Traditional vacuum circuit breaker (CB) equipped with a bistable permanent-magnet (PM) actuator suffers from the disadvantages of having long start-up time and large current peak, and these shortcomings are limiting its applications on synchronization operation and high-voltage switchgear. In this paper, a new drive circuit which can significantly weaken the flux of the holding force with the usage of an auxiliary capacitor is proposed. In the proposed circuit, a negative current is circulated in the respective coil when the PM actuator is ready to switch on or off . Cosimulation which integrates the PM actuator and the circuit is carried out with the Maxwell and Simplorer software. The prototype is tested on the platform in conjunction with a 10-kV PM vacuum CB (VCB) to showcase the success of the proposed flux-weakening control strategy.