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Nowadays the phase controlled switching is a preferred method for capacitive switching. Thus the prestrike characteristic is an important issue for the control strategy. The objective of this paper is to understand the prestrike characteristics of vacuum interrupters (VIs) in the capacitive making operations of 40.5 kV vacuum circuit breakers (VCBs). In the experiment, three VIs with CuCr50 (50 wt% of Cr) contact material and three VIs with CuCr40 (40 wt% of Cr) contact material with contact diameter of 50 millimeters were prepared. The CuCr50 and CuCr40 contact materials are made by using infiltration and arc-melted technology, respectively. An L-C oscillating circuit generated an inrush current with a frequency of 207 Hz and with a peak of 6.48 kA, while the applied voltage was 46.3 kV which is equivalent to the peak voltage for a 35 kV three-phase network whose capacitive voltage factor is 1.4. The experimental results show that the complementary cumulative distribution function (CCDF) of the prestrike gaps dpre follows a 3-parameter Weibull distribution. The prestrike gap below which prestrike would always occur is similar for all six test VIs which is 2.4–3.1 mm. However, the average values of d\0, ¿50 and ¿90 for infiltration CuCr50 contact material are 57.5%, 45.3% and 28.9% higher than the ones in arc-melted CuCr40 contact material, respectively. During the inrush current flowing, at each zero-crossing of the inrush current the prestrike arc tries to extinguish with the occurrence of three types of contact gap breakdowns. Furthermore, if the contact gap breakdowns are withstood at the inrush current zero-crossing, inrush current interruption phenomenon happens, which proves a common phenomenon in capacitive making operation. The inrush current interruption phenomenon is mainly determined by the prestrike distance and not by the material quality. The experimental results imply that the field emission dominated breakdown and the micro-particle induced breakdown both take effect in the prestriking and contact gap breakdown process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]