F1’s finest swap cockpits for grandstands as Carlos Sainz, Hülkenberg and Bortoleto join Idris Elba at 2026 Monaco E-Prix
If there was any lingering doubt that Formula E has muscled its way into motorsport’s A-list, Saturday’s running of the 2026 Monaco E-Prix put it firmly to bed.
The harbourside paddock played host to a guest list that read like a cross-pollination of the Formula 1 grid, the Met Gala and a Netflix premiere, with Carlos Sainz, Nico Hülkenberg, Gabriel Bortoleto and Ollie Bearman rubbing shoulders with Idris Elba, Susie Wolff and a who’s-who of fashion and influencer royalty.
Round 9 of the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship saw the all-electric series return to the streets that have defined the very idea of grand prix racing for nearly a century. And while Mahindra’s Nyck de Vries took a deeply emotional maiden win for his new team after a textbook PIT BOOST strategy, much of the chatter in the paddock concerned the four men who had come to watch, not race.
Why F1’s class of 2026 turned up to a Formula E weekend
It was no accident that a Williams driver, two Audi recruits and a Haas racer all chose to spend their Saturday in the Formula E pit lane. With Formula 1’s most radical regulation overhaul in a generation now in full swing — a near-50/50 split between internal combustion and electrical power, tripled battery deployment to around 350kW and the abolition of the MGU-H — energy management is no longer a Formula E party trick. It is, for the first time, central to how an F1 driver will navigate a lap of Monte Carlo.
Sainz, whose Williams team is wrestling with the new ruleset like everyone else, was seen deep in conversation with Formula E engineers ahead of qualifying. Hülkenberg and Bortoleto — now Audi team-mates as the German marque prepares its own factory F1 assault — looked equally studious. For Bearman, the youngest of the quartet, it was a chance to see what 350kW of regenerative deployment actually looks like through the Fairmont Hairpin.
“Monaco is the one race weekend where energy doesn’t go to waste,” one senior F1 engineer told this writer. “Every braking zone is a recharge opportunity. That’s why the Formula E guys have been running on these streets for years — and that’s why our drivers are paying attention.”
The Principality goes electric, again
This was the tenth Monaco E-Prix in Formula E’s history and the second visit of the GEN3 Evo era, with the championship now firmly established as a fixture on the Côte d’Azur calendar. Crucially, the series uses the full Circuit de Monaco, the same 3.337km layout that hosts F1, meaning every comparison drawn by Sainz and company on Saturday will carry weight when they return for the Monaco Grand Prix on 24 May.
The all-electric paddock also offered a preview of what is shortly to come. With GEN4 cars set to deliver up to 600kW of peak power and a 0–62mph time around two seconds, the gap between Formula E and Formula 1 on outright performance has rarely been narrower. Several F1 paddock insiders quietly conceded that by 2027, head-to-head lap-time comparisons may no longer be flattering for the combustion crowd.
A guest list that money can’t (entirely) buy
Beyond the F1 contingent, the celebrity turnout was the strongest Formula E has seen in Monaco. Idris Elba, actor, musician and investor in the Cupra KIRO Formula E team, was the marquee name, but Northern Irish actor Anthony Boyle and House of the Dragon star Harry Collett gave the grid walk a distinctly British screen presence. Television presenter Danni Menzies and Germany’s reality TV royalty, the Geiss family, added to the mix.
The sporting legends line-up was equally heavyweight: Olympic decathlete Daley Thompson, marathon great Paula Radcliffe, and, perhaps most poignantly, Susie Wolff, the F1 Academy Managing Director and former Venturi Formula E boss who has watched the series evolve from sceptical curiosity to bona fide cultural force. Christian Horner, the former Red Bull Racing chief executive, was also seen working the paddock.
Model-and-creator royalty came courtesy of Olivia Ponton, Sabrina Elba, Rebecca Donaldson and French content creator Julian Petrillo, while F1 Academy alumnae Marta García, Nerea Martí and 2025 champion Doriane Pin, now a Citroën GEN4 development driver and Mercedes-AMG F1 junior, added genuine racing pedigree.
Why this matters beyond the celebrity column inches
For Formula E, the picture being painted is no longer one of a fringe sustainability project. With Porsche, Nissan, Jaguar, Stellantis (via Citroën, DS and the incoming Opel GSE team) and Mahindra all committed to the GEN4 era, and with the reigning Drivers’ Champion Oliver Rowland chasing his title defence on the same streets that decided his crown a year ago, Formula E’s commercial pitch has rarely been sharper.
The fact that four current F1 drivers chose to spend a precious off-day studying an all-electric world championship, rather than, say, sunbathing on a yacht 100 metres away, tells you everything you need to know about where motorsport’s centre of gravity is shifting.
Round 10 of the 2025/26 ABB FIA Formula E World Championship gets underway today, Sunday 17 May, with qualifying at 10:40am local time and lights-out for the race scheduled for 3:05pm. The result may yet alter the title picture; but as Sainz, Hülkenberg, Bortoleto and Bearman pack up for their own Monaco assault next weekend, the lessons learned on Saturday may prove more valuable than any podium.
