The Formula E season reached its halfway point at the Berlin ePrix, with the fan-favourite Tempelhof circuit delivering the goods over its double-header.

From a dominant performance in round seven to the extreme energy-conserving strategies and a bit of a controversial end to round eight, there were plenty of up-and-down moments across the weekend.

Here are our winners and losers from Formula E's Berlin ePrix.

Winner: Nissan

Oliver Rowland: 3rd and 2nd
Norman Nato: 18th and 5th

The lack of a strong combined points score for Nissan has been a debilitating problem since the start of the 2024-25 season.

The 29 from Rowland’s second place and Nato’s fifth in Sunday’s race was remarkably the biggest haul since the fifth Berlin race at the August 2020 pandemic-affected race, when then team-mates Rowland and Sebastien Buemi notched up 30 between them.

The fact that Nato finally delivered a result of note was what allowed that almost six-year-old fact to be trumped, and the Frenchman took great heart in being able to execute a race after recent times saw potential and pace go unrewarded.

But the trough had initially continued on Saturday when Nato struggled for most of the day, before a change to his car overnight did the trick.

“The team spent some time last night to change a part which was, in a way, not correct on the car,” Nato confirmed to The Race.

“Straight away this morning in FP already, I didn't really do a 350[kW lap] correctly but on 300 everything was back to normal so I was confident. But when you have the performance since the beginning of the season that I'm having and also some races where I was constantly in top five but always something was happening, it’s tough.”

Nato managed to under-consume and make positions on his 300kW laps when needed. Then he was “quite aggressive on attack mode” and also “worked well with Oli” to make hay in the final laps and go from 12th to fifth.

From Rowland’s side, a virus that had seen him washed out in the run-up to the race was put aside as the adrenaline overrode his green gills and he got stuck in, in typical Rowland fashion.

His battling third on Saturday was backed up by one place better on Sunday in a race that, much like Mitch Evans and Jaguar’s, came about through a smart tyre strategy thought out beforehand.

He survived a wild swipe from Buemi to get into second position, though it also came via some flag controversy. In the end he was able to come home just behind Evans for his fifth podium of the season and within 18 points of championship leader Wehrlein.

Winner: Porsche

Nico Mueller: 1st and 13th
Pascal Wehrlein: 19th and 3rd

A win, a pole and a podium on home turf was a decent haul for the championship leaders in all three title fights. But it could have been even better had it not been for a freakish tyre valve air leakage for Wehrlein after contact with Jake Dennis on Saturday and a skirmish with Antonio Felix da Costa’s Jaguar for Saturday race winner Mueller 24 hours later.

Wehrlein has been largely excellent all season and this was especially the case across the Berlin weekend, where he was robust and resilient. He would likely have been in the mix for another win on Saturday as he was broadly on the same strategy as his winning team-mate Mueller. Prior to that, he had narrowly lost out on pole to Edoardo Mortara despite having skewed steering, in one of his best-ever qualifying efforts.

On Sunday, Wehrlein did grab pole - before a well-structured race brought a podium and the repossession of the title lead.

“I think the podium was the best we could do. Mitch and Oli both kind of skipped qualifying for better tyres in the race,” Wehrlein told The Race.

“This track is just very unique and very extreme to the tyres. So, I’m happy with the result for what we did today, as we bounced back from yesterday, and I didn't let it get into my head.”

Loser: CUPRA Kiro

Dan Ticktum: DNF and 14th
Pepe Marti: 7th and 12th

It wasn’t so much that CUPRA Kiro again came away with fewer points than its collective package probably warranted, but more the manner in which it squandered a decent opportunity to build on the competitive momentum from a double-points score at Jarama in March.

On Dan Ticktum’s side, the weekend was an unmitigated disaster that saw a familiar pattern of occasional pace curtailed by issues and obligatory temporary fury and histrionics from Ticktum himself.

An overwhelming sense of disappointment was hard to contain on Saturday when he should have got at least a top-five position, and perhaps a podium. In a strong position throughout the early phase, he watched haplessly as an intermittent electrical fault devalued his efforts.

His response was to pre-warn his team that his fury was building and then to vacate the track immediately after parking his Porsche. Ticktum said later that exiting the track was “the best thing to do".

"I don’t want to be surly with people and I’m not here to blame people, I’m not going to blame anyone. It’s obviously probably someone’s fault, but it’s certainly not my engineer or my performance engineer, so it’s better in these scenarios if I just remove myself from the situation.

“As far as I’m concerned, it’s better than me just f****** negging everybody out, so I just sat in the car and chilled for a bit.”

Sunday was little better, though, with Ticktum electing for a similar strategy to Rowland and Evans on a fresher tyre and ultra-saving plan. But it just didn’t work, as Ticktum suggested the car “just doesn’t seem to handle the tyres well” and that it was “the worst it’s ever been to drive”.

Team-mate Marti fared a little better but had similar frustrations. The rookie at least was able to have something to show for the Berlin weekend with a tenacious run to seventh on Saturday after benefitting from a late pit boost strategy.

Overall though, the team is further cut adrift of Andretti in seventh place after its third non-score of the season on Sunday, with only Marti’s continued steady points collation in an increasingly impressive rookie season offering any real positivity at present.

Winner: Mitch Evans (6th and 1st)

Since a bruising first two rounds at Sao Paulo and Mexico City, Evans has been the series' top scorer by a handy margin - but this is perhaps the first hint that he is a truly serious title threat.

He's alarmed by his qualifying form this season, and was upset to have "burned" his tyres while working his way through on Saturday. But both the continued qualifying struggles and the average return on Saturday were factors in a massive turnaround the following day - set up by the call not to run on fresh rubber in qualifying.

Not everybody was thrilled that Formula E's competitive picture rewarded that kind of strategy. "I don't know any categories where you don't want to do qualifying, keep the new tyres, and win the race like this," vented Citroen driver Jean-Eric Vergne to The Race.

But Evans's win obviously took more than just that call. He was pacing himself very carefully through the race, in constant communication with his engineer and trying to keep as much abreast of rivals' energy percentages as possible as he and Jaguar bid their time for his charge.

"I thought Oli went maybe a lap or two early, but in a good window. Because we had that [energy] delta to the front guys," Evans recounted. 

"And I thought, if he gets to the front, and he's still got that delta, he could be gone. And so, I was getting the team to read [the energy] every time he was up there. And I could see his progress. 

"Once he kind of got to the front, he lost 2% [of energy] to me straight away. So, I thought, 'OK, it’s expensive to try and get up there'.

"It was just a massive race of patience. Full credits to the team for guiding me through that. But I think it all just came together, and it all started before quali."

On a weekend before which Evans' commitment to definitely leaving Jaguar became public knowledge, any emotion or awkwardness surrounding the situation was drowned out by the performance.

Loser: Antonio Felix Da Costa (10th and 18th)

A place that was once so central to Da Costa's Formula E title charge did not smile upon him at all this time.

On Saturday, he felt robbed of a good result by an undetermined power loss, but he was "100 per cent optimistic" of turning it around on Sunday.

It wasn't quite working out to the same extent as for team-mate Evans, but it didn't take a turn for the calamitous until a moment of disagreement with Mueller (his Porsche replacement, because of course) removed both from top-five contention.

"Obviously it's all fine margins. He kind of closed the door, but not really," Mueller told The Race. "The gap was just about there. I went for it, and in that very moment, he turned a little bit to the left, and the gap became, you know, that little bit smaller. 

"And I'm not saying, you know, that he did something completely stupid, but it was just a small move to the left that I don't expect on a straight that goes to the right."

Da Costa was the series' form man coming into Berlin. Two races and one point later, he's eighth in the standings and with a 30+ point mountain to claim to former team-mate Wehrlein and current team-mate Evans.

Winner and Loser: Nick Cassidy (2nd and DNF)

The return to the podium, though it was only a four-race wait, clearly felt like a long time coming for Cassidy, who acknowledged after Saturday's second place that it was a necessary change of pace after below-par outings in strategically compromised affairs at Jeddah and Madrid.

Those looked to have torpedoed an unexpected early challenge. The Saturday race flickered life back into it again, Cassidy defeated (like everyone) by Mueller but able to prevail in the scrap a few seconds down the road, once again reinforcing his status as perhaps the true master of this style of energy-saving racing.

But just as Saturday gathered up the momentum, Sunday dissipated it again. The DS powertrains seemed to really huff-and-puff their way through this particular energy gauntlet, but Cassidy didn't get the chance to show whether he could make the difference - caught up in the "concertina" of the Envisions right in front of him.

"I was behind Joel [Eriksson] in the slipstream," recalled Buemi. "He lifted very early. I tried to avoid a bit, but Cassidy was doing the same to me.

"I was not expecting Joel to lift so early. So, to avoid, I moved a bit left. And then Cassidy avoided me, but not enough."

Cassidy battled through the pain barrier due to a niggly back injury, but the real hurt will have been coming unstuck on Sunday in atypical messy circumstances with a rare pack-racing misjudgement.

Loser: Nyck De Vries (9th and DNF)

This season is landing punch after punch, glove after glove on one of the series' champions in the field. De Vries at least cut short a three-race scoreless streak - but is even further in the hole now approaching the halfway point of the campaign.

He has 15% of team-mate Mortara's points, effective enough in his through-the-field recovery in race one (after a tough qualifying) but forced onto the sidelines right away the following day.

That one will have stung. De Vries was unwillingly in the middle of a four-wide and left feeling like he was caught in someone else's mess. Those around him during the post-session media duties could see him replaying the incident on his phone, with an air of bemused resignation around him. 

"We've had quite a lot of difficulties so far, but we just have to keep on going, focus on ourselves. Reset for next," was his summary in the end.

Loser: DS Penske

Maximilian Guenther: 11th and 15th
Taylor Barnard: 8th and 11th

While paddock rumour and theory abounded about what a DS-free Penske might be up to in Gen4, on the track the team continued its descent in a season that is crumbling apart alarmingly.

The team has hit a points famine status with just six from the last six events, all notched up by Taylor Barnard, while team-mate Maximilian Guenther’s pointless streak now runs to seven miserable races.

One-lap pace is not too much of an issue, but getting any kind of cohesive race long-pace and strategy together appears to be temporarily beyond the squad.

Sunday began with an optimistic vibe as Barnard took Wehrlein to a final battle that saw him just miss out by 0.038s. But the race crumbled away alarmingly.

“The problem was my pace,” said a forthright Barnard.

“In the races, the race pace that we have, our car, our powertrain is just not good enough. That's our main issue.”

Guenther showed plenty of characteristic fight. But, truth be told, he never had the car beneath him to even come close to delivering a decent points-scoring finish as DS looks set to leave Formula E this summer with a disappointing whimper.

As the second half of the season ticks over in Monaco later this month, the scene of many a DS glory day, including a win for Jean-Eric Vergne in 2019, DS Penske finds itself near the foot of the table, seemingly now with only pride to race for this season.