'All instinct' - There was nothing lucky about Rowland's epic win

There are plenty of mythical spectres in Mexico City, they even made a film around it.

But the one that threatened to reappear (from Sao Paulo) to haunt Nissan and Oliver Rowland in the first Formula E race of 2025 eventually got banished by an inspired piece of racing exorcism.

There was an element of gamble, an element of luck but also a big sprinkling of out and out racing brilliance about Rowland’s fourth E-Prix victory, which firmly knocked Porsche off its previously unassailable perch at Mexico City - where it had won on the series’ previous three visits.

Rowland’s rollercoaster of emotions on Saturday included a nasty flashback.

In the Sao Paulo opener a month earlier, Rowland was controlling the field and still had an extra attack mode at his disposal but saw that tactical advantage destroyed by a safety car for Jake Dennis’s stranded and ‘live’ Andretti Porsche.

In Mexico, Rowland was fourth and poised to attack Dennis and the factory Porsches of Pascal Wehrlein and Antonio Felix da Costa ahead when he took his final six minutes of attack mode at a point when his rivals had burned through all of theirs.

Then with Rowland just a few seconds into that attack mode, David Beckmann and Zane Maloney collided and race director Scot Elkins reached for the safety car activation button.

Rowland hollered incredulously into his radio:  "I can't believe it! Again.”

But sharp work by the excellent Mexican marshals meant Rowland still had just over a minute of the precious 350kW mode left when the race went green again.

And what the gods took with one hand (most of his six minutes), they gave with another: that safety car brought him right onto the tail of the three Porsches ahead.

Half a lap later Rowland was in the lead after pulling off three excellent and well-judged moves. Frankly he had to, because the clock on his attack mode was ticking down to zero, which was effectively an alarm call on whether he could beat the Porsches or not.

Yes, the Nissan had the performance advantage of the extra energy and all-wheel-drive but Rowland still had to get three moves done against a ticking clock - at a track where passing was significantly harder than it had been in Sao Paulo even with attack mode.

“I was confident I could maybe get one into Turn 1. It was Jake, and he can be quite aggressive, but I did it,” Rowland told The Race.

“I was thinking ‘what a waste of time with the safety car coming out’ and then went 'boom, the lights are off so let’s go’. I didn’t have time to plan it, it was all instinct.

“With Pascal I put my nose in to try and put him off and it worked because he left me a bit of a gap. Then I was able to pass him.

“Then with Antonio, I knew that my attack mode was going to run out near the start line, so I thought, ’f*** if I'm going in, I’m going to try’.”

Rowland wasn’t quite sure if he “was going to stop in Turn 12, when I braked on the dirt” but it worked, and he was on to Da Costa’s tail.

The subsequent pass was “a good ‘un” according to Rowland, who after nudging da Costa lightly at the chicane claimed the inside line into the stadium to take the lead.

There was still the chance of another dip in the rollercoaster of emotions though as Mitch Evans’ shunted Jaguar, which had hit the wall after avoiding a stuttering Nico Mueller, brought out a second safety car.

Rowland is as strong a defender as he is an attacker and with no added laps and the race now flat out, it didn’t matter that he was energy poor compared to da Costa’s Porsche 99X Electric.

But could Rowland have challenged the Porsches anyway even if the safety car hadn’t come out for the Beckmann and Maloney incident?

It’s highly doubtful because he was 2% down on energy compared to the cars ahead with the race becoming flat out after the first safety car, meaning overtaking would have been nigh on impossible - as da Costa proved in the final laps in his failed effort to repass Rowland.

The Nissan driver had been forced into some energy-spending combats earlier on that weren’t wanted, especially with Jean-Eric Vergne’s DS Penske.

“My balance went away a little bit after 10 laps,” said Rowland as he looked back on the first half of the race and the degree to which it looked then like a Porsche cakewalk.

Rowland is usually bullish though, and reckoned that he could have got among them irrespective of the safety car concertina.

“I had a really good balance in the first 10 laps. I could pass JEV quite easily and I probably could’ve passed both of them [the works Porsches] at one point, but I didn’t really want to as the rears went away a little bit, so I suffered a bit from then on,” he said.

That all seemed like ancient history after he crossed the line to a rapturous welcome by the 40,000 strong Mexican crowd, who know a fighter, a controlled tactical gambler and an exorciser of ghosts when they see one.

Rowland’s win was a racer’s win and making it all the more special was the fact that he dedicated it to his performance engineer Asier Sebastien Galardi. He was taken to hospital after the morning practice session suffering from suspected appendicitis.

As Rowland was turning a calculated gamble into a victory, Galardi was going into surgery at a local hospital.

“I’m definitely going to see him before my flight,” Rowland told The Race.

“He’s done an absolutely great job for us, and he had to leave this morning. He still managed to come and say, ‘look I’ve changed this and that but I’m going to the hospital’.

“It will be a nice result for him and it’s not one we are going to forget for many reasons today.”