Formula 3 and Formula 2 boss Bruno Michel says the current feeder series ladder “makes sense” and he isn’t concerned about drivers skipping F3 and jumping straight into F2.

By Steven Walton

Andrea Kimi Antonelli and Joshua Dürksen both jumped from Formula Regional cars to F2 machinery for 2024, skipping F3 altogether.

Neither Antonelli nor Dürksen have looked out of place in F2. Antonelli, who will race for Mercedes in Formula One next season, has become a two-time F2 race winner and sits sixth in the overall standings with two rounds to go.

Dürksen won his first race earlier this month in Baku and also finished on the feature race and sprint race podiums in Imola and Monza respectively.

F3 and F2 chief executive Bruno Michel told Feeder Series in an F3 press conference that the current pyramid of series below F1 “makes sense”.

“If you want to skip, if you are the right age, you have the right number of points, you can do it,” he said. “Whether it’s good or not, I have my view but maybe the management of the drivers can have a different one sometimes.”

The typical feeder series “pyramid” or ladder below F1 consists of F4, FR, F3 and then F2.

Michel told Feeder Series that teams do not have difficulty finding drivers. “So we are not desperate to say ‘oh you have to do F3 and then F2 because we are missing drivers in F3 or we are missing drivers in F2’,” he said.

“It’s really up to the drivers and the drivers’ management to decide the way they want to manage the careers of the drivers. For me, if I was doing drivers’ management, I would put the drivers going along the pyramid because for me it makes more sense.” 

Earlier in the press conference, Michel said the current pyramid of series was “very thought about”.

“To me, going through Formula 3 and then going through Formula 2 is something that makes a driver much more prepared for Formula 1, [rather] than trying to skip one of those two categories.”

Michel said “the best drivers” going into F1 were those that won GP3 or F3 as a rookie and then graduated to F2 and won it as a rookie too.

“I’m talking about Charles Leclerc, I’m talking about George Russell, I’m talking about Oscar Piastri. You know it’s these kinds of drivers, they didn’t skip a year, but they were so good that they could win every year that they were arriving [in] a new category.”

At another point in the press conference, Michel highlighted the recent F1 points finishes achieved by F2 graduates Ollie Bearman and Franco Colapinto as examples that the pyramid was working. 

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency