When Oliver Rowland hops back into his Nissan Formula E seat this weekend, he insists he won't be dwelling on any "if only..." thoughts about a 2024 title challenge that his Portland absence appears to have snatched from his grasp.
Rowland was unable to fly out to the penultimate event of the year in the US due to illness, meaning that he missed the opportunity to capitalise on points leader Nick Cassidy’s disastrous weekend.
Had Rowland been able to replicate the sort of heroics he's pulled off elsewhere this season at Portland, he could at the very least have joined Cassidy’s chief pursuers Mitch Evans and Pascal Wehrlein in being within striking range of Cassidy heading into the final two races on home soil in London this weekend.
Instead, Rowland was forced to watch those races on TV before heading to the Calafat circuit in Spain last week to test his fitness ahead of the finale.
That test proved positive and Rowland has been passed fit to compete at the inside and outside London ExCeL Arena track.
“I was gutted not to be there,” Rowland tells The Race. “I didn't know if I could watch the races to be honest. It felt weird.
“Then the aftermath, obviously, with Cassidy not really scoring and nobody really scoring big around me, it's frustrating and disappointing.”
Rowland now heads to London fifth in the standings and 36 points off Cassidy, rendering him a rank outsider in the title fight. But he’s not giving up, even though he’s never really considered being a contender this season.
“I guess stranger things have happened in Formula E. I'm still only what 36 points behind, so anything can happen,” he says.
“Look, the target for us has never been to win the championship. It can happen if certain things spiral in certain ways. All you need is one mega first day where you qualify well and win it. Then, all of a sudden if results go the right way, it can look a lot different.
“But for us, it's like any other race; we go there, we try to improve and we try to optimise our package. If it's fast enough, then I'm sure we'll be in the hunt to win. If not, then we'll be looking at improving for the second day and with one eye on next year as well, so no pressure at all really.”
Outsiders' downfalls
In reality, Antonio Felix da Costa is probably the only rank outsider you would even consider having a punt on.
He’s 33 points off Cassidy - three points ahead of Rowland and fourth overall - meaning that only an outrageous set of circumstances would create an extraordinary and unlikely final weekend title twist.
Yet both drivers have legitimate reasons to ponder what might have been if certain scenarios had played out a little more favourably. In both cases, the Porsche and Nissan drivers have fallen foul of slow starts to the season and a loss of points not of their making.
Da Costa’s dreadful start in Mexico and Saudi Arabia was much starker than Rowland’s, as the Nissan driver did manage a pole that he converted into a third-place finish in the second race of the Diriyah weekend in January.
But at Misano in April da Costa infamously lost a maximum score, as he was disqualified after his Porsche was adjudged to have used the wrong throttle pedal spring, while in the second race Rowland was on course to win when his car ran out of useable energy on the final lap - the consequence of a start procedure error from Nissan.
Add that to the two races missed for Rowland and in another world he could easily have been Cassidy’s nearest rival and biggest concern ahead of the finale.
“I've kind of accepted it all in my own head already,” says Rowland. “You can't spend too long dwelling over these things, [though] I'm sure there'll be a small thought on Sunday if it is close.
“You can always look and say 'what if' but really the pure priority for this year wasn't to go for the championship.
“Even to be talking about a position where we could've been in the mix is great. And I think it just puts us in a really good position for next year too.”
Rowland has already been testing the Nissan Gen3 Evo package ahead of 2025. It is a season that promises a great deal considering the efforts Nissan has put into centralising its programme after years of a more expansive operation that included the e.dams organisation and the Viry-Chatillon engine headquarters of the Renault Formula 1 team (now Alpine).
That pure factory feeling is now starting to pay dividends and Rowland is privately direct on how different and more efficient the set-up is now compared to when he drove for the team in its previous guise from 2018-21.
There is little doubt therefore that Nissan should be the prime challenger to the Porsche- and Jaguar-powered cars in the first season of the upgraded ruleset that begins this December.
Rowland, two races down on those he is among at the top of the points table, will definitely be at the forefront of that challenge. And with a touch more luck, he might just be capable of bringing a first ever world championship title to the Japanese manufacturer.
