It was only just over six months ago that Oliver Rowland was sat on a sofa in his then UK home (he's since moved to Dubai) recovering from illness and watching his faint Formula E title hopes dwindling as the Portland round happened without him. Missing the penultimate event of the year must have been a dejecting experience.
But he bounced back two weeks later by winning the season finale in London brilliantly and sealing fourth in the standings, 42 points off champion Pascal Wehrlein having contested two races fewer.
Rowland and Nissan weren't ready for a concerted title crack then, but they indeed appear so this season after dominating elements of the opening race in Sao Paulo last month and then vanquishing a trio of quicker and more efficient Porsches in Mexico last weekend.
Could this be the year that the pretenders become the favourites?
"We know our package is a good improvement compared to last year," team principal Tommaso Volpe told The Race. "But there are still things that we need to work on. In free practice it was wet, and we could not extract the best performance from the car.
"Yet definitely the package is much better, and the team is much better than last season. We keep on improving in the way we prepare for the races and how we run them."
Already though there is anguish over the errors that cost Rowland a likely win in Brazil, when all four Nissan received penalties because of a software glitch.
Volpe was, and still is, a little haunted by the wasted points given Rowland is only 12 behind Porsche's championship leader Antonio Felix da Costa and potentially gave away 25 in the opener.
"Sao Paulo was, I hope, an exception in the season, because we made mistakes there," he reiterated.
"We had this illegality in the car, so we deserved the penalty, no doubt. But it was such a stupid error in the system that we fixed it immediately after the race, which made it even more frustrating."
It was a twist and a turn that had to be swallowed quickly as dejected team members sat forlornly on the pitwall packing away that day. There will inevitably be more for Nissan to clear, as is the way with title contests that reward consistency as much as domination.
DON'T UNDERESTIMATE PORSCHE
While Porsche was inevitably disappointed by being knocked off its Mexican perch by Nissan, it will be soothing itself because its double podium means it's opened up a 31-point lead in the teams' title race and a single-point lead over Nissan in the first official manufacturers' standings.
It can also be confident about its performance having dominated for all but seven of the 36 laps in Mexico - holding 1-2-3-4 status across its works cars and customer Andretti at times and generally 1-2 with Wehrlein and da Costa controlling the pace and comfortable with their energy spend.
Just before David Beckmann and Zane Maloney collided and the safety car was scrambled, Rowland was four seconds away from leader da Costa. The attack mode was a 5.5-second loss and da Costa and Wehrlein had 1.5% and 2% more energy to use than the chasing Nissan. Rowland's chances of spoiling the Porsche were quite slim.
It all changed when the marshals matched Porsche's speed and efficiency and the race resumed, with Rowland still able to spend the final 80 seconds of his attack mode.
That, combined with Rowland's determined charge and the fact the race became a flat-out sprint, cost Porsche the possibility of adding a fifth Mexico win to add to Wehrlein's hat-trick (2021, 2022 and 2024) and Jake Dennis's 2023 triumph for Andretti.
But the result didn't change the fact that Porsche still has the best all-round package on the grid.
While Nissan isn't far off on one-lap pace, there is still a deficit in out-and-out race consistency and the ever-important energy target and efficiency package. Porsche has proved it has an advantage - a small one, but an advantage nonetheless - on two very different tracks.
"If no neutralisation comes, there's no chance for another car to catch us and close the gap," was Porsche boss Florian Modlinger's matter-of-fact summary of the Mexico City race.
"In the position we are with leading the race, you cannot gamble on neutralisations, which Rowland did with a late attack mount. And it quite worked out.
"Also, it was a bit unlucky when the safety car came in. Because the safety car came in when the car [Beckmann's] was still on the crane.
"I'm really happy with the 36 points we took and no other team and manufacturer took more points.
"Another thing which was really, really positive was when you see we were leading the race one and two and how we were managing our pace and building up energy compared to the others."
TEAM ORDERS?
Rowland's new Nissan team-mate Norman Nato is still on zero points for 2025 and not expected to produce a title challenge, whereas Porsche - like its other main rival Jaguar - has two championship hopefuls to manage. Indeed, the big question for much of the Mexico City race was which of da Costa and Wehrlein would have taken the win.
Porsche is coy about any team orders but it will have a structure in place with a holding pattern of some description. There could be races where that is employed and with one driver on a long-term deal (Wehrlein), and the other's ending this summer (da Costa), the permutations and decisions could be very interesting - especially as championship leader da Costa already has a 16-point advantage over the reigning champion.
Don't expect da Costa to be his generally old 2023-24 subservient self to Wehrlein again. In his mind, he's done his favours and within reason he'll be looking out for himself more this season. He's found his feet at Porsche, he's understood them and they've understood him.
While the relationship is much better than it was last year, there is an element of them being wired very differently. He and Wehrlein too generally get on well but they aren't peas in a pod and it wouldn't take much to unsettle the balance in that team. But for now all is cordial, all is calm.
Still, it's very early days and despite the Porsche party being spoiled by rowdy and uninvited guests in Nissan and Rowland, Wehrlein said he will not lose much sleep over it. In fact, he will rest soundly. Having exited the season opener with a violent upside down crash into the wall, a third-place finish in Mexico was just fine.
"The most important thing for me is that the car feels fine and I'm feeling fine," Wehrlein told The Race.
Battered, bruised after the crash and unable to collect his 2024 world title award at the FIA gala last month, Wehrlein was mainly just relieved he could continue his championship defence - especially as his Porsche had been sent to the FIA for analysis after the Sao Paulo crash and was only rebuilt in the Mexico paddock during race week.
"The team rebuilt a completely new car here on Wednesday and Thursday," he said.
"As a driver you always have doubts if the car feels the same. Is it performing on the same level or does it feel worse? Is it reliable?
"It's not the same environment as building up the car in Weissach [Porsche's base], so therefore I'm very happy with the job we've done.
"I can now sleep a bit more peacefully in the next couple of days knowing that the car is fine and looking forward to the season."
BEWARE THE CURVEBALLS
There's plenty that's ominous about Porsche right now in Formula E. The step it has made seemingly works anywhere, and it has a fully lit and massively motivated da Costa and an evidently even hungrier Wehrlein.
But that didn't stop Nissan from toppling it in Mexico and nearly doing so in Brazil.
Will having the pace and energy advantage actually be enough in a season that could contain even more curveballs than usual, particularly when pit boost stops are introduced? Nissan sees both an opportunity and a potential stumbling block there.
"This season there will be a lot of new things with the pit boost, and a lot of unknowns, where the learning curve is very steep," warned Volpe.
"So not necessarily teams that are supposed to be always the best will always be the best because there might be new things that some teams will find and understand before others.
"But no excuses because we need to try to simulate and anticipate any kind of scenario. I'm sure that there will be some ups and downs from everyone.
"Having said that, our ambition this season is definitely to be fighting for at least one of the three championships until the last race."
The gap from now until the Jeddah weekend in mid-February, and in particularly the yawning chasm of Jeddah to Homestead (two months), is likely to be pivotal in the sense of what is happening away from the track, as Volpe attested.
"Definitely there is, I wouldn't say a lot, but there is quite a solid part of development that is still coming up," he said.
"So, if we do things right and it's in the right direction, for sure, we can make the car more and more competitive, and we can fight with the best."
Nissan is doing that already. Now it needs to show it can do it consistently if it's to be an irritable thorn in Porsche's quest to add to its trophy cabinet.
