Energy management, not lap time, has decided this Formula E season, and the current points leader has been the best in the field at spending it.
Formula E races are not won by the fastest car. They are won by the driver who arrives at the final five laps with more usable energy than the cars around them, and who has spent the preceding forty minutes making that surplus invisible. Higher peak power and a tighter energy allocation have made that skill more decisive than at any point in the championship history.
Da Costa has been the clearest exponent of it. His racecraft this season has followed a consistent shape: sit in the second half of the leading pack for the opening third, run in the slipstream to bank a percentage point of energy, then use attack mode later than everyone else, when the pack ahead has already burned its margin.
The Berlin weekend was the template. He ran seventh at half distance with the third highest energy reserve in the field, took his second attack mode with eleven laps left, and cleared four cars in six laps without a single defensive move against him. Formula E calls this a late race; it is really a slow motion strategic ambush.
The championship consequence is a lead built on floor rather than ceiling. He has not been the most frequent pole sitter, and there are rounds where his single lap pace has been mid pack. But the finishing record is exceptional, and in a series where a first lap incident is a genuine statistical risk at every round, simply arriving at the end has become a competitive advantage.
The threat is the calendar. Formula E finishes on street circuits where qualifying position matters more and where energy strategy compresses, and the remaining double header rounds mean a single bad Saturday can be doubled by a bad Sunday.
What the season has already proved is a broader point about the category: as the powertrains have grown more powerful, the racing has become more cerebral, not less. The drivers winning in Formula E right now are the ones treating each lap as a budget rather than a stopwatch.
The 2025, 26 ABB FIA Formula E World Championship, Season 12 standings capture the state of play recorded After Round 10, Portland E Prix. AntĂłnio FĂ©lix da Costa leads the drivers classification on 142 points, 8 clear of Jake Dennis on 134, with Maximilian GĂĽnther third on 121. A lead of 8 points is a meaningful cushion at this stage of the year, but with 2 rounds still to run it is not yet a decisive one. The championship will be settled by how the front runners negotiate the rounds that remain, not by the margin they carry into them.
Behind the leading group the field is tightly compressed. JeanÉric Vergne holds fourth on 108, Sam Bird is fifth on 95, and Sergio Sette Câmara completes the top six on 87. The spread across those three positions is just 21 points, which means a single strong weekend can reshape the order behind the title contenders. The midfield battle is where the championship depth is most visible, and where the cost of one bad round is highest.
In the teams classification, McLaren Formula E leads on 229 points from Jaguar TCS Racing on 213 and Maserati MSG Racing on 121. The teams standings are often the more reliable indicator of outright pace, because they smooth out the individual bad weekends that every driver encounters across a full season. A team that places both its entries consistently in the points will accumulate constructors score at a rate that single car brilliance cannot match.
The depth of the teams championship reflects how competitive the Formula E grid has become. McLaren Formula E holds the lead on 229 points, but the gap to Jaguar TCS Racing on 213 is small enough that a single double points finish can close it. Behind them, Maserati MSG Racing sits third on 121, close enough to capitalise if either of the top two stumbles. The constructors race is a long game, and it rewards reliability over heroics.
The recent rounds have done most to shape the current standings. Berlin E Prix Race 1 at Tempelhof Airport, Berlin was won by Dennis, Berlin E Prix Race 2 at Tempelhof Airport, Berlin went the way of da Costa, and the most recent completed round, Portland E Prix at Portland International Raceway, was won by Bird. Each of those results shifted the points arithmetic at the top and reset the momentum that the title contenders carry into the next weekend.
The form guide across the recent rounds reads as a study in momentum. Bird took the most recent victory at Portland International Raceway, da Costa won at Tempelhof Airport, Berlin before that, and Dennis prevailed at Tempelhof Airport, Berlin. No single driver has dominated the recent sequence, which is why the points lead at the top has remained stable rather than stretching. The closing rounds will decide whether that pattern holds or one contender finally strings together the run of results that settles the title.