Eleven and a half years after pushing the throttle on a Renault e.dams chassis at the inaugural Beijing E-Prix in September 2014, Sebastien Buemi will line up at Tempelhof this weekend for his 150th Formula E race start.
The 37-year-old Swiss is now Envision Racing's senior driver, on a multi-year contract, and arrives in Berlin as a former champion (Season 2), 14-time race winner, 36-time podium finisher and joint pole-position record holder with 17 — a tally he equalled in Mexico City earlier this season.
Berlin is also one of his strongest tracks. Buemi has won twice at Tempelhof, both in 2016, on the way to his Formula E title — and the venue itself is the only city to have appeared on every Formula E calendar since 2014.
The driver, however, is keeping his head firmly on what his car can deliver this weekend rather than what came before. The biggest looming change is the GEN4 era, due in Season 13.
"I like the look of the GEN4 car," Buemi said. "It's big and I really feel like there's a lot of performance."
"Of course, with WEC, Red Bull and Formula E, to put it all together is not that simple," he said.
Buemi has been a long-standing Toyota Gazoo Racing endurance driver and a reserve and simulator driver inside the Red Bull Racing Formula 1 program — a triple commitment that has shaped his contractual conversations for next year.
"We've been working on the 2026 cars for a very long time, so of course I've given my feedback," he added of his Red Bull simulator work.
Berlin's 2026 format is also something Buemi has historically suited. With only one ATTACK MODE allocation per race weekend — albeit a longer six-minute window — and the PIT BOOST format adding strategic complexity, the experienced front-runner has tended to extract more than younger drivers when timing is critical.
"With PIT BOOST I usually like those races," Buemi said. "You need to qualify quite well because the PIT BOOST races usually have more energy."
He added: "The fact that there is only one ATTACK MODE, even if it's a bit longer being six minutes, makes it different again."
The wider championship picture provides a fascinating backdrop to Buemi's milestone. After six rounds, Pascal Wehrlein leads the standings on 83 points for Porsche — a German driver going to a German home race who has never actually won at Tempelhof, despite a runner-up finish 12 months ago. Edoardo Mortara is second on 72 for Mahindra, and the season has produced five different winners across four teams: Jake Dennis, Nick Cassidy, Mitch Evans, Wehrlein, and Antonio Felix da Costa, who took back-to-back wins in Jeddah and Madrid.
Tempelhof's ledger of past winners is similarly even. Across more than 20 races at the airport circuit, 15 different drivers have stood on the top step. Da Costa and Cassidy lead the pack with three wins apiece — a record Buemi could threaten if he repeats his 2016 form.
For now, the Swiss veteran is approaching the weekend with the same calm professionalism that has carried him from a single-team prospect into one of the all-time pillars of Formula E. Reaching 150 starts, with championship and race wins still on the resume, is the kind of milestone that says as much about consistency as it does longevity. And in Berlin, of all places, he gets to mark it.
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*Originally published on [Motorsports Global](https://motorsports.global/article/buemi-150th-formula-e-start-berlin-tempelhof-envision-2026). Visit for full coverage.*