Whatsapping with: Callum Ilott (Formula 2)

Callum Ilott comes off the back of an excellent debut season in Formula 2 with the Sauber Junior Team. For 2020 the British driver has moved to UNI-Virtuosi. We talked to him about his season, the Ferrari Driver Academy and that fateful day at Spa.

By Floris Visman

Ilott had an explosive start to his single-seater career in 2015 when he went straight to European F3 from karting. That season he scored a podium for Carlin and also did the Toyota Racing Series and the Macau GP amongst others. 2016 proved to be a breakthrough year as he switched teams in European F3 (he went to Van Amersfoort Racing) and he won his first single-seater race. He finished the season in sixth, winning once more and grabbing a total of five podiums. To add to that he finished fifth in Macau.

In 2017 the Ferrari Driver Academy member did a final European F3 season and it would prove to be his most successful. Going up against teammates Maximilian Günther, Mick Schumacher and Guanyu Zhou at Prema, Ilott finished fourth in the standings winning six times and scoring eleven podiums (and an additional nine poles and nine fastest laps). He also got his big break in F2 doing the Silverstone round with Trident.

In 2018 the British driver moved to ART GP to participate in GP3. He teamed up with Nikita Mazepin, Jake Hughes and the eventual champion Anthoine Hubert. Ilott finished the season in third bagging seven podiums of which two wins. In 2019 he made his full time debut in Formula 2, a season which he in retrospect is very pleased with. He finished eleventh in the standings for the Sauber Junior Team grabbing a maiden podium in Barcelona. This year he’ll compete with UNI-Virtuosi.