Paul Aron has started the 2024 Formula 2 season superbly. While he has not yet won a race, Aron led the championship for much of the early season, with consistent displays paying dividends for the Estonian. While bad luck and mistakes have recently dealt blows to his title hopes, he remains third in the drivers’ standings. Feeder Series spoke to Aron exclusively during the British Grand Prix weekend.

By Martin Lloyd

Aron entered F2 under the radar. The additions to the championship of reigning junior single-seater champions Andrea Kimi Antonelli and Gabriel Bortoleto, alongside the returns of Ollie Bearman and Victor Martins, meant that Aron did not arrive from Formula 3 with great fanfare. This is despite a third-place finish in his rookie season in the championship, behind only Bortoleto and Zak O’Sullivan in the drivers’ standings. Aron was eminently impressive in his F3 season, meaning he has finished in the top five of every championship in which he has competed.

Although Aron made his single-seater debut five years ago, his journey in the sport began long before. Paul Aron now counts his brother, Ralf, as a key part of his management team. Alongside this role, Ralf continues to race part-time in GT categories after his own rise through the junior single-seater ladder. In conversation with Feeder Series, the younger Aron brother described how he came to be a racing driver.

“My whole family has been connected to racing,” said Paul Aron. “My grandma was racing bikes at her time, my father was racing bikes around Estonia during his time. He knew how dangerous it was, so for us we were never allowed to race bikes so my brother started racing go-karts. Having that history and growing up seeing my brother race, that’s where I also get my love for the sport.”

Ralf Aron ended his single-seater career after the 2018 European F3 season, becoming a team manager at Prema Racing, for whom he had previously competed as a driver. Paul described how he was not close to making a similar decision.

“During the early years, when I was racing and attending school until last year, I wanted to make sure that I realised early enough if I wanted to fully commit to this road because I didn’t want to think back and leave anything on the table. A sportsman’s worst regret is seeing that at that time, they didn’t realise how much they cared about something and they felt like they could’ve done more.”

“Once I answered that question in my early years, then I was all out for racing,” added Aron. “I think this year is kind of showing it, I’m leading the championship, we’ve been constantly quick.”

Aron has been consistently quick in 2024, continuing a trend throughout his junior single-seater career. In only one season – the 2020 Formula Renault Eurocup campaign – Aron finished outside the top three of a championship in which he competed full-time. Third-place finishes in Italian F4 and Formula Regional Europe, alongside his impressive rookie F3 campaign, emphasise Aron’s strong talent. While he has never won a championship, he has often progressed after his first season in a category, resulting in a rapid rise through the ranks.

This season, the 20-year-old made his full-time F2 debut with Hitech. Having consistently led the championship during the first half of the season, he now sits third, 41 points behind current leader Isack Hadjar. This gap would be at just 26 points, but Aron was eliminated from third place by a mechanical failure on the last lap of the Spa feature race. Speaking after another mechanical issue in the Silverstone sprint race, Aron described how he felt fortunate to have avoided the amount of problems suffered by other drivers.

“It’s racing, in the end. There’s not much you can do about it, generally this year I’ve been on the lucky side. We had an issue in Barcelona where the engine was cutting out and it happened three times, but we had a big enough gap in that race that I could restart it and keep going, and we managed to finish the race.”

Since his Silverstone issues, Aron has suffered that heartbreaking issue at Spa, contributing to a difficult run of results since the British Grand Prix. He has also not yet won a race, coming closest in the Imola sprint race when he was passed by Franco Colapinto, having dominated until the Argentinian’s move. Despite his lack of victories, before the Silverstone round, he had finished in a points-paying position in 13 of the 14 races, making consistency the bedrock of his title challenge. 

Since then, that bedrock has been eroded, with only three points scored in the last three rounds. All three were scored in the sprint race at the Hungaroring before a braking misjudgment from Aron caused an incident with Zane Maloney that eliminated both from the feature race. Was the pressure of leading F2 in his rookie season beginning to affect Aron’s performance?

“There’s no one else putting that pressure on me, it’s if I put that pressure on myself,” Aron said. “I wouldn’t say I’ve been thinking about the championship, and certainly the mistake in qualifying on Friday [a spin that meant he qualified in 12th] didn’t happen because of that. It was just that I’m wanting so much out of myself and I’m just a sucker for excellence!”

Despite the difficult recent patch, Aron’s first half of the season was so strong that he remains in touch with the championship battle. The final two European rounds in September will be crucial; if Aron can close the gap to Hadjar at Monza and Baku, he could yet claim the title in what has been an undoubtedly impressive rookie year. He proved his front-running pace again at Spa with a third pole position but was limited by the shortened sprint race and the last-lap engine issue in the feature race. At Silverstone, Aron had confidence in his ability to fight the Frenchman for the title. 

“If we are in the lead after half the season, it means we are doing something right. If we look at the stats, then pace-wise we are always up there, and so far consistently we have been bringing the results and points. In that sense, I’m also confident we will be there come Abu Dhabi.”

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency