokyo Big Sight/Ariake paddock lies the expansive water of Tokyo Bay.

As Oliver Rowland swung both another winner's trophy and his daughter Harper from his arms upon leaving the paddock, you couldn't help but wonder if he might just casually walk across that water on Sunday evening.

Such is Rowland's aura of invincibility at present, and the fact he has long since cultivated a title winning streak of results in Formula E, that it now feels a mere formality that he will be crowned champion, probably with a couple of races to spare.

A fourth win of the season on Sunday in Tokyo was added to the bounty bag, as were two more pole positions and a 77-point title advantage that in all reality wouldn't even be jeopardised if he now missed a couple of races, as he did last season at Portland. 

While Rowland and Nissan's excellence was clearly presented again at the weekend, there was also some fortune to go with it. This was particularly evident on Sunday when the late safety car saved him having to perform a big energy save and defensive equation in the last phases of the race.

But the real framework of the win came when he elected to take his final six-minute tranche of attack mode relatively early, something that he felt he had forced himself into after getting stuck behind Nick Cassidy's Jaguar.

"I couldn't pass him and he couldn't pass Edo [Mortara]," Rowland told The Race.

"I kind of just got stuck in sixth and I basically lost positions in the [first] attack mode. I was really annoyed at myself."

Rowland didn't want to leave his six minutes of attack mode too late because he would have got passed by other people and then had to "make up too many places and that never would have worked. So, I decided to roll the dice," he added.

"Actually, luckily for me, they all jumped in [to attack mode] and let me pass and Christmas came early. And obviously I knew I would have a little bit more than [leader] Pascal [Wehrlein]. 30 seconds or whatever and I'd have one chance. And I took it."

Therefore, the latest Rowland/Nissan masterclass was complete, and so too, in all reality, was the 2024/25 Formula E drivers' title fight.

Loser: Antonio Felix da Costa

Antonio Felix da Costa held his hands up for a mistake on Sunday after he crashed into the back of Mortara's Mahindra when a full course yellow was called for debris on the track created by Mortara's team-mate Nyck de Vries' front wing.

The Porsche driver drove strongly on Saturday to claim a hard-earned seventh position, clearly outperforming team-mate Pascal Wehrlein. But in the context of da Costa's once strong-looking crack at a second title this was a weekend to forget.

On a bigger picture level, da Costa's future at Porsche should be decided next month when it will indicate whether an option to retain him for 2026 is taken up.

Asked whether the upcoming Shanghai double-header would be an important indicator in that decision, team principal Florian Modlinger said that it wouldn't be.

"With the performance they [da Costa and Wehrlein] both show at the moment I would not say one single race is critical for anything but we really want to get the most points we can with both cars," he said.

In Tokyo, as in Monaco, Porsche and da Costa simply didn't achieve that again. 

Winners: Dan Ticktum/Cupra Kiro

Prior to the Tokyo weekend Dan Ticktum undertook some amusing zen-master filming skits with Formula E TV pundit and commentator James Rossiter. 

While that was firmly tongue-in-cheek there was a degree of relative serenity within Ticktum in Tokyo, and unsurprisingly it paid dividends with a fifth and a third place, by far his and the Cupra Kira team's best ever combined result.

It was well-deserved, and irrespective of Ticktum's small mistake in the qualifying final against Rowland, in general the maximum performance was achieved from the year-old Porsche package across the weekend. 

Ticktum's races were calculated superbly. Sunday's performance was operated in conjunction with works Porsche driver Wehrlein's race, as the two worked hand-in-hand for much of it. But the true pearl in the oyster was Ticktum's absolutely sublime qualifying laps prior to the race.

While his quarter and semi-final laps were very strong, the first two sectors of his final attempt were next level efforts of dexterity and skill. It actually had paddock admirers, of which Ticktum's talents have many, in complete rapture for its controlled commitment and application. 

That he then overcooked it was actually beside the point. It reminded one of Max Verstappen's legendarily nuclear 2021 crack at Formula 1 pole in Jeddah.

Ticktum's effort was Formula E's equivalent on Sunday. And it was this, in conjunction with his first ever podium position, that meant Ticktum and Kiro finally showed their core potential after an annoyingly fractious and sub-standard Monaco effort just two weeks prior.

"There was no time, in my opinion, left on the table," said Ticktum. 

"I knew that coming out of Turn 13, and I knew Oli was going to be fast and I just obviously slightly overdid it. 

"Overall, I really think we're starting to find our feet, get things in the window, consistently in all conditions. I feel like in the first bit of the season, I just didn't have the car to be able to do what I'm doing at the moment, and now I do, and I'm doing it."

Loser: Jaguar

🛑 RED FLAG 🛑

Mitch Evans loses a tyre and goes into the wall, he is ok. #TokyoEPrix pic.twitter.com/CUXUVBkURY

— Formula E (@FIAFormulaE) May 18, 2025

A true annus horribilis season is slowly playing out at Jaguar, and new pain was suffered in Tokyo with expensive shunts to go with an overall lack of performance compared to the competition. 

Cassidy fought tooth-and-nail for a 10th and a seventh position in Tokyo and deserves some kind of medal for perseverance in what was a difficult car in the dry. In the wet was where some opportunity was to be had but unlike Sebastien Buemi's win and Cassidy's podium in Monaco, it wasn't quite enough in Japan. 

Mitch Evans' awful season also reached new lows too. He was the innocent victim of a clash with De Vries on Saturday, suffering a 26G impact with the wall, which necessitated a new rear end for Sunday.

That was further damaged in the Kiwi's qualifying shunt at Turn 16 and despite an initial plan to again rebuild for the race, time ran out and Evans missed his first ever E-Prix.

"Once I got to the mid corner, the rear started to go and then I obviously didn't recover," Evans told The Race. 

"I didn't feel like I was being overly optimistic, it's just a very fine line, as we've seen throughout the weekend. If you just get a little bit offline, there's a load of dirt, and I must just get onto it through the braking.

"I got to the apex and I thought I was alright. Then it really went and I was gone."

Now usurped by Maserati MSG in the teams' standing, the Big Cat has sunk to eighth position from 11 teams, by far its worst first half of a campaign since its inaugural season in 2016-17.

Jaguar's misery was mostly mirrored by customer Envision, although it at least had Sebastien Buemi's very strong fourth place from Saturday's wet race to cheer.

Jaguar now heads to Shanghai where it won with Evans last season. However, that past form means very little in reality as it continues to try to manage with a package that just appears to offer very little consistency or positivity at most venues this season.

Winner: Jake Dennis

Jake Dennis's draconian black flag on Saturday prevented a probable podium finish but his run to Sunday's fourth place was one of the drives of the entire weekend.

The Andretti driver cut through epically from 14th position on the grid, vanquishing rivals at will on 300kW power at a track notoriously difficult to make moves stick without the attack mode in the dry.

"I felt like we deserved those points after proving such a good race pace," said Dennis.

"The pace all weekend has not been amazing to be honest, we didn't think we had the fourth quickest car, but ultimately, we extracted what we could from it and perfected that race.

"I did quite a few divebombs out there and that shot us into the places where we needed to be.

"Then in the attack mode we gained six or seven positions in two laps but I would honestly put it down to the overtakes in 300kW at the start of the race, which really projected our race forward."

Despite a challenging weekend in all for Andretti, and in particular for Dennis's so-far surprisingly disappointing team-mate Nico Mueller, the 2023 champion's drive on Sunday was a much needed tonic.

Losers: FIA/Formula E

On one level there would have been relief that a race could actually happen at all in Saturday afternoon's weather but there were questions too over why qualifying could not take place when conditions looked and felt very similar to when the race started at 15.00 local time.

Clearly, the motivation of the FIA was to ensure that a buffer could be available to it in the later afternoon in case it was needed for a delayed race being run, so there was method behind the decisions there.

But of more concern were some of the race incidents on Saturday in what was an otherwise excellent race. Dennis's black flag incident felt ultimately like the FIA was reacting to and shutting down a loophole in the regulations.

The fact that he crossed a red light in the pitlane is not in dispute, but the positioning of the red light itself for viewing of the driver, the FIA's confusing real-time messaging application, the bewildering semantics of ‘pitlane' and ‘pit entry' in context of displaying messages and then the draconian black flagging of Dennis, certainly was.

On a wider picture the fact Rowland is making the 2024-25 championship his own private toy to play with isn't great for Formula E.

The high likelihood at present is that there will be two dead-rubber races at London ExCeL in July. While this would be completely earned and deserved for Rowland and Nissan, it would be an overall disappointment for a championship that has traditionally thrived and fed-off a grand finale narrative to its seasons.

Winner: Taylor Barnard

McLaren's Taylor Barnard displayed new traits of distinction in Tokyo, a track he was visiting for the very first time.

That element appeared to be telling when he suffered a major shunt against the Turn 16 wall in the first free practice session on Friday afternoon.

A big rebuild by the McLaren team was then rewarded with a dynamic run to a third podium of the season for Barnard on Saturday, a showcase of some sublime opportunistic overtaking and coolness under pressure that belies his inexperience in Formula E.

While that looked unlikely to be matched, it was probably actually enhanced on Sunday with another glittering display in the dry. Barnard in fact would have had a credible crack at winning his first E-Prix had it not been for a safety car inducing swipe from Mortara's Mahindra in the final knockings of the race.

It was a bitter end for the 20-year-old. Yet again the paddock has taken note of Formula E's brightest ever young talent and while the future of the team he races with is under serious question, Barnard's destiny is not.

"It was a masterful drive," McLaren team principal Ian James told The Race.

"There was amazing defending, especially against those that had attack mode behind him. With Oli running out of energy as well, or more energy limited than Taylor, something special was on the cards, but sadly it wasn't to be."

Loser: Mahindra

After a superb succession of races, Mahindra went through several missteps in Tokyo that meant what should have been another bountiful points fell short and halted a significant amount of momentum it had worked hard to get.

The frustrating aspects for the Indian manufacturer were that it had strong pace in all conditions across the weekend and through contacts and penalties it came away with a mere eight points when it should have achieved at least triple that amount.

De Vries' races were compromised by a penalty for pitching Evans into the Turn 2 barriers on Saturday and then an energy-saving strategy that never paid off on Sunday.

Mortara had real misfortune on Saturday when he was in line for a podium shot at least before a botched attack mode application scuppered him, and then in the second encounter he was pinged for nerfing Barnard's McLaren off when another podium crack was active.

Mortara described the shunt with Barnard as "unfortunate" and speculated that the stewards considered he "should have done more" to avoid the contact but he was also "really surprised how much he [Barnard] stopped".

"We checked the data and between Turns 5 and 6 you have maybe 300 metres and he lifted maybe 100 metres earlier," said Mortara. "This caught me out and it's clearly not helping my reaction to avoid hitting him.

"I tried to go on the left as much as I could and still I could not avoid him."

Winner: Stoffel Vandoorne

Stoffel Vandoorne doesn't need telling that his last few seasons in Formula E have been a bit underwhelming. While he isn't 100% to blame for that, the fact he has gone off-radar in so many E-Prixs has dented his reputation a little after his excellent championship season in 2022.

In Tokyo, he and his side of the Maserati MSG garage conjured up a superb, calculated gamble strategy on Saturday to bring his first win for three years.

That it owed to a large slice of luck with a red flag flying soon after he took an inspired ultra-early Pit Boost was undeniable. But the win was much more than that. This was because he had to get into the state-of-charge window by driving aggressively in that early phase from 14th place on the starting grid.

Maserati MSG also likely honed its power discharge and limited, probable no-regen setting to help Vandoorne but he still had to apply it all on the track while also dealing with the treacherous conditions and more conservative competitors around him. It was far from easy.

That he then managed his low-energy percentage in the later phase of the race in still wet conditions was also impressive, as was his recovery from a half-spin that almost ruined an otherwise excellent run.

"It's probably one of the first Formula E races that if you saw what we were discussing before the race, it actually 100%  turned out the way we wanted," Vandoorne told The Race.

"It was not easy to manage, but, you know, Thibaut [Arnal], my race engineer, was super calm on the radio and guided me through the race [telling me] how to do it and he kept constantly reminding me of the gap with Oli behind, so I knew how much I could back off."

It was a sniper's victory from Vandoorne. A reminder that he, and the Maserati MSG team, are very dangerous competitors when opportunity allows.

Winner: Lola Yamaha Abt

With a bit of home pressure via Japanese brand Yamaha's involvement in this new tri-brand/operation squad, Lola Yamaha Abt was given its latest Formula E initiation test last weekend.

On balance it passed it with distinction as Lucas di Grassi executed his and the team's best overall race strategy so far.

The surprise Homestead runner-up spot was fortuitous after penalties for others were applied, but both di Grassi and team-mate Zane Maloney were quick there, with the Brazilian able to come away with a lot to show from it.

The same was true of Tokyo on Sunday, and although this time there were eight fewer points brought back, performance wise this one was probably better, especially considering how poor the Lola-Yamaha package was in Monaco last time out.

Di Grassi topped his group in qualifying but just lost out to Jean-Eric Vergne in his duel. The race was carried off impressively with di Grassi always a factor in the top 10 early doors and then pushing through with strong attack mode calls to claim fifth via some decisive moves on Cassidy, Jean-Eric Vergne and Mortara.

"For Yamaha on Japanese soil this result was very important as we had the whole board here," di Grassi told The Race afterwards.

"It's the car's first year and we are up here fighting cars that have been here for six or eight years, so I'm actually very happy to have scored 28 points so far this season."