Red Bull's Max Verstappen set the tone for Formula 1's 2026 preseason when he dismissed the championship's heavily electrified new engines, describing them as “Formula E on steroids.” The comment landed squarely on the doorstep of the all-electric series that concluded its 2025-26 campaign with a pair of races at London’s ExCeL exhibition center last weekend.

Porsche's Pascal Wehrlein was crowned champion in a bad-tempered final race. But the wider story of the weekend was Formula E taking stock of its identity, 12 years after it arrived in motorsport, as F1's own flirtation with hybrid technology reaches an inflection point.

Verstappen was speaking during the second of three preseason F1 tests, before the championship’s first campaign with cars overhauled to the greatest extent ever compared to their predecessors. The four-time world champion’s disdain for how the new F1 engines require drivers to go slower in corners to be much faster on subsequent straights was clear.

'Formula E should be Formula E'

So what did Formula E make of catching strays during the early stages of Verstappen’s diatribe?

“I know Max, and that’s not how I read it,” FE CEO Jeff Dodds told The Athletic in an interview during the London event. “It wasn’t meant to be derogatory. What he actually said, and when clarified, was, ‘Look, Formula E does their thing. They race electric cars. Formula 1 should do this thing. It feels like we’re trying to be a bit of everything. And that’s not what I come to Formula 1 to race cars for.’”

Indeed, Verstappen subsequently explained that his criticism was chiefly aimed at the change in F1 engine technology rather than a snipe at FE. “Focus on a nice (F1) engine and have Formula E as Formula E, because that’s what they are about,” Verstappen told reporters at the third and final F1 test last winter. “I’m sure that with the new (Gen4) car, from what I’ve seen and talked to some of my friends in there, that’s going to be a really cool car. But let them be Formula E. We should stay Formula 1 and try not to mix that.”

F1's shift back toward combustion

Essentially, what Verstappen wanted for F1 engine technology will now occur. F1 will reduce its reliance on electrical energy for engine power from the current near-50/50 split with internal combustion power to 58/42 (ICE vs. electrical) in 2027, then to 60/40 in 2028, ahead of a possible return to F1 cars running V8 engines (with a small hybrid element remaining) from 2030.

This would silo the FIA-sanctioned world championships into distinct categories, with F1 as the pinnacle of performance car racing on the governing body’s racing ladder. Elsewhere, FE and the World Endurance Championship would represent distinct disciplines within efficient electric racing and endurance competition across the rest of the FIA’s circuit racing slate.

“It’s not a surprise to me at all that they’re discussing a move back to combustion engine cars (for F1),” said Dodds. “In some respects, it simplifies the landscape massively for us. You want to go and watch a petrol car race? You go and watch that. You want to watch an electric car race? You come and watch this.”

The Gen4 era arrives

‘This’ will look slightly different for FE when its 2026-27 season commences in December. As Verstappen referenced, the championship is introducing a new car as its Gen4 era begins. This will be the fourth car in FE’s history, a championship in which manufacturers build their own electric powertrains that sit inside a spec chassis. Unlike F1, this makes all cars appear identical on the surface, as aerodynamic chassis development is not permitted.

FE’s Gen4 car will have a top speed of 208mph, deploy two aero modes — high downforce for qualifying laps and low drag for races — and use all-wheel drive, where power is sent to all four wheels.

“It’s going to be an amazing car to drive, and I think the races are going to be amazing,” Lucas di Grassi, the 2016-17 FE champion who retired from racing after the London event concluded, told reporters. “And Gen5 is going to be even better than Gen4.”

In a similar way to F1 rules eras, which typically last five years unless major alterations are deemed required, “each generation is typically around four years long,” Dodds said. “They allow the championship to stay at the edge of technology. The fourth generation of the car allows us to take advantage of the latest versions of (electric vehicle) technology.”

As the Gen4 car is also wider and longer than its predecessor, this, along with its formidable top speed, means FE has altered its calendar to include more permanent race tracks. United States GP host Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas, will join the FE calendar next season, while London’s round will move away from the narrow, part-indoor ExCeL course to the former British GP venue, Brands Hatch.

When it launched in 2014, FE focused on erecting short, temporary street tracks in cities to highlight the benefits of EV use — such as lower carbon emissions — to people living in urban areas. Is FE now moving away from that aim, which it twinned with a message to promote overall sustainability?

“Not a permanent move away, but I guess I would describe when we started the championship as we were like a child,” said Dodds, who later said FE was still “100 percent” committed to promoting sustainable motorsport. “The max speed of the Gen1 car was 130 mph in race conditions, and it got to 60 mph in 3.2 seconds. The Gen4 car technology allows it to go well over 200 mph on a racetrack, and it gets to 60 mph in 1.8 seconds — 30 percent faster than an F1 car can get to that speed. So we’ve grown up and therefore where we race has to grow up with us. We don’t want to put the car in an environment where it can’t show off what it’s capable of doing.”

A dozen years of survival and growth

The start of FE’s Gen4 era, which begins in earnest now the 2025-26 season has concluded, will involve the seven FE powertrain manufacturers (Jaguar, Citroën, Nissan, Porsche, Lola-Yamaha, Mahindra and Opel) completing a testing phase of their new kit. It provides a neat moment to take stock of the electric championship 12 years since its arrival in motorsport.

FE has always been championed by the FIA, which co-created the series and granted it exclusive status as its only global electric circuit racing championship. Since 2020, FE has been granted FIA world championship status — alongside F1, the WEC, World Rallying and World Rally-Raid.

But FE and its in-house promoter, Formula E Holdings, came very close to collapsing just four races into its inaugural 2014-15 season. It was saved by investment from Liberty Global (related to F1 commercial rights owner Liberty Media) and Discovery Communications.

“Today we could be profitable,” Dodds said of FE’s current financial health. “If we were choosing to run this championship purely for profit, we would be profitable. I’m very lucky that our primary investor is Liberty Global. They see a huge amount of headroom to invest and grow this championship. We’re only 12 years old. They treat us like a growth asset. So they are investing in us to grow.”

In-house financial worry has not been the only major risk to FE’s future in the last 12 years. In 2020 and 2021, during the economic strain wrought by the Covid-19 pandemic, automotive giants Audi, BMW and Mercedes in turn announced they were quitting the series after short entries as works operations.

“We went through a lot of stages where I feel like the Covid-19 (pandemic years) beat Formula E quite a lot,” Sébastien Buemi told The Athletic in an interview. Buemi, who made 55 F1 starts for Toro Rosso (these days Racing Bulls), is intriguingly placed to comment on FE’s future. He is the series’ 2015-16 champion, who is now stopping driving in FE to concentrate on racing for the Toyota team in the WEC. Regular clashes in race dates between the two series have been a problem for drivers hoping to pair their racing programs.

“It lost a lot of momentum for a few years, and they’ve gained momentum back and because of the Gen4 (interest) gained even more,” said Buemi.

That interest extends around Verstappen in the F1 driver cohort. Back at FE’s Monaco race in May — using the same hallowed track where Kimi Antonelli would triumph for Mercedes in the 2026 Monaco Grand Prix four weeks later — Lando Norris, Carlos Sainz, Ollie Bearman and Nico Hülkenberg visited the FE paddock as it made camp in their home city.

“I was planning to do a bit of driving in a Formula E car at some point,” Norris said, after seeing the Gen4 demonstration model in Monaco. “I grew up with a lot of these guys (FE drivers), or I raced with them. The level of drivers you have here is top – it’s as good as you get.”

High praise from Norris, reflecting a consistent FE strength — that it has been able to attract drivers such as Buemi, who dropped out of F1, and, these days, younger drivers viewing it as an alternative career path in global motorsport.

“The electric adventure in Formula 1 has been quite interesting for us,” said Dodds. “(It’s) raised awareness of electric powertrains and what they do and how it works. Also raised awareness of how complicated it is to drive an electric car — where you’re trying to do energy management at the same time (as racing).”

Soon enough, such an approach will matter much less in F1. And when that happens, FE will continue to fly the flag for energy-efficient electric racing in motorsport.