Radio: "Can I have a job now, please?" 

Reality: "I wouldn't call it a jibe; it was just a bit of a joke. There's no secret that things haven't been particularly plain sailing in the relationship with the team."

Later this year the Cupra Kiro Formula E team will feature in a behind-the-scenes documentary. It will be intriguing viewing and some of it might just be viewable through flattened palms in front of faces. It will be a hell of a ride.

Was Dan Ticktum's radio comment just after taking the chequered flag to win in Tokyo simply classic Ticktum, or serious, insightful Ticktum? It's sometimes hard to know, such is the playful tone he often adopts. It's often interwoven by unsubtle barbs, maybe not even deliberately just Ticktum-y.

The Kiro driver seemed to be, as ever, dealing in that unique forthright manner when The Race spoke with him at a media roundtable last week after he had sealed his second E-Prix win in the stolidly humid air of Tokyo Big Sight.

Ticktum is in an intriguing position right now. His current season has finally ignited just when it is coming to a close, but the fuse was short and a bit damp heading into this phase of the season. And that's left his drive in jeopardy.

Formula E 2025-26 standings

1 Jake Dennis 146
2 Mitch Evans 144
3 Pascal Wehrlein 141
4 Oliver Rowland 132
5 Edoardo Mortara 116
...
12 Pepe Marti (Cupra Kiro) 62
...
14 Dan Ticktum (Cupra Kiro) 54

The majority of that was not solely down to Ticktum. But the results were hard to come by, although a large caveat was that he had been swiped out of the first two races by others. 

By Monaco in May, things were snowballing a bit. Two poles were not converted into results for varying reasons, but the main trigger of being shot in both feet had been an emotional response to his Saturday race falling apart and then getting a penalty for contact with a chasing Antonio Felix da Costa.

Twenty-four hours later he also couldn't convert a second consecutive pole amid similar tyre overheating frustration. That might not have been the case had he not thrown his helmet, stormed off and missed the formal debrief the day before.

It was a muddled time and it turned into a second official reprimand of the season.

While Ticktum clearly isn't best pleased by what he feels is some poor treatment by team management, he has been consistent in his praise for the majority of the Kiro team.

"Everyone in the garage I get on very well with, work very well with, I have absolutely no issues at all with any of the personnel in the garage," he said.

"It was just how the [post-Monaco] reprimand was dealt with and then it went public - which is quite defamatory. I was told that I would be able to renegotiate my contract in the off-season at the end of last season and I was just sort of effectively lied to, which left quite a bitter taste in my mouth, obviously.

"The reality is my contract, for what I believe or what I know I am in the market for in Formula E, is not very strong."

True, there are some big earners in Formula E - and Ticktum isn't one of them. That's really what he's part reflecting here and in his head he clearly thinks he deserves to be in that high-paying echelon.

Ticktum has also consistently suggested that he was part of the process for getting the Forest Road company to buy the ailing Electric Racing Technology outfit in the late summer of 2024 and create what's now Cupra Kiro. 

"I feel like I've obviously done a lot for the team over the past five years - the first three of which were in a bad car, and constantly trying to pick myself up and pick everyone else up and keep going," argued Ticktum.

"There's bigger things going on in the team than me, I'm just a cog in the machine. We won't go too much into that now, but ultimately I haven't felt like I've been treated as well as I should be really - and I feel like there's been too much energy focused on the 1% of the job and not the job I'm actually pretty good at: which is driving the car quickly."

What options does Ticktum actually have?

"I think there's still an option to remain with the team and I'd like to continue the journey, to be honest. Especially into Gen4 with Porsche, it's going to be a strong car, I'm sure, and I'm sure we can win. And it would be a very nice chapter of my career, to win consistently or finish in the top three of the championship, or win the thing."

Hear that? It's a shop window being opened, nice and wide…and loudly.

"I had a good meeting with Russell [team principal O'Hagan] a couple of months ago, around the time of the reprimand letter, and things have been a lot more positive since then, I would say. 

"They haven't told me if they want to sign me or not. They're sort of waiting until the end of the season - and I don't feel like whatever I've done wrong has justified leaving me hanging while all the other drivers are being signed."

Interestingly Ticktum has also inadvertently gauged the temperature of the Formula E paddock, too. 

"I asked other drivers, or they asked me, 'are you sorted for next year?', 'no' - and they say, 'what are that team without you?'. I don't think like that, but that's the sort of general consensus. 

"All the social media stuff I do for them. The Americans and the team in general encourage me to be a character, maybe even more than I am, as do FE, which is fine, but when it goes slightly wrong or results aren't there on paper they can't just immediately use me as a scapegoat for team's morale or all these other bullshit things that I've heard. 

"If I stay with the team I want to all go forward in a much more positive way, and if I am to leave the team, I want to obviously end the season as well as I can, finish on a high and close the chapter nicely."

So, if not Cupra Kiro, which could be offered DTM champion Ayhancan Güven this autumn by supplier Porsche as its new driver, what is on the menu for Ticktum?

Mahindra, Porsche, Jaguar, Envision, Citroen, Opel, Nissan and Andretti are believed to be either locked or 99.9% locked. That leaves Lola, Penske and the new second factory Porsche team.

There are some options there but the same old question of whether board members and decision-makers at some of those entities want the spikiness that sometimes goes with Ticktum.

"There's a few plates spinning at the moment, options-wise. I don't know where I'm going to be yet. There's a couple of exciting options, let's just say that," reckoned Ticktum. 

Plates can spin; plates can smash. An almost perfect analogy for Daniel Charles Anthony Ticktum.