As the sun set on the Formula 2 season in Abu Dhabi, Gabriel Bortoleto and Invicta revelled in their double championship victory while Isack Hadjar and Campos wondered what might have been. Feeder Series analyses the key takeaways from the final round of the 2024 campaign. 

By Martin Lloyd

A second successive title for Bortoleto

Gabriel Bortoleto took a while to find his feet in Formula 2. But once he had rediscovered the metronomic consistency that helped him to the 2023 F3 title, he continued on his meteoric rise in junior single-seaters, taking points from 20 of the last 22 races.

As in 2023, he did not contend for wins in every race but consistently chipped away at the gap to the championship leaders before eventually taking the lead himself at the Baku round. Bortoleto may not have had the same dominant winning margin as he had in F3, but his performance was remarkably similar to that dominant season of F3 outside of the first three rounds. 

When Gabriel Bortoleto joined Trident in F3, his signing was unheralded. Yes, he recorded the fastest time in the post-season Jerez test, but he had only finished sixth in his second FRegional Europe season in 2022 after a disappointing 15th-place finish in the previous year. He had impressed in karting, but that was already fading from memory before his Trident move.

Having joined the F3 grid, he responded with his strongest year in car racing, winning the championship by 45 points and beating out Zak O’Sullivan and Paul Aron. The Brazilian banished the bad memories of his time in FR Europe with six podiums, including two wins, and rose to F2 for 2024.

It took slightly longer for Bortoleto to find his feet as, despite taking pole in the opening round, he failed to score in four of the first six races. Nevertheless, the 20-year-old began to charge when the season reached Europe and he took the championship lead in Baku. He never relinquished it.

In winning his two titles, Bortoleto became just the fourth driver to win back-to-back titles in F2 and F3 or predecessor series GP3, after Charles Leclerc, George Russell and Oscar Piastri. The once-unheralded F3 signing now has a fully deserved seat at the top table of F1 driving for Sauber, the future works Audi team. 

Hadjar’s heartbreak

As deserved as Bortoleto’s title was, it was impossible not to feel for Campos’ Isack Hadjar, his chief rival. The Frenchman put together a fantastic sophomore year in F2, winning four races and scoring four additional podiums. If he had outscored Bortoleto by five points on Sunday, he would have been the champion, yet his battle on the day was virtually over before it had even begun. 

The first half of the 2024 season saw a number of the new-generation cars fail to move off the grid. This phenomenon became less frequent in recent rounds, but Hadjar stalled on Sunday at the most critical juncture of the season. Regardless of what caused the issue, the absence of anti-stall mechanisms on F2 cars meant that Campos had to wheel Hadjar’s car back to the pits and manually restart it. 

By the time Hadjar had finally joined the race, he was two laps down. He regained one of those laps with a symbolic pass on Bortoleto on lap 4, but required a safety car to return him to the lead lap – a safety car that never arrived. Hadjar was left to ponder what might have been, while Campos also lost the chance to fight for the teams’ title. 

Even though a potential first car racing title slipped from his grasp in difficult circumstances, Hadjar would have been a deserving champion. He enjoyed a stunning season, with highlights including feature race wins over Bortoleto at Imola and Spa. Without a series of mechanical failures, he may have overcome the challenge posed by Bortoleto, but his failure to score in 46 per cent of F2 races in 2024 meant that the championship was a bridge too far. 

Mechanical issues happen in all motorsport series, but in F2 in 2024, Hadjar seemed to suffer more than others. Failures in qualifying at Spielberg and the feature race at Jeddah, among other instances, altered the championship picture. 

The 20-year-old can take solace in the fact that his F2 performances have impressed the Red Bull hierarchy, with multiple F1 free practice appearances under his belt and a race seat rumoured at RB for 2025. 

Invicta triumph as Martí provides Campos with consolation 

While Hadjar’s heartbreak on Sunday put paid to any hopes of the drivers’ or teams’ championships for Campos, the silver lining was teammate Pepe Martí’s sprint race victory on Saturday. This was the Spaniard’s first F2 win after a season that resembled Hadjar’s difficult debut year in 2023 with Hitech. 

Still, though Campos achieved 13 podiums, including five wins, their first teams’ title since 2008 continues to elude them. The Valencia outfit have never won a drivers’ title in either F2 or GP2, with Hadjar’s second place the best ever result for a Campos driver. Though it has been the team’s strongest second-tier season since 2008, the outcome of losing to Invicta by an eventual margin of 34.5 points will be a huge disappointment for Campos. 

The Norfolk-based squad, meanwhile, have their first title since 2017, under their previous identity as Russian Time. Even though the team had fewer wins than Campos, Bortoleto’s consistency allowed his team to pull clear.

Both Kush Maini, Bortoleto’s teammate, and Martí had difficult seasons, finishing 13th and 14th in the standings respectively. Maini has been confirmed to join DAMS next year, while Martí is expected continue with Campos for a fifth year, having also raced with them in Spanish F4 and F3. 

Dürksen’s delight on Sunday

AIX’s Joshua Dürksen was not worrying about any championship in Abu Dhabi. The Paraguayan has enjoyed a solid debut year in F2, confounding those who, before the season, expected him to struggle at the back of the grid. He won his second race of the season on Sunday at Yas Marina, leading home new champion Bortoleto, the early race leader. 

Dürksen started eighth but had moved to third place by the end of the first lap. He rose to a net second place following Maini’s slow stop before successfully fending off polesitter Victor Martins and overcoming a cautious Bortoleto. He won by an eventual margin of 1.8 seconds, earning 25 points that lifted him to 10th in the drivers’ standings. 

In the process, Dürksen elevated AIX above Trident to ninth in the teams’ standings; both teams finished on 105 points, but AIX were classified higher by virtue of their two wins to Trident’s one. This was an impressive effort for a team that did not score at all in 2023 under their previous guise of PHM as well as for a driver whose previous full seasons in FR Europe with backmarkers Arden ended in 14th- and 19th-place finishes.

Though nothing is yet confirmed, Dürksen is expected to remain with AIX for the 2025 season.

Beganovic impressing in quest to ‘prove some people wrong’

The F2 grid changed dramatically at the end of 2024, with eight F3 drivers from this past season lining up on the grid in Abu Dhabi. Undoubtedly the most impressive has been Ferrari junior Dino Beganovic, who replaced Juan Manuel Correa at DAMS after the Baku round of the championship. He has finished in the top 10 in each of his four races so far and even took an impressive sprint race podium this past weekend. 

On Saturday, Paul Aron had originally finished third behind Pepe Martí and Bortoleto, but the Estonian was later disqualified after his car was found to have had an elongated DRS flap. Aron’s exclusion promoted Beganovic to a maiden F2 podium. 

Beganovic finished seventh on Sunday after starting fifth. He told Feeder Series in the paddock after the race that he had a steering loom problem that caused him to lose all gears multiple times during the race.

On reflection, Beganovic added that he “couldn’t be happier” with his first two rounds in F2 and that he was hoping to “prove some people wrong” with his performances after a difficult F3 season. He highlighted the raw pace that took him to fourth- and fifth-place qualifying results as his biggest strength in adapting to F2.

“I’m able to put things together like we saw in Qatar, like we saw here, so this is something I’m very happy to be back on top of,” Beganovic said after finishing seventh in the feature race. “Formula 3 was tough this year. I was not happy with the car, with how we were working, so it’s great to come back like this and to come back to where all my strengths are.”

Beganovic is strongly rumoured to be joining Hitech in 2025 for his first full season in the championship while retaining Ferrari backing. 

Additional reporting by Michael McClure

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency