The drivers’ title battle stole the spotlight in Formula 2’s 2024 season, but the series’ 11 teams staged an equally intriguing contest as they got to grips with a new car. During the final two rounds at Lusail and Yas Marina, Feeder Series caught up with team leaders from Invicta Racing, MP Motorsport, Hitech GP, AIX Racing and Trident Motorsport to discuss how their seasons went.

By Michael McClure

The 2024 F2 season was both pivotal and peculiar for drivers and teams, with the introduction of a new car and an unusually fluid driver market leading to radical and unexpected shifts in the balance of performance throughout the year.

Through it all, Invicta Racing began and ended the year as the team to beat. Gabriel Bortoleto took the season’s first pole position in Bahrain and ended the year as champion, while he and teammate Kush Maini helped Invicta to a 34.5-point winning margin in the teams’ championship over Campos Racing, who leapt from ninth in 2023 to second in 2024, their best placement since they won the 2008 season of F2 predecessor GP2.

MP Motorsport beat Hitech GP to third in the teams’ standings despite losing both of their original drivers mid-season. Franco Colapinto became the first driver to abandon an F2 campaign for an immediate F1 promotion since Romain Grosjean in 2009, while Dennis Hauger cut his season short two rounds early to prepare for his switch to stateside competition in Indy Nxt for 2025.

Prema Racing and ART Grand Prix, last year’s teams’ title contenders, finished only fifth and seventh respectively, split by DAMS. Two points behind ART, the renamed Rodin Motorsport in eighth endured the team’s worst season in the second tier since the former Carlin Motorsport entity finished 10th in their final GP2 season in 2016.

AIX Racing and Trident Motorsport ended the year tied on 105 points, but the former was classified ninth on account of having three wins to the latter’s two. Van Amersfoort Racing brought up the rear, though their 78-point haul was still the largest of any last-placed team in series history.

For the first time in championship history, all teams won at least one race during the season.

By the time F2 travelled to the Middle East for the season’s final two rounds, teams and drivers had already cast one eye towards 2025. But before the season ended, five of the series’ 11 team principals sat down with Feeder Series to review their outfits’ 2024 seasons.

Participating in the survey were Andy Roche, team principal of Invicta Racing; Sander Dorsman, team principal of MP Motorsport; Clive Hatton, team manager of Hitech GP; Morne Reinecke, team principal of AIX Racing; and Giacomo Ricci, team manager of Trident Motorsport.

A selection of their best responses follow, lightly edited for clarity.

Feeder Series: What was your greatest strength as a team this year, and why?

Andy Roche: It’s always a combination of things. Driver, team effort, preparation. Preparation has always been one of our strongest points to work on before the season starts, especially with a new car.

Clive Hatton: Our pace was definitely our strength this year. You can see with Paul [Aron] and Amaury [Cordeel], there’s been a lot of times we’ve put the car down on track and we’ve been on from the start of the weekend. Probably the strongest weekend we’ve had was Qatar, where Paul dominated quite well on Friday and also ended up winning his first race on Sunday.

Giacomo Ricci: Street circuits. We’ve been always competitive on the street circuits.

FS: What about your greatest weakness this year as a team?

Sander Dorsman: Losing two drivers. That doesn’t really help if you want to be consistent and build up something. Franco we lost for a good reason, at least for him. We are super happy for him and that was a golden ticket for him. But of course if you want to fight for a team championship or whatever, that doesn’t really help. I guess that’s then immediately a weakness as well in trying to do a good job and be competitive.

Morne Reinecke: We generally had strengths from when we took over, like building a base. We were working off of a relatively average base, to be fair. Prior to our taking over, I think it was more the cohesion thing, teamwork, the inner team structure was a weakness. For us, because the base was really average, to build on that base, it almost appeared as though it’s just getting better and better and better and better.

GR: High-speed circuits!

FS: In what way did each of your drivers develop the most this year?

MR: If we take Joshua [Dürksen], definitely his quali, his ability to work the tyres, get the car in the window, absolutely. Taylor [Barnard] was amazing straight out of the get-go. He was great. Also the teamwork between them was really good, and the development was just really more seeing them grow into the car – the way they adapted, how Taylor could get the car to adapt to his driving style and also how Dürksen could adapt his style to the car.

CH: For Amaury, it was his third year in F2, it was another new team for him, so he needed to get used to the team, get used to our style as a team and working with us. He’s been working on that and every weekend he’s improving. To be fair to him, he’s done a good job.

And then Paul as well, stepping up to F2, let’s say there was more for him to get used to – pit stops and having two different compounds of tyres, the jump up in compound from free practice to quali. For Paul, there was probably a bit more getting used to F2 than Amaury, but he’s gone well.

SD: For Dennis, it was his second year with us, but I think during the season he showed he was a bit more consistent as well. From moment one, he showed very good potential, I would say. The last part probably was also a bit unlucky. He got clipped, T-boned in Monza, et cetera – things like that that don’t really help you.

For Franco, if you look at him, I remember well the first F2 race for him in Abu Dhabi last year, which wasn’t great, to put it mildly. But perhaps it was a good wake-up call for him that he had to work hard over the winter to adapt himself, put more effort in things, and I think he did well.

Of course at the start of the season he still learned, which is normal, but from that moment he also showed he had very good pace already. And when the season progressed he became a bit more mature, more experienced in F2, and I think he did a good job. And then, of course, suddenly this opportunity [the Williams F1 seat] arises, and there you go.

FS: In what way did your team grow the most this year?

GR: Pit stops!

MR: Family. I know it’s clichéd, but we said it the other night. We had a team building here in Dubai, and the cohesion again – you can have 10 brilliant people working together, but if they don’t gel, it’s never going to work. And we’re getting to that point now where everyone’s working, just looking at each other and understanding what the other one’s thinking. We’re getting to that space, just building a family unit effectively, because we spend more time here than we do with family. 

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This family atmosphere came as part of a broader team restructuring catalysed by former title sponsor AIX’s takeover of PHM Racing in May. Also added to the team this year, Reinecke notes, were Damian Glass to head up the administrative side and marketing firm Five Communications.

But the composition of the grid was also uncharacteristically volatile. Eight of the 11 teams had at least one driver change during the season’s final four rounds, with MP, Trident and AIX having two changes each.

The F1 debut of Colapinto was the cause of one of MP’s swaps, and he was also the first of many drivers from the 2024 grid to graduate to professional racing seats. The 2025 F1 grid will feature Bortoleto at Sauber, Isack Hadjar at RB, Kimi Antonelli at Mercedes and Ollie Bearman at Haas. These come in addition to Formula E graduates Barnard and Zane Maloney, who now race for McLaren and Lola Yamaha Abt respectively after leaving F2 mid-season, and new Alpine reserve driver Aron, who is thought not to be racing in junior single-seaters in 2025.

After the season concluded, another graduate came in the form of Zak O’Sullivan, who left his ART Grand Prix ride in September with three rounds remaining but has since landed at Toyota-powered Kondō Racing in Super Formula.

FS: How did you adapt to the changes in your driver line-up, and did anything surprise you about your new drivers?

SD: A good thing is we know both of them quite well. Richard, the first time he entered our workshop, he was 14, so he was still a kid. Of course it helps if you know each other well and then you don’t need to learn each other anymore. When he comes back, he will see new faces in the team.

From his side, if you move from one to team to the other, of course a lot of aspects will be completely different and you need to adapt to that, but I think he did a quite a good job yesterday in doing so [qualifying in Qatar]. I think he was around P4, P5 non-stop, and it was not a lucky shot, but that’s really where we stepped in on that level. That looks promising, and of course he needs to get used a bit to our car, but it only gets better from here.

MR: I wouldn’t say anything surprised us, but we were comfortable, especially now with Cian [Shields], with his ability to take instruction and give feedback. Because the guys are fresh out of F3, your ability to try to explain or to speak mechanic is not the easiest thing, so from that perspective, that was quite surprising.

FS: A large number of F2 drivers graduated to professional single-seater seats in 2024. Why do you think that was the case this year in particular?

AR: I think a few circumstances came into play. A couple of drivers got an option to run that they wouldn’t normally have done, and that showcased F2 a lot, I feel, and brought attention to F2 drivers from F1. I think people are starting to realise how competitive F2 is and the talent that’s here. I’m glad it’s happening. It makes everything stronger and that’s how it should be.

MR: Fundamentally, there’s always those windows where next year, for the next two, three years, no one’s going to change seats, right? It’s not like we’re going to have two or three drivers go to Formula 1 next year, or presumably not. So I think it was just luck of the draw. And I mean, obviously, they’re massively talented individuals, no doubt, but for the guys where the window’s closed, where are they going to go?

SD: I don’t know the answer on that, but it’s at least fantastic to see. They’re all young people that get opportunities. And what is also quite nice to see is that they get the opportunity but also take the opportunity. They immediately do well. Liam [Lawson] – he got his first opportunity last year – Bearman, Franco, they don’t look stupid in their first outing in F1, and probably that also motivates F1 teams to think like, ’Hey, wow, out of the box, they do a pretty good job’, and perhaps they are a bit less insecure about taking a risk of putting in a rookie.

That’s the same process in F2. If you have a rookie driver you will always have some ups and downs because there’s still a learning curve, but we can look through it and see the pure pace. I think they acknowledge that this is quite a good pathway towards F1, and I think now, if you see a couple of them doing pretty well, then perhaps they are a bit more relaxed about putting a rookie in instead of an experienced driver with 20-years-plus experience.

For you as well, you see them around here and then one weekend later they’re on the other side. For a lot of people that look, it almost seems like it’s unreachable. But it’s also a nice story that, for example, for a guy like Franco, coming from a normal family, it’s possible to reach your goals and still live your dreams, basically. That’s been great.

FS: We’ve now had all 11 teams and 17 different drivers taking a victory [Pepe Martí became the 18th after this interview series was conducted]. What do you think this says about the series?

AR: It points to the strength of the championship. I think it proves there’s no one car or engine combination better than anyone else. It’s fair across the board and it’s down to the team to make the difference and the driver talent. I think it just makes it stronger. If someone was dominating all the time, I don’t think it’s very good for the championship.

CH: I think it’s good, especially in F2, because a lot can happen in a feature race. There’s pit stops, there’s a lot of strategy involved and it all depends on when the safety car comes out. It could play in your favour, it could play against you, but I think it definitely makes it a lot more interesting and close.

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This record variety came in the year F2 introduced a new car, which was unveiled at the Monza F2 and F3 round on 31 August last year. The Dallara F2 2024’s initial shakedown took place in July 2023 at Varano by former F2 driver Tatiana Calderón, and the car underwent further tests in the remainder of the year.

F2’s 11 teams each received one car in December 2023 and another in January 2024 ahead of the series shakedown in Barcelona on 24 January. Pre-season testing took place from 11 to 13 February, two and a half weeks before the season opener.

FS: When did you start preparing for the switch to the new car?

GR: As soon as we received the car, we started to prepare immediately for the year after. It’s normal to plan things extremely in advance. It’s not that to wait until you receive the car in the factory to think what you have to do. Everything is planned and decided almost one year in advance, what you want to carry in terms of development with the car, how you want to structure the team, et cetera.

SD: That goes always a bit step by step. You see that now with F3. Step by step, teams are getting information and based on the information you’re getting, then you prepare, you line yourself up to what you are getting, and now, mid-December, we get our first F3 car, for example. And then if you have that car in your hands, the real work starts, basically. But before that, of course, you get some drawings here and there from the organiser, so you can start working on toolings and things like that. The prep works starts way early when we start getting the information from the organiser, the promoter.

CH: When we started to get the info, like any bit of info you get, you start looking into it, comparing it against what was the old car. But really your main kind of research and development of the car is once you actually put it on track, which would have been Bahrain. I know we had the Barcelona shakedown, but that was kind of generally a shakedown, just getting rough ideas and getting the drivers’ feedback. The Bahrain test is the main time where you actually develop it.

FS: What challenges did you find you had to navigate in adapting to the new car? Were any of them unforeseen?

SD: You always have some surprises that suddenly pop up. Especially if there’s a new car, it’s never easy to get all the spare parts you want, which is also normal. Nowadays, everything you want to buy in a shop has a certain lead time, so also on these kind of things, it’s always a process you got through, and with these kinds of things, it cannot be perfect from moment one. That’s something you need to accept and just go with the flow and do your job as good as possible with everything you have in your hands. 

GR: This car has an extremely tight window, and it’s not so easy to stay within this working range window with the car, so it’s extremely challenging. I have to say, compared to the old car, it’s more challenging for all the teams, so that’s why you also see more up and down between the teams through the season.

Feeder Series: In hindsight, do you wish you had changed anything in how you had prepared for the new car?

AR: No, not really. If we were at the bottom of the table I’d say yes, but the car’s been quick. We’ve been quick everywhere this year, so I couldn’t say I would do anything differently at the moment.

MR: I would have ordered some more speed on Amazon! [laughs] From the base we worked from to where we’re at, I’m pretty comfortable with the progress we’ve made. Nothing happens quickly in this sport. It takes time. I don’t think there’s anything I would have fundamentally changed.

FS: How did this process differ, if at all, from when you had to adapt to previous new F2 chassis?

AR: It’s the standard. Whenever we have a new car coming in, we start working on it as soon as possible to be ready. As I said, I think one of our strengths is that preparation of the car. Historically we’ve been right there from day one with a new car, and I wanted to make sure we did the same, so that drives the people as well. They want to keep that continuing.

The first race, we’re on pole, so that proves that we’re on top of the car straight away. And I think you’ll find when they brought the 2023 car, we were exactly the same, so that drives people on. We want to maintain that record to prove we can get on top of the car very quickly. And we keep doing it, hopefully.

SD: It also probably differs a bit with the people you have in the team. In the end, it’s the people who make the team. And all those people, perhaps if we take this car and the car we had eight years ago, probably the approach was slightly different. But the people make the team, and they together decide and build the approach of how we are developing a car.

FS: What lessons can you take from adapting to the new F2 car as you prepare for F3’s own switch to a new car next year?

GR: The biggest thing, though I haven’t seen them, will be the tyre in Formula 3, the 16-inch tyre. I think you cannot take so much, to be honest, from this car except for some process. Here you have a carbon brake, the wheels are bigger, the car is heavier. Each car has its peculiarity and each car has to be developed in a different way. You can take some working methods that we are using here in several areas of Formula 2 and you can mix it a little bit for the Formula 3, but it’s a different car. 

CH: Your main learning is what you’re actually putting on track. So really, it’s about putting the F3 car down in their first test next year and seeing where you’re at. Try things because generally what’s worked on this car might not work on the F3 car.

MR: R&D, R&D, and more R&D. That’s it. From brakes, aero, flat patches, everything changes fundamentally, and just be willing to go down the R&D route to extract as much as we possibly can from the product.

F2’s 2025 season kicks off in Melbourne, Australia, on 14 March.

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency