Tokyo's Formula E double-header brought wild weather, another big step towards the title for Oliver Rowland, the end of a very long win drought for Stoffel Vandoorne and Dan Ticktum's greatest FE performances yet.

Sam Smith explains the stories behind all that and picks his winners and losers from another crazy weekend.

Winner: Oliver Rowland

At the back of the Tokyo Big Sight/Ariake paddock lies the expansive water of Tokyo Bay.

As Oliver Rowland swung both another winner's trophy and his daughter Harper from his arms upon leaving the paddock, you couldn't help but wonder if he might just casually walk across that water on Sunday evening.

Such is Rowland's aura of invincibility at present, and the fact he has long since cultivated a title winning streak of results in Formula E, that it now feels a mere formality that he will be crowned champion, probably with a couple of races to spare.

A fourth win of the season on Sunday in Tokyo was added to the bounty bag, as were two more pole positions and a 77-point title advantage that in all reality wouldn't even be jeopardised if he now missed a couple of races, as he did last season at Portland. 

While Rowland and Nissan's excellence was clearly presented again at the weekend, there was also some fortune to go with it. This was particularly evident on Sunday when the late safety car saved him having to perform a big energy save and defensive equation in the last phases of the race.

But the real framework of the win came when he elected to take his final six-minute tranche of attack mode relatively early, something that he felt he had forced himself into after getting stuck behind Nick Cassidy's Jaguar.

"I couldn't pass him and he couldn't pass Edo [Mortara]," Rowland told The Race.

"I kind of just got stuck in sixth and I basically lost positions in the [first] attack mode. I was really annoyed at myself."

Rowland didn't want to leave his six minutes of attack mode too late because he would have got passed by other people and then had to "make up too many places and that never would have worked. So, I decided to roll the dice," he added.

"Actually, luckily for me, they all jumped in [to attack mode] and let me pass and Christmas came early. And obviously I knew I would have a little bit more than [leader] Pascal [Wehrlein]. 30 seconds or whatever and I'd have one chance. And I took it."

Therefore, the latest Rowland/Nissan masterclass was complete, and so too, in all reality, was the 2024/25 Formula E drivers' title fight.

Loser: Antonio Felix da Costa

Antonio Felix da Costa held his hands up for a mistake on Sunday after he crashed into the back of Mortara's Mahindra when a full course yellow was called for debris on the track created by Mortara's team-mate Nyck de Vries' front wing.

The Porsche driver drove strongly on Saturday to claim a hard-earned seventh position, clearly outperforming team-mate Pascal Wehrlein. But in the context of da Costa's once strong-looking crack at a second title this was a weekend to forget.

On a bigger picture level, da Costa's future at Porsche should be decided next month when it will indicate whether an option to retain him for 2026 is taken up.

Asked whether the upcoming Shanghai double-header would be an important indicator in that decision, team principal Florian Modlinger said that it wouldn't be.

"With the performance they [da Costa and Wehrlein] both show at the moment I would not say one single race is critical for anything but we really want to get the most points we can with both cars," he said.

In Tokyo, as in Monaco, Porsche and da Costa simply didn't achieve that again. 

Winners: Dan Ticktum/Cupra Kiro

Prior to the Tokyo weekend Dan Ticktum undertook some amusing zen-master filming skits with Formula E TV pundit and commentator James Rossiter. 

While that was firmly tongue-in-cheek there was a degree of relative serenity within Ticktum in Tokyo, and unsurprisingly it paid dividends with a fifth and a third place, by far his and the Cupra Kira team's best ever combined result.

It was well-deserved, and irrespective of Ticktum's small mistake in the qualifying final against Rowland, in general the maximum performance was achieved from the year-old Porsche package across the weekend. 

Ticktum's races were calculated superbly. Sunday's performance was operated in conjunction with works Porsche driver Wehrlein's race, as the two worked hand-in-hand for much of it. But the true pearl in the oyster was Ticktum's absolutely sublime qualifying laps prior to the race.

While his quarter and semi-final laps were very strong, the first two sectors of his final attempt were next level efforts of dexterity and skill. It actually had paddock admirers, of which Ticktum's talents have many, in complete rapture for its controlled commitment and application. 

That he then overcooked it was actually beside the point. It reminded one of Max Verstappen's legendarily nuclear 2021 crack at Formula 1 pole in Jeddah.

Ticktum's effort was Formula E's equivalent on Sunday. And it was this, in conjunction with his first ever podium position, that meant Ticktum and Kiro finally showed their core potential after an annoyingly fractious and sub-standard Monaco effort just two weeks prior.

"There was no time, in my opinion, left on the table," said Ticktum. 

"I knew that coming out of Turn 13, and I knew Oli was going to be fast and I just obviously slightly overdid it. 

"Overall, I really think we're starting to find our feet, get things in the window, consistently in all conditions. I feel like in the first bit of the season, I just didn't have the car to be able to do what I'm doing at the moment, and now I do, and I'm doing it."

Loser: Jaguar