Few drivers make it to Formula 1, but their odds of doing so skyrocket by being affiliated with an F1 team’s junior driver programme. This series explores the performances of driver academy members in 2024. Today’s spotlight: the Ferrari Driver Academy.

By Daniele Spadi

This year, the Scuderia Ferrari Driver Academy – renamed from Ferrari Driver Academy at the start of the year – featured six drivers in its roster. That total was two fewer than 2023’s, with James Wharton departing Ferrari entirely and Arthur Leclerc moving into GT racing while serving as a Ferrari development driver.

Despite the academy’s high ambitions and history of producing F2 and F3 championship winners, its drivers won only two titles in 2024. Still, 2024 was not a failure for the programme, as one of its pupils got his first taste of F1 racing and will graduate to a full-time race seat in 2025.

Check out the e-book below to read all eight of the 2024 F1 driver academy reviews!

Ollie Bearman (F1, P18; F2, P12)

The driver graduating to F1 is, of course, Bearman. The Briton entered 2024 as an F2 title favourite, but it wasn’t to be. Prema struggled to adapt to the new F2 car, and while Bearman scored a spectacular pole position in Jeddah, he never got to take advantage of it after being called up by Ferrari’s F1 team to deputise for Carlos Sainz, who had to undergo surgery after contracting appendicitis.

The 19-year-old drove brilliantly to seventh on his F1 debut, but his F2 season suffered. With difficult weekends in both Melbourne and Imola, Bearman scored only six points in the first eight races, all but eliminating his title chances.

The middle of the season wasn’t much better. Bearman finished in the top 10 only three more times before the summer break, one of them being a sprint race win in Spielberg. His F2 results improved after the summer break, as he won twice more on a Saturday and finished in the top 10 in five of his last six races to end up 12th in the standings with 75 points.

The 19-year-old also returned to F1 for two more race weekends, replacing Kevin Magnussen at Haas in both Baku – where he skipped F2 – and São Paulo and scoring a point in the former event. Those came after his 2025 F1 seat with Haas was confirmed in July – news no doubt helped by his stealing the spotlight in Saudi Arabia.

Dino Beganovic (F2, P20; F3, P6)

Beganovic has been part of the programme the longest, having joined in 2020. Coming off of a promising debut F3 campaign, the 2022 FRegional Europe champion partnered with Prema once more as he looked to challenge for the title in his second season.

The start of the season, however, did not go as planned, with Beganovic failing to score in the first three races. A maiden F3 win in the Melbourne feature race then reinvigorated his campaign, and he enjoyed six consecutive points finishes until the season’s midpoint.

The 20-year-old struggled with consistency and qualifying pace in the second half of 2024. While he took three more podiums, including a sprint race win in Belgium, he dropped out of the title fight in the penultimate race and finished sixth in the drivers’ standings for the second year running.

Beganovic also partook in the 71st running of the Macau Grand Prix, the first event using FR machinery. Racing for Theodore Prema, he qualified 15th, recovered to 10th in the qualifying race and finished eighth in the main event.

The Swede then made the most of his two-round F2 appearance with DAMS at the end of the year. He finished all four races he entered in the top 10 and secured his first F2 podium in the Abu Dhabi sprint race. Beganovic will continue in F2 in 2025, this time with Hitech.

Rafael Câmara (FRegional Europe, P1; FRegional Middle East, P3)

Though many expected Câmara to step up to F3 after a great rookie season in FR Europe, the Brazilian stayed in the European series for one more year with a clear goal in mind: to win the title. To maximise his preparation, the Brazilian competed in FR Middle East first, finishing the season in third place for the second year running while taking home two wins.

At the start of his second FR Europe season, Câmara made his intentions clear from the beginning by winning four of the opening seven races of the season and finishing second in the other three. He scored points for fourteen races in a row in a feat of great consistency before not taking any points from a rough weekend at the Red Bull Ring.

Câmara was already on the brink of the title by then, and he claimed it at the next round in Barcelona; finishing on the podium in three of the final four races ensured he won with a 73-point gap over Wharton. Coming off seven wins total and five additional trips to the podium, Câmara will join the 2025 F3 grid with Trident – the team that won the last two drivers’ championships – as an early candidate for the crown.

Tuukka Taponen (F3, P31; FRegional Europe, P3; FRegional Middle East, P1)

Another star of FR in 2024 was Taponen, who joined the Ferrari programme at the end of 2022 ahead of his first full year in single-seaters. After racing in three F4 series in 2023, Taponen stepped up to FR Middle East at the start of 2024. A near-faultless campaign saw him collect five wins and four more podiums, finish in the top seven in all 15 races and claim the title with a whopping 79 points over Taylor Barnard.

In his maiden FR Europe campaign,Taponen finished on the podium on debut in Hockenheim and won his first race at round three in Zandvoort. He then hit new heights with three victories in a row in both Hungaroring races and the first race in Mugello, putting him just 29 points behind Câmara in the title fight at the season’s midpoint.

Bad luck and errors, however, hamstrung Taponen in the second half of the season. With five retirements from the last nine races, the 18-year-old dropped to third in the standings, 111 points behind Câmara and 38 behind Wharton.

The Finn also headed to Macau in November with R-ace GP as a favourite for victory, but an accident in the qualifying race left him 26th on the grid for the main event. Taponen recovered to 10th in the race, finishing 10 seconds behind race winner Ugo Ugochukwu.

Next year, Taponen graduates to F3 with ART Grand Prix. He already made his F3 debut with the team when he substituted for Nikola Tsolov at Spa in July.

Maya Weug (FRegional Europe, P29; F1 Academy, P3)

Weug was one of the surprises of the 2023 FR Europe season, collecting all 27 points of  KIC Motorsport’s year-end total. During the off-season, Weug was looking at the possibility of being picked up by teams’ champions Prema to compete once more in the series.

However, the 20-year-old later announced she would join the F1 Academy grid with Prema in 2024, representing Ferrari. The Spanish-Dutch driver looked quick and comfortable with the car straight away, collecting two podium finishes in Jeddah, but two challenging race weekends in Miami and Barcelona – the latter of which yielded no points – essentially put her out of title contention early on.

Despite pre-season expectations and her prowess in faster FR machinery, Weug ultimately lacked the pace to fight with the top two drivers of the series, Abbi Pulling and Doriane Pin. She collected eight podium finishes throughout the season, with her sole victory coming at the last race in Abu Dhabi, and ended the season in third place with 177 points.

In September, she added the Imola round of FR Europe with KIC to her calendar and finished 22nd and 14th in the two races.

Weug finished the season in third place with 177 points. Her 2025 plans are still unannounced, but she is expected to stay in F1 Academy for another year alongside a campaign in a second championship, as Pulling and Pin managed this year.

Aurelia Nobels (F1 Academy, P12; Saudi F4, P11; F4 UAE, P38; Euro 4, P29; British F4, P26)

Nobels was the academy’s statistically most active member in 2024, racing in five different F4-level series. To start off the year, the 17-year-old took part in the opening two rounds of F4 UAE with Saintéloc, achieving a best result of 19th, before racing in round three of Saudi Arabian F4 at Lusail, where she finished all four races in the points and stood on the podium in the final race.

The Brazilian then began her main 2024 campaign in F1 Academy with ART by scoring points on her debut in Jeddah, though those were her only ones until Zandvoort. There, she enjoyed her best weekend of the season, finishing seventh and a season-high fifth in the two races. She added three more points finishes in Qatar and Abu Dhabi to her season tally of 29.

Nobels also made appearances in British F4’s Zandvoort round with Argenti and Euro 4’s Monza season finale with ART, though she did not reach the top 10 in any races.

After failing to score points in both Italian F4 and Euro 4 in a tough 2023, Nobels aimed for a step forward in 2024. Twelfth in the F1 Academy drivers’ standings was not the result she would have wanted, but she is expected to have another chance in the series next year to improve on her 2024 performances.

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency