Ten rounds of the 2024 Formula 2 season have come and gone, with a record 14 drivers taking wins and all bar three standing on the podium at least once. As the grid roars back into action this week in Monza after a month-long summer break and Franco Colapinto’s shock promotion to F1, get up to speed with how all 22 drivers’ campaigns have gone so far.

By Martin Lloyd and Steven Walton

1. Isack Hadjar (Campos Racing, 165 points)

Hadjar currently stands atop of the F2 standings following a stunning first part of the season. Despite a series of disappointing results, including a first-corner retirement in the Bahrain feature race and two mechanical failures in Saudi Arabia, Hadjar has risen to first place with a 36-point margin over Gabriel Bortoleto, having displaced longtime championship leader Paul Aron at Silverstone. 

Hadjar is looking to secure an RB seat, recently telling Feeder Series that he feels he is ‘in the conversation’ for a drive with the team. The Red Bull junior is making a strong case for the seat, and with four feature race wins at Melbourne, Imola, Silverstone and Spa, Hadjar has marked himself out as the F2 driver to beat as the season reaches its conclusion.

2. Gabriel Bortoleto (Invicta Racing, 129 points)

Thanks to a handful of strong weekends during F2’s European leg, Bortoleto is a definite contender for this year’s title.

At the early flyaway rounds, Bortoleto was hampered by mistakes and technical issues. But since the fourth round in Imola, the McLaren junior has become a much more common fixture inside the top ten, especially in the feature races, which award more points.

Bortoleto finished second in feature races at Imola and Spa and won the Spielberg feature, his sole win of the season so far. During the final race before the summer break at Spa, Bortoleto was the only driver who put championship leader Isack Hadjar under pressure, a sure sign that he has found his feet in F2.

3. Paul Aron (Hitech GP, 124 points)

Aron was F2’s most consistent driver throughout the first part of the season, picking up a podium at each of the seven rounds from Bahrain to Spielberg. Although a race win has remained stubbornly elusive, consistency still helped Aron lead the championship between the Monaco and Silverstone rounds.

For those first seven rounds, Aron was undoubtedly the pick of the drivers in the field. He wasn’t rash, he wasn’t impatient, he just picked up the results week after week.

But his consistency disappeared just before the summer break. The last three rounds – Silverstone, Budapest and Spa – all went terribly. Across six races, Aron only mustered a single points finish, sixth in the Hungary sprint. He has subsequently fallen to third in the championship standings.

As he returns from the summer break, Aron needs to rediscover his early-season form if he wants to haul himself back into title contention.

4. Zane Maloney (Rodin Motorsport, 111 points)

Maloney began his second year of F2 competition in barnstorming fashion by winning both races at the opening round in Bahrain, but he has not yet notched another victory. A welcome return to form at Silverstone saw him take a double podium, but Maloney has championship ambitions. Top-drawer results in only a couple of rounds will not satisfy that. 

Nonetheless, the Barbadian driver has shown pace at most rounds in 2024, though poor qualifying sessions have restricted his ability to achieve podiums and wins. At the time of writing, Maloney has an average qualifying position of 10.4.

Maloney’s early-season results formed the foundations of his high championship position, He could still prove to be a force in the title battle, but his final four rounds will need to be as strong as his first. 

5. Jak Crawford (DAMS Racing, 100 points)

Crawford has often put himself at or near the top of the timesheets this year. He is fifth in the championship with 100 points and has been the quicker of the two DAMS drivers.

The Aston Martin junior’s performances have arguably gone slightly under the radar. He won the feature race in Barcelona and also picked up third-place finishes in the Silverstone and Spa feature races, losing victory in the former only because of a penalty for an unsafe release in pit lane.

One wonders whether his points total could’ve been a bit higher with a smoother season. Crawford was in the mix for a podium in the Bahrain feature race when he had to retire with car trouble. He also had compromised qualifying sessions in Imola, Monaco and Hungary.

6. Franco Colapinto (MP Motorsport, 96 points)

Colapinto has impressed since the opening round of the season in Bahrain – so much so that he landed a Williams F1 seat for the remainder of the season. That means he will take no further part in F2 this year.

By beating Dennis Hauger, his vastly experienced teammate, in the first feature race, the Argentinian rookie set the tone for the season. He scored three podiums, including a dramatic win at Imola when he passed Aron on the final lap. 

In half of 2024’s races run so far, Colapinto finished in the top six. He now sits sixth in the championship, 69 points from championship leader Hadjar. Even before his F1 call-up, the Williams junior’s performances impressed the Grove team enough that he was given a chance to drive the FW46 in the first practice session at Silverstone.

Then, when Logan Sargeant’s form deteriorated to the degree that Williams looked to replace him, they called up the Argentine, abruptly halting his strong debut F2 season. Colapinto now has the opportunity to stake his claim for an F1 seat beyond his nine-race foray with Williams.

On Wednesday, Oliver Goethe was announced as Colapinto’s replacement. The German, who had been competing for Campos in F3, was seventh in the championship and still in mathematical title contention with one round remaining.

7. Andrea Kimi Antonelli (Prema Racing, 87 points)

Antonelli has had a solid start to his F2 career. He is already a race winner, and he has cemented himself as the more consistent driver at Prema despite having considerably less experience than his teammate, Ollie Bearman.

Prema has clearly struggled to adapt to the new F2 car this season, yet Antonelli has still dug deep for respectable results. Those include a maiden sprint race victory at Silverstone in soaking-wet conditions and a feature race triumph in Hungary thanks to a perfectly executed alternate strategy.

Overall, Antonelli has handled his unusual jump from Formula Regional machinery to F2 mightily well. He does not look out of place at all.

8. Dennis Hauger (MP Motorsport, 83 points) 

It has been a strange season so far for Hauger. In his third season of F2 competition, Hauger needed to find the form that earned him the F3 championship in 2021. While the Norwegian has shown glimpses of great speed, with two pole positions and several other strong qualifying results, he has often faded in races. 

The 21-year-old has also been a victim of bad luck. A clutch failure from pole in Austria ended his chances of a potential feature race win, while he was eliminated in a first-lap collision with Victor Martins in Barcelona. 

But Hauger has also finished on the podium on five occasions, including a win at Jeddah in the sprint race. He could have also won the feature race in Melbourne two weeks later but crashed from the lead.

There is evidently more to come from the MP driver. He needs to show it on a more consistent basis if his third F2 season is to remain significant. 

9. Kush Maini (Invicta Racing, 74 points)

Maini has shown flashes of the speed that persuaded Invicta and the Alpine Academy to sign him. He scored five podiums in the opening rounds, although four have been in sprint races. Arguably the finest of those was the Hungary sprint race win he inherited from Richard Verschoor after the Dutchman’s disqualification. 

Notably, Maini was also on pole in the first race of the season in Bahrain before being disqualified for a technical infringement. He then qualified second for the following round in Jeddah before inheriting pole from an F1-bound Bearman. 

While he may not have reached the heights of teammate Bortoleto, Maini has enjoyed several strong outings in the first part of 2024. The Alpine junior already has more points than he scored in the entirety of his debut season in 2023. 

10. Zak O’Sullivan (ART Grand Prix, 59 points)

O’Sullivan’s championship standing comes with an asterisk: 42 per cent of his points were accrued when he lucked into a win in the Monaco feature race.

That is not to discredit ART’s pace improvement. At the start of the year, it looked unlikely that the team could even challenge for a ‘lucky’ win as they struggled to adapt to the new car. Yet the tactic of delaying O’Sullivan’s mandatory pit stop until the end of the race paid off when a late virtual safety car was called. The Williams junior earned his first F2 win and 25 points as a result. 

Outside of the victory in Monaco, there has been relatively little to show for O’Sullivan’s efforts. He did win the sprint race at Spa, but that was a shortened race that lasted just seven laps, five of which were run behind the safety car. While he is usually not in the lower reaches of the 22-car field, the Briton has only scored points on seven occasions and qualified in the top 10 only twice.

11. Enzo Fittipaldi (Van Amersfoort Racing, 58 points)

Fittipaldi’s season so far has one enduring memory: a somewhat unexpected victory in the Jeddah feature race. On that Sunday afternoon during the second round of the year, Fittipaldi was simply unbeatable as he took his first ever feature race win in F2.

Unfortunately, the performance was not a sign of things to come. Ever since, Fittipaldi has struggled to bag consistent points, leaving him 11th in the drivers’ championship. 

Still, he warrants recognition for being just one of seven drivers to win a feature race this year. His Jeddah drive was masterful and composed throughout. His daring double overtake to snatch the lead is definitely a contender for move of the year.

12. Victor Martins (ART Grand Prix, 57 points)

Entering the season as the best rookie of 2023 and the highest-placed returning driver, Martins was supposed to be a firm favourite for this year’s F2 title. But his championship hopes vanished thanks to an unfortunate mix of mechanical problems and mistakes.

His season lowlights so far include a race-ending electronics problem in Bahrain, a disastrous start off the front row in Monaco, a collision with Dennis Hauger in Barcelona, and a clash with teammate Zak O’Sullivan in the wet at Silverstone. Problems during qualifying in Melbourne and Spa also meant he had to start from the back at those rounds.

Still, it hasn’t been all miserable. Martins won the Barcelona sprint race and collected back-to-back second-place finishes at the Hungaroring, which were enough to help him to 12th in the standings. 

13. Richard Verschoor (Trident, 45 points)

It is difficult to judge Verschoor’s season so far. Despite his inconsistency, he has challenged at the front on numerous occasions, taking podiums in the Budapest feature and the sprint at Spa. He would also have likely won the Monaco feature race but for a mechanical problem, and he was disqualified from victory in both the Jeddah and Budapest sprints for technical infringements. 

If he had won those races, Verschoor would now be seventh in the championship in a season in which his Trident teammate has only scored on three occasions. Despite heading for his lowest finishing position in the drivers’ standings in his four-year F2 career, Verschoor has generally impressed in his return to Trident.

14. Pepe Martí (Campos Racing, 38 points)

Red Bull Junior Team member Martí started the 2024 season with a bang by finishing third and second in his first two races in Bahrain. The results immediately marked Martí out as a potential driver to watch this season, but he simply hasn’t reproduced that form since.

Martí has only reached the points four more times after the double podium, the most notable of which was a second-place finish in the Spielberg sprint race. Martí has just 38 points for the season so far, a fraction of the 165 accumulated by his Campos teammate and Red Bull stablemate Hadjar.

15. Ollie Bearman (Prema Racing, 34 points)

Bearman’s performance, or lack thereof, has proved one of the biggest surprises of 2024. Prema have undoubtedly struggled with the move to new machinery, and the pre-season title favourite has only one win to his name. 

On occasion, Bearman has shown flashes of the talent that impressed the F1 paddock. With poles in Jeddah and Imola, he could easily have had two feature race wins to his name, or at least a much larger points tally. However, his F1 call-up in Saudi Arabia meant that he could not take any F2 points from the weekend, while a stall in the pits at Imola caused him to fall out of contention for the victory. 

It is unlikely that Prema will improve significantly in the second part of the season given their struggles so far. Bearman’s focus is likely to shift to his forthcoming F1 bow with a title charge all but impossible. 

16. Juan Manuel Correa (DAMS Racing, 31 points)

Correa has not had the F2 season that he would have hoped for. He has only five points finishes to his name and sits 16th in the championship. The most important takeaways from his campaign so far, however, are the latest chapters he’s written in his recovery story.

The 25-year-old had been seeking an F2 podium since his return to action following the tragic accident in 2019 that took Anthoine Hubert’s life and left him with serious lower body injuries. That wish finally came good in the Barcelona feature race, exactly five years to the date of his last podium in the series. Correa charged through the field on the alternate strategy to take third.

While the results may not have arrived for Correa, he has shown pace on occasions too. He lost a podium in the Barcelona sprint to a post-race track limits penalty, and a loose tyre at his Silverstone pitstop deprived the Ecuadorian-American driver of a strong finish there. 

17. Amaury Cordeel (Hitech GP, 29 points)

Cordeel has not enjoyed a great season. His year began with three straight retirements, and things have not gotten much better since.

He has only scored points five times with a best result of fourth in the sprint race in Imola. He sits 17th in the standings while Aron, his rookie teammate at Hitech, has long been a championship contender. Cordeel has shown no signs of reaching a similar level of performance.

For a driver who is now in his third year of F2, Cordeel should be having a more meaningful impact on the series.

18. Ritomo Miyata (Rodin Motorsport, 29 points)

Miyata’s somewhat unconventional jump from Super Formula to F2 for 2024 with Toyota’s backing has not gone entirely to plan. Any driver with a CV as good as his would be expected to be a regular points finisher in F2 at the very least. In reality, Miyata sits 18th in the standings having finished in the points only six times.

Miyata’s best result so far this year is fifth, which he achieved in both races in Melbourne. His points tally is just over a quarter of his Rodin Motorsport teammate Maloney’s. Still, this year is Miyata’s first time racing single-seaters in Europe. He doesn’t have the built-up knowledge of the tracks, and F2 drivers only get a meagre 45 minutes of practice at each round, limiting his chances to learn.

19. Joshua Dürksen (AIX Racing, 25 points)

Little was expected of Dürksen when he entered F2. He had just finished a tough Formula Regional Europe campaign with Arden, finishing 19th in his second season in the championship. But the likeable Paraguayan has impressed in his rookie season while racing for the unfancied AIX Racing outfit. 

AIX, formerly known as PHM, had failed to score so much as a point in 2023, but Dürksen achieved a fantastic feature race podium at Imola. While he has only scored points on three other occasions, the 20-year-old has helped AIX exceed expectations as he adjusts to life in F2. 

20. Taylor Barnard (AIX Racing, 18 points)

British rookie Barnard has shown form in fits and starts but has been unable to string together a run of consistent results. With a sprint race win in Monaco to his name alongside three other points-scoring finishes, the AIX Racing driver has shown flashes of speed. He could have also scored strongly in the Barcelona feature race, only for a mechanical issue to halt his progress. 

Barnard’s clear talent has not yet shone through in F2. His AIX Racing team continues to progress, but their low starting point means he has been unable to challenge regularly at the front. 

He has, however, done enough to earn himself a ride at McLaren’s Formula E team for the 2024–25 season, which begins in São Paulo on the same day as F2’s Abu Dhabi season finale. A provisional entry list released by the FIA on Friday has Niels Koolen listed in Barnard’s place for Monza, but there has been no formal announcement of any change.

21. Roman Staněk (Trident, 14 points)

Staněk’s season hasn’t been all that memorable. He has been the weaker of the two drivers at Trident, and his only significant highlight was a sprint race win in Melbourne, which he inherited when original winner Hadjar was given a post-race penalty.

Aside from the race win, Staněk has only scored points two other times, finishing sixth in the Monaco sprint race and eighth in the Silverstone sprint race. He sits second to last in the F2 standings, a hugely unremarkable position for a driver who was fifth overall and a title contender back in F3 in 2022.

22. Rafael Villagómez (Van Amersfoort Racing, 9 points)

Villagómez sits at the bottom of the F2 standings with nine points courtesy of three top-10 finishes. He hasn’t been a starring driver this year, but he also isn’t with a team for which regular wins and podiums are the norm.

Villagómez’s three points finishes this year have already given him more points than what he scored during his three seasons in F3. Still, he needs to avoid weekend-ruining mistakes moving forward. In both Jeddah and Spa, Villagómez was compromised from the go thanks to big practice shunts.

Editor’s note, 28 August 2024, 20:43 CEST: This article was updated to include the post-publication announcement that Oliver Goethe had been announced as Franco Colapinto’s replacement at MP Motorsport.

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency