Formula E isn't being too subtle about its hopes that its upcoming fastest-ever new car - the Gen4 that will race for the first time in late 2026 - might turn a few heads among Formula 1 drivers.

Some have turned F1 rejection into massive Formula E success.

Others…less so.

Here's Sam Smith's worst-to-best ranking of all 22 ex-F1 drivers who came to Formula E, some going straight from one series to another, others having long detours between them. Only drivers who started at least three F1 races and subsequently at least three FE races are eligible for Sam's judgement.

22 Jacques Villeneuve

The 1997 F1 champion came into Formula E with fresh eyes and an initial will to make a fist of his latest racing challenge.

Villeneuve was open, relaxed and engaging at the opening race in Beijing as he brought both strong brand enhancement for the then-nascent series and some ludicrously oversized overalls that were baggier than a 1990-spec Happy Mondays gig.

In his first race, he was unlucky to get nudged off by a wild Antonio Felix da Costa while jousting for a top-12 position but it seemed from this point on that things went awry. 

His second event in Putrajaya was unspectacular, but in Punta del Este a month later Villeneuve was erratic, trashing one Venturi tub in qualifying, missing the race, and then bending his retubbed mount in post-race testing.

The Christmas break brought a rather unsurprising split between driver and team, meaning it all became an unsatisfactory end to a chapter which, despite the smiles and comedy threads, left neither party with any positive memories.

21 Antonio Giovinazzi

It feels a lot longer than three years ago that now World Endurance champion and Le Mans 24 Hours winner Giovinazzi had an ill-fated sojourn with the Dragon Racing operation after dropping out of F1.

He had little expectations on his shoulders in the final Gen2 season with what was then one of the grid's most poorly resourced outfits.

Zero points, hammered by his team-mate Sergio Sette Camara, multiple incidents, just seven race finishes and an average grid start of 18th from a field of 22. The stats told their own sorry story.

But in addition to the statistics come multiple other strands illuminating why Giovinazzi's season, one which was always going to be challenging, was more abject than predicted.

He never looked anywhere close to being at home in the championship and it ended at Seoul in the final event of the season with him being replaced by Sacha Fenestraz after he bruised his thumb in an accident during the first race. As exits go, this was entirely in keeping with a year the Italian will forever want to forget.

20 Esteban Gutierrez

The former Sauber and Haas F1 driver's time in Formula E was born of initial Carry On-style comedy in which Formula E's promoter acted as a quasi-consultant to desperate suitors for a hapless concubine.

Gutierrez was initially going to replace an oblivious Loic Duval at Dragon. Indeed, a seat fitting and overalls order had been completed when Gutierrez was snatched from Jay Penske's grasp and thrust into the new Techeetah team as a replacement for an off-the-pace Ma Qing Hua.

It was of course all intended to fill some extra seats for the 2017 Mexico race and this was undoubtedly accomplished. But Gutierrez seemed genuinely disinterested in the whole thing and took just three points from three starts while team-mate Jean-Eric Vergne was runner-up in Mexico and challenged for podiums elsewhere.

Few noticed Gutierrez missing from the paddock in Berlin when Stephane Sarrazin replaced him.

19 Jarno Trulli

Trulli was sweet-talked into doing Formula E and his enthusiasm for it waned spectacularly as results became hard to come by for one of F1's quickest single-lap exponents.

A fortunate fourth place at Punta del Este was the results highlight for Trulli, who ran his eponymous team with operational and technical support from Super Nova.

Then, almost inexplicably, he took pole position at the inaugural Berlin E-Prix at Tempelhof before the team slowly wound down to the point where it became defunct at the start of the second season. The remnants of it - from an entry point of view at least - were picked up by Formula E's first ever full manufacturer entrant, Jaguar.

18 Felipe Nasr

It was hardly ex-Sauber driver Nasr's fault that his three-race mini-stint in Formula E brought three retirements amid crunched carbonfibre and technical incapacity.

The Brazilian's deal with Dragon - the undisputed king of chaos when it comes to Formula E teams in the Gen2 era - was doomed from the start when he failed to leave the pits at a crucial Marrakesh test.

This was because of an oversight in the deal he had signed to do the test and it meant he went into his debut race at Mexico City unprepared.

That ended in contact and a delayed 19th-place finish, and the following races in Hong Kong and Sanya ended in retirement.

Maximilian Guenther came back into the fold for the remainder of the season and Nasr's dalliance with Formula E was over.

17 Roberto Merhi

Merhi was the slightly random choice to replace Oliver Rowland, who split with the Mahindra team midway through the first Gen3 season in 2023.

The hirsute Merhi barely raised a blip in terms of performances with only a 12th in the attrition-hit Rome E-Prix resembling anything near a result.

His Formula E career ended at the final round in a hail of crunched carbonfibre after he wiped out unsuspecting McLaren driver Jake Hughes.

16 Vitantonio Liuzzi

One of the great unfulfilled F1 talents, Liuzzi contested five E-Prixs as a driver and was present for many more as a steward's advisor. His best performance came at Berlin in 2015, when he took a couple of points for a patient ninth place.

Liuzzi's pace started to become evident in those five events, but by the following season the Trulli team had become a paddock joke with a disastrous season-two offering that in testing could barely complete a lap. The cars turned up in Beijing but never raced and the operation was wound up shortly afterwards.

15 Charles Pic

Who recalls former Marussia and Caterham F1 driver, Charles Pic, making five Formula E starts in the first season?

Not many do, but it all actually started quite promisingly when he drove to a decent fourth place in his one and only start for Andretti at Beijing in 2014.

Four further starts for Team China yielded just a handful of points for eighth in Monaco and he quietly faded away from motorsport and moved into the logistics industry, where he remains as a managing director to this day.

14 Jaime Alguersuari

You could almost see Alguersuari's passion for racing drain from his soul the longer the inaugural Formula E season went on.

His disinterest in it was palpable, with very few performances of note and a peculiar ending with a worrying collapse after the chequered flag in Moscow following what became his last-ever race.

This ensured that Fabio Leimer would replace Alguersuari, then still just 25, for the final races at Battersea Park.

It was a curious ending to an odd career. But there was a sense of inevitability about it, especially after Virgin team-mate Sam Bird outscored Alguersuari by a whopping 103 points to 30. Alguersuari's clear detachment from taking Formula E seriously began to play out for all to see.

13 Brendon Hartley

Hartley arrived at the Dragon team in the summer of 2019 and, after a decent test programme and a points finish in Saudi Arabia, things looked promising.

However, by the early phase of 2020 Hartley cut an increasingly frustrated figure, especially after his engineer left the team just a few races into the campaign.

By early summer, he was replaced by Camara in a self-reported mutual parting of the ways.

12 Karun Chandhok

Chandhok extended his international racing career beyond his brief F1 stint and Le Mans 24 Hours appearances for a full year with Mahindra in the inaugural Formula E season of 2014-15.

With support from Carlin Motorsport, a team Chandhok knew well and was instrumental in bringing together with the Indian manufacturer, there were high hopes the squad could fight for major results.

But it never happened, despite some decent drives by Chandhok, especially in Buenos Aires and at the Beijing opener. A potential podium disappeared in Argentina when his suspension broke, while the first race in China garnered a fifth place.

The relationship between drivers and team started to get fractious as that campaign wore on and Mahindra's insistence on going a different way for the second season was also the end of Chandhok being part of the operation.

11 Bruno Senna

Chandhok's team-mate Senna fared marginally better on pure results with four points finishes in the first season, peaking with fourth in the final Battersea Park race in London.

The former Hispania, Lotus and Williams F1 driver's second Formula E campaign though started in controversy when Mahindra team principal Dilbagh Gill signed Nick Heidfeld and Antonio Felix da Costa to drive.

Senna though had a deal for a second campaign and stayed with the team - which ran its own derived powertrain with partners Hewland and McLaren.

The results for Senna, though, were similar, with Heidfeld just outscoring him by a point - and it was clear that the Brazilian's enthusiasm for Formula E had dissipated significantly.

10 Scott Speed

Speed is one of Formula E's more fun cameo performers, having started just four races at the revolving door that was Andretti in the first season of 2014-15.

It started brilliantly when Speed snatched second place at Miami on his first start. But there was to be no repeat of those heroics as he struggled at the subsequent three races at Long Beach (retiring while running sixth), Monaco and Berlin.

It was entirely in keeping with the rapid Californian's volatile career, which flitted from immense promise to erratic performances.

9 Felipe Massa

Massa's deal with Venturi was a preordained project fully formed in the corridors of Hammersmith, London, where Formula E is run.

A brief taster test with Jaguar in 2017 pre-dated the Venturi deal, which came in late 2018. That was a year after Massa was initially likely to have made his Formula E debut.

That was because the knock-on of Nico Rosberg's surprise retirement was felt all the way to the Formula E paddock, as Massa ended up committing to a final F1 season at Williams in 2017 following Valtteri Bottas's departure for Mercedes. 

The hope was that Massa would get Formula E from the off but that just didn't transpire.

A few flashes were seen, especially at Monaco, where he scored his only podium in 2019, but despite a reasonable comparison to team-mate Edoardo Mortara much more had been expected.

A largely anonymous second season at Venturi sealed Massa's fate and the fact he so publicly admitted he didn't understand the nuances of Formula E told you most of what you needed to know about his time in the series.

8 Nick Heidfeld

Heidfeld's Formula E career often felt like a bit of a replica of his F1 time with a succession of podium positions but no victory.

No less than eight third places are his record after a four-season stint that brought much promise initially with the Venturi team - how different might things have been had he won the inaugural race? - and then for three campaigns with Mahindra.

It was in the third season, in 2016-17, that Heidfeld was at his best. With Felix Rosenqvist joining him at Mahindra, many feared that the veteran might be shown up but that was far from the case.

While the very quick Rosenqvist took Mahindra's first win at Berlin, Heidfeld was the more consistent of the pair and took five of his eight third places that campaign.

But by the following season, Heidfeld self-admittedly saw the writing on the wall as Rosenqvist hammered him in qualifying and races. That spelled the end for the German but he remained affiliated to original Mahindra boss Gill with the nascent FG Series electric single-seater plan.

7 Jerome d'Ambrosio

Belgian d'Ambrosio made the briefest of F1 reappearances with Lotus at Monza in 2012 after a trying season with the Marussia team the year before.

By 2014, he'd signed up with Dragon Racing in Formula E and took two wins for the Jay Penske-owned operation, at Berlin in 2015 and Mexico City in 2016, although both were handed to him after disqualifications for Lucas di Grassi after technical infractions were spotted post-race.

A move to Mahindra in 2018 brought a renaissance after two tough seasons with Dragon. A win in Marrakesh followed a third in the opening race in Riyadh and d'Ambrosio was the unlikely points leader in the early running of the Gen2 era.

But the form tailed off thereafter as Pascal Wehrlein's performances alongside him made the decision to retire from driving at the end of 2020 a much easier one for d'Ambrosio. His intellectual capacity stood him in good stead in Formula E, and it was a trait he took forward into his career as a sporting manager first at Mercedes and subsequently Ferrari in F1.

6 Stoffel Vandoorne

Vandoorne came to Formula E after a bruising time with McLaren in its dark F1 days.

Signing a deal to race for Mercedes from 2019 onwards, Vandoorne had a prep campaign with HWA Racelab in the first Gen2 season of 2018-19 before going full Mercedes the season after alongside Nyck de Vries.

After the inevitable bedding in process, Vandoorne got Formula E and his mastery of the Gen2 era became apparent when he claimed his and Mercedes' first victory in one of the sextet of pandemic-season races at Berlin in August 2020.

Thereafter, Vandoorne looked like a champion in waiting and he didn't have to be that patient. By the 2022 season he was always on the money and he took the title with a clever campaign that was short on victories but majored on consistently brilliant race reading.

But although he finished off the Gen2 era, and Mercedes' time in Formula E, in style, Vandoorne's big-money, big-on-ambition move to DS Penske never really worked. He didn't look like the same proposition in the new and quirky Gen3 landscape and he was unable to add to his victory tally in his two seasons there.

That was checked off when he was moved sideways to Maserati MSG for the 2024-25 campaign before a complex series of manoeuvrings shuffled him off the grid for this season - although this is highly likely to be a temporary affair as he is primed to race for Jaguar in the near future.

5 Nelson Piquet Jr

Piquet's Formula E story is perhaps the most fascinating of this group as it started a full five years after his bitter-tasting F1 experience came to a conclusion.

One day the entire truth will out of all that transpired in the grottiness of the Singapore Grand Prix 2008 crash scandal. Piquet's stock was at a low ebb in the summer of 2014 when attempts were made by some to ostracise him all over again as he tried to get into Formula E.

Fortunately, those were unsuccessful and, after almost completing deals at e.dams and Amlin Aguri, he got a late seat with the ambitious but entirely unprepared Team China Racing entity.

The first few races were disastrous and Piquet wasn't convinced there was a future in the programme until some former Toyota F1 engineers, under the auspices of the Rational Motion company, came into the team to transform it technically.

It triggered an epic and beautifully orchestrated revenge story whereby Piquet took a nail-biting title in Battersea Park to vanquish many of his haters.

4 Lucas di Grassi

The grand old stager is still going strong at Lola-Yamaha Abt, where he has got stuck into a new project after a messy single season with Mahindra at the dawn of the Gen3 era.

But it is di Grassi's Gen1 and Gen2 excellence that will be his legacy, one in which his absolute peak was in his masterful title season of 2016-17 when he spectacularly hunted down Sebastien Buemi and denied his often bitter rival back-to-back title successes.

The Brazilian's F1 experience was far from adequate with a hapless and wholly unprepared Virgin Racing team in 2010.

That di Grassi picked up the pieces and reinvented himself as the go-to F1 tester for Pirelli, friend of the engineer, and visionary future-scope force he is today, deserves respect.

But he wouldn't have been able to do all that so effectively if it had not been for results on the track. These came with Audi in the World Endurance Championship and the Abt concern in Formula E and without these, his career would have fizzled out like so many others of his generation's did.

His pugnacious style on the track wasn't always positive. There are many who still don't buy his description of the infamous Battersea shunt with Buemi in July 2016. It makes little difference to di Grassi, though, as he expertly balanced his revenge in that unforgettable championship-winning season a year later.

3 Sebastien Buemi

Buemi had a period of single-seater racing 'cold turkey' from F1 to Formula E in 2012 and 2013 when he started to establish his ultra-successful endurance racing career.

But there really wasn't too much abstinence from F1, as he was retained by Red Bull for test duties where he put a solid amount of miles on the clock after his Toro Rosso years ended at the end of 2011.

By 2014, when he was a relatively late addition to the e.dams Formula E squad, Buemi was already entrenched in sportscar racing with Toyota but still hungry for single-seater success.

It came quickly, with a title in 2015-16 and then what looked to be a cakewalk in retaining it the following campaign where he scored six wins from the first eight races. That all ended in a bouillabaisse of controversy amid a three-headed WEC/Formula E calendar clash, a tub-wrecking Montreal shunt, and an unforgettable pitlane rant.

That apart, Buemi has been a constant benchmark in Formula E, even to this day as he scored an unlikely victory in May to register his third E-Prix win in Monaco.

His high achievements have in fact left many wondering if he had been given a few more seasons in F1 - a question that also applies to Vergne - could he have matured into a potent proposition at the highest level?

2 Pascal Wehrlein

Wehrlein had a reasonably low-key entrance into Formula E via Mahindra in the first Gen2 season of 2018-19.

Fresh from his final F1 season with Sauber in 2017, Wehrlein was still only 23 when he first drove the Mahindra, with which he took a second place in Santiago on only his second start. He also should have won the next race in Mexico City but was memorably beaten at the finishing line by a flying and energy-richer di Grassi.

Wehrlein's move to Porsche was a contentious one as Mahindra felt it had a deal with him in place. The final couple of Gen2 seasons were at times tough for Wehrlein, but he still took a breakthrough win at Mexico City three years after di Grassi snatched the trophy from his grasp.

But the 2022 campaign was otherwise a disastrous one for Porsche, where it finished a lame seventh in the final standings, and at times Wehrlein lost patience.

Behind the scenes, the Gen3 preparation was intense and, despite a hefty practice accident in Hyderabad in February 2023, Wehrlein took to the new pack-racing chessboard powerplays well.

By 2024, he took his title - which in truth always felt like it was coming. Of the drivers to have won the crown it is perhaps Wehrlein, who has continuity of a close-working relationship with the tight-knit Porsche team, who is most likely to become only FE's second double-champion.

1 Jean-Eric Vergne

Few argue that Vergne isn't the best-ever Formula E driver when his achievements are stock-taken. With two titles and 11 wins from 147 starts the stats are impressive - but perhaps more so is the story behind his success.

We have recounted on these pages before the mindset that Vergne found himself in back in December 2014.

It was a traumatic time after being somewhat harshly cast aside by Red Bull and losing his Toro Rosso drive and then going through the trauma of seeing childhood friend Jules Bianchi injured in his ultimately fatal Suzuka accident in 2014.

On track, however, Vergne carved a sublime niche in Formula E and despite a messy season with DS Virgin in 2015-16, he was reborn with Techeetah, a team that he was completely integral in making into a reality.

From there, he has created a new life away from F1 and one that has provided something that he previously found difficult to grasp: contentment in his profession, despite the tumultuous end to his F1 dream.

In recent seasons, Vergne's star has waned a little with just one victory so far in the Gen3 era. But he's still a template for consistent performances and being a threat to a new breed of razor-sharp racers such as Wehrlein, Nick Cassidy and Rowland shows just what a force he is.