Sebastien Buemi’s 12-year Formula E career will end this weekend in London - after the 2016 champion has decided not to pursue the possibility of a drive in the Gen4 era of the all-electric world championship.

Envision announced today that both Buemi and current team-mate Joel Eriksson will leave the team after the London E-Prix.

The Race understands that Zak O’Sullivan tested the Jaguar Gen4 development car at Estoril last week and is a key driver of interest to join the already signed Maximilian Guenther at the Chinese owned/British based team next season.

The team will confirm its line-up after the London finale this weekend.

Buemi, who has competed in all but two of the 161 E-Prix held since 2014, will race in his final event this Sunday for the Envision team that he has competed with since 2023.

Prior to that, the Swiss driver drove for Renault and Nissan between 2014 and the start of the Gen3 era.

Buemi has now taken the decision to concentrate on his successful endurance career with the Toyota Racing operation, with which he has won four Le Mans 24 Hours and four World Endurance Championship titles.

All bar one of Buemi’s 14 Formula E wins came with the e.dams’ iteration of the Renault and Nissan operations - and his single Gen3 win in his time with Envision came at the 2025 Monaco E-Prix.

Buemi was well beaten by Nick Cassidy in their single season together in 2023, a campaign in which Buemi appeared to struggle with the new pack racing that self-generated through the Gen3’s initial quirky technical set-up, especially with the fickle Hankook tyres.

But against Robin Frijns in 2024 and 2025 Buemi fared much better and was occasionally right at the front, as he has been this season.

Buemi will bow out of Formula E not at the top, as he so often was in the first era of Formula E.

He is still quick, competitive and retains a massive amount of respect from the paddock for both his achievements and his burning and unflinching commitment to motorsport, in which he has carved out a deserved reputation as the ultimate professional.

What is Buemi’s FE legacy?

A tally of 14 wins, 36 podiums, 17 poles and one title tells only a small proportion of one of Formula E’s OG drivers and one of its most intensively driven operators.

Buemi has a strong case of being the most active, successful and, collectively, one of the best-paid drivers outside of Formula 1 since he left racing’s highest echelon at the end of 2011.

He is as fierce a competitor as has ever set foot in a Formula E car. But perhaps more impressive has been his staying power where he has remained competitive well into his 30s.

It says a great deal that he has every chance of signing off with at least a podium position in London this weekend, as the hands of time finally push through even beyond his power and tick from Gen3 to Gen4 and the start of a genuine new Formula E era.

It’s easy to forget now that he was just 23 when his F1 career petered out. There were at least a couple of occasions when he might have returned to it but instead he has become the most decorated endurance sportscar driver of modern times and a bona fide Formula E legend.

It is not so much how he does that, because it's genuinely come from hard work, intellect and skill. But it's the 'why?'.

Why did Buemi feel the need to take a chance on a nascent series like Formula E when in all reality it was little more than an ambitious, at first poorly-organised dream that looked as though it would die in its first season?

Intriguingly Buemi raced in A1GP when he was 17 and 18 years of age at the very start of his career. He didn’t do that for any altruistic reason. He did it just to race. But perhaps subconsciously he picked up the understanding that trying something new and soaking up experience via experienced hands such as Max Welti and former McLaren and Williams engineer James Robinson might actually lead somewhere.

Fast-forward six or seven years from the A1GP days and Buemi re-engaged with Jean-Paul Driot (below, left), the legendarily forceful and driven boss of the DAMS empire that was branching out into Formula E. Buemi had some other offers but Driot's was by far the most compelling.

Although the two had not worked together in GP2, they had talked extensively when they shared the A1GP paddock, with Buemi racing for Switzerland and Driot running the French squad. It quickly became apparent that they shared high ideals of professionalism and racing desire.

From there, the pair created early Formula E history with multiple victories and the 2015-16 title.

There is also some irony in that Buemi will take part in his last E-Prix this weekend in the same race as his former nemesis Lucas di Grassi, the driver with whom he clashed in the Gen1 era, retires as well.

That old bitterness has long since gone and Buemi was generous in his tribute to di Grassi earlier this year when the Brazilian announced his own exit.

“We’ve not always been good friends, even if I would say today we’re all good,” Buemi told The Race. 

“He’s maybe the driver that has contributed the most to Formula E. We all need to acknowledge that he’s been there from the beginning and he came up with great ideas on how to build the championship initially.

"I think he was part of what made Formula E that good, especially in the first few years of the championship, so he deserves lots of credit for doing that.”

Di Grassi is expected to be as effusive in his praise for his former rival, too - and while it will come from a very different character, it will be genuine nonetheless.