Franco Colapinto’s move up to Formula 1 with Williams Racing on Tuesday kicked off a sequence of driver changes in the F2 and F3 paddock as the remaining places on the grid were filled Wednesday. We talked to the three drivers in new places for this weekend’s Monza round.

By Michael McClure

While it is understood that Williams’ talks with F2 rookie Colapinto had begun as early as Friday evening, 23 August, word began to spread on Tuesday that he would be announced as the replacement for the embattled Logan Sargeant in F1.

WIth his ascension to F1 for the final nine grands prix of 2024, Colapinto thus vacates his F2 seat at MP Motorsport for the final four rounds of the season in Monza, Baku, Lusail and Abu Dhabi.

On Wednesday evening, MP Motorsport was announced that F3 title contender Oliver Goethe would graduate to the F2 team and forgo the F3 season finale. The Red Bull junior, 19, is seventh in the F3 standings on 94 points and has stood out on account of his consistent points finishes, particularly in the early part of the season.

Goethe said he was informed earlier that same day about his step up to F2, leaving him with little time to prepare.

“I just found out like yesterday, pretty much, that I was going to do this race in F2, so the approach for the weekend was more for F3. I did simulator for F3, didn’t do any preparation for F2, so it will be straight into the car without any sim,” he told Feeder Series from his new abode in MP’s F2 truck.

“My approach this weekend for us is just to take as much information as possible, learn as much as possible. Of course, I’ll still want a result. I’ll want to fight in the points at least, but the main focus is to learn as much as possible. The rest is a bonus.”

Goethe and Colapinto are both clients of Bullet Sports Management, and Colapinto’s father and manager Maria Catarineu were hanging around the MP garage midday Thursday. But did Goethe and Colapinto have much communication? 

“We congratulated each other. I congratulated him, he said congrats to me, so it’s a good step up for both, especially him going into F1. It’s really, really good for him,” Goethe explained. “Apart from that, we haven’t spoken much. [I’ve] just been speaking with the team, spoke with Dennis a bit.”

Goethe refers to Dennis Hauger, his highly experienced teammate at MP. The 21-year-old, himself a former Red Bull junior, is in his third year of F2 and his second with MP, and he sits eighth in the standings with 83 points.

Goethe has never driven the current-generation F2 car before, though he did take part in two days of post-season testing last year with Trident, his 2023 F3 team, at Abu Dhabi. That means Monza will be his first time driving the car on top of the fact that he had zero time in the simulator to prepare.

“It’s at least preparation for the track,” he said about his F3-specific Monza preparations. “It’s a track I’m comfortable with, which is good to focus on, really just adapting to the car. Ideally, I would have liked to do preparation with MP for F2, but it is what it is.

“I’m looking today to already start learning as much as possible, take in information to make me feel as comfortable as possible going out for free practice.”

The replacement for Goethe at Campos was 17-year-old Noah Strømsted, who is currently eighth in Formula Regional Europe as a rookie with two podiums and 61 points. Strømsted previously competed in Spanish F4 with Campos in 2022 as a guest and 2023 as a full-time competitor, finishing the season seventh. 

Strømsted said he was already in Italy when he found out yesterday afternoon that he would be racing in F3.

“My manager got a call about Ollie going up and there might be a possibility for me to join, so I was going a bit back and forth,” Strømsted told Feeder Series. “And then in the afternoon, everything was complete. So luckily, I was here already doing the preparation and stuff.”

He completed some simulator work before arriving, while Thursday included a seat fit and data and video analysis at the Campos garage.

The last-minute nature of the move meant Strømsted had little time to chat with Goethe, whose new home is about 40 metres away across the paddock.

“I met him briefly, but I think it’s quite straightforward,” Strømsted said. “[You have] to go in free practice and learn as much about the car as you can and try to be ready for the race.”

Strømsted’s manager is GT racer Diego Menchaca, who drove for Campos in Euroformula Open in 2015 and 2016 and in GP3 in 2018. Menchaca, who hails from Mexico, drives one of Motopark’s Mercedes cars in GT Open, another of which is raced by Morten Strømsted, Noah’s father.

Menchaca mentioned that Mexican telecommunications giant Telmex “were involved in making this happen” for the 17-year-old Dane, who is the only driver from outside of Latin America sponsored by the company. Menchaca has been backed by Telmex for the entirety of his racing career.

In an unrelated change, F2 newcomer Niels Koolen has taken up a seat at AIX Racing for both the Monza and Baku rounds. The 23-year-old Dutchman replaces rookie Taylor Barnard, whose deal with the McLaren Formula E team for the 2024–25 season was announced Tuesday, a few hours before Colapinto’s announcement. Barnard and AIX announced earlier today that he had terminated his F2 campaign ahead of Monza.

Having raced in F4 in 2022 and at the Formula Regional level in 2023, Koolen moved stateside to IndyCar support series Indy NXT this year with HMD Motorsports, the series’ 10-car behemoth team. He had abandoned his campaign after the Laguna Seca double-header in June but unexpectedly returned for the Iowa round a few weeks later. He has not made appearances since and is 20th in the points.

Speaking to Feeder Series, Koolen, who has also raced prototypes in both LMP2 and LMP3 classes this year, said his goal for the next two rounds was to learn and see where he stood relative to the rest of the F2 grid. He added that he had been looking for a seat “for quite some time”.

Feeder Series understands that when he initially halted his Indy NXT campaign, a deal had come together for him to move to F2 mid-season with a team other than AIX. That deal later fell through.

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency