Joshua Dürksen was one of the surprises of the 2024 Formula 2 season after making an unorthodox jump up from FRegional. At the end of his rookie year in the category, the AIX Racing driver gave Feeder Series an inside look into what drove his unlikely success.

By Michael McClure

One year ago, Joshua Dürksen just wanted a few points.

Dürksen leapt up to F2 from the Formula Regional European Championship, in which he finished 14th and 19th in 2022 and 2023 respectively. In doing so, he was one of just two drivers on the grid to skip over F3 – the other being Andrea Kimi Antonelli, whose title win marked his fourth championship in single-seaters within 12 months. Moreover, Dürksen had joined what was then PHM Racing, who in 2023 became the first second-tier F1 support series team not to score since DPR in 2009. The odds were firmly against Paraguay’s first-ever F2 driver.

After two F2 rounds, Dürksen said his target was “to be really close to the top 10, top 12”. He of course meant race finishes, not championship placements. When Feeder Series reminds him of his response almost nine months later at F2’s 2024 season finale in Abu Dhabi, he chuckles.

“It has changed completely,” he said on the Thursday of the race weekend. “I’m laughing now because at the beginning, I was aiming at top 15, finishing top 10, realistically. Really, the season has changed a lot. Now we’ve got three podiums in total, including one win, and then 12th in the standings right now and with good pace overall in these last races.”

Entering the 14th and final round, he was ahead of such known quantities as Ferrari junior Ollie Bearman, who already had three F1 grands prix under his belt by that point. His new goal, he said, was “not anymore P15 or top 10 but [to] get a feature race win.”

It took him just three days to achieve it.

“I was starting P8. I was quite sure I would get to top five. I was quite sure as well that the chances of a podium were quite big. But a feature race win, I was not expecting that, to be honest,” he told Feeder Series afterwards. “The race went just perfect, and somehow I didn’t realise in what position I was. My engineer never told me. Then I crossed the line and he says, ‘You did it! You did it!’ I’m like, ‘What? What position?’ ‘P1’, and I’m like, ‘what?!’ 

“It’s crazy, but I think it was the correct thing to not let me know because like this, I just kept focused on my driving. I knew I was in the front – I was quite sure I’m in top P3 or P2, something like this – but I didn’t think I was P1. I didn’t know it, so for sure the emotions were quite big.”

Dürksen’s 1.791-second triumph over champion Gabriel Bortoleto propelled him to 10th in the drivers’ standings with 87 points. It also gave his team, presently AIX Racing, their first feature race win across several identities and owners going back to 2018.

Before winning at their home race, the team had failed to score in 2023 and in the first three rounds of 2024 while competing as PHM Racing. On May 13, it was announced that Dubai-based investment group AIX had acquired the team; six days later, they scored a breakthrough podium courtesy of rookie Dürksen in the Imola feature race. Six days after that, Dürksen’s teammate Taylor Barnard took victory in the Monaco sprint race.

But besides getting more track time since the start of the year, what was the secret to Dürksen and AIX’s combined turnaround?

“I was able to transmit to my team what I needed from the car and they could understand it and translate that into the car and into the performance,” the 21-year-old answered. “They have studied a lot. They have tested a lot of things on the free practice, on qualifying, stuff like this. I think this helped us a lot to understand better the car. I think this teamwork together, it’s really meshing and it’s helping for getting these better results.”

Intra-team cohesion was the trait new team principal Morne Reinecke identified to Feeder Series as AIX’s biggest area of growth in 2024. Dürksen added that the new leadership’s financial investments have also paid off on track.

“The boss is a different boss now, but basically that only. With these new bosses, they’ve also invested a lot in the team to buy new equipment, better equipment, more precise,” Dürksen said. “When we do the analysis and the conclusions we get, these tools also help a lot.”

After his maiden podium, Dürksen achieved his first front-row start in June and became a race winner in September at Baku, the 12th round of 14. The 21-year-old excelled both there and at Monza the round before, finishing in the top five in all four races at the two venues known for their long straights and high top speed.

“We found the sweet spot on the low-downforce setup,” he said. “There’s still some work to do on the high downforce, but this is my feeling. I think the car somehow adapts better for the low and medium downforce than the high downforce.”

Fresh off the feature race victory in Abu Dhabi, Dürksen came into F2’s three-day post-season test at the circuit with renewed confidence. He finished the first morning fourth and the afternoon session second before being excluded from the latter’s results after his car was found to have run underweight. 

The next day, he topped the timesheets in the morning with a 1:35.583, which proved the best time of the test. But during the lunch break, as mechanics surrounded the rear of the car, it was clear something was amiss. Shortly before the start of the afternoon session, the engine, now wrapped in a large, blue plastic bag, was being wheeled away on a transport trolley.

“What they told us is that the engine was on its last days, so they wanted to prevent a bigger issue,” Dürksen said. “I have the same engine from the start of the year. I only had to change once the engine because of my Imola crash, where I had to get another one while they repaired my old one. Once they repaired it, I got it back and that’s the one I used now, so my engine really has a lot of mileage. It was expected that it should stop working. They changed it before something bigger happens.”

The engine change appeared to be a small inconvenience. Dürksen eventually made it out on track just past the afternoon session’s halfway point and once again set the best time of the session as most drivers focused on race runs. That session was his last outing in the car in 2024 before Argentine sports car driver Nico Varrone took over his car for the final day of the test.

“It [the issues] affected almost nothing, luckily, because we were not planning to run as much as maybe the others were doing,” Dürksen said. “On the first day, we did a lot of testing on the car, aero testing and testing different stuff. For day two, we still made some of those, but also I’m coming from the race weekend. We had a good pace, we had a good race, we knew more or less what we have to do.”

FR Europe graduates Dürksen and Antonelli – who placed sixth overall with 113 points – both upstaged several rookies who followed a more traditional route. With the advantage of hindsight a year later, would Dürksen advise others to follow a path like his?

“I don’t know if I would recommend it, to be honest,” he said. “If you’re not ready enough and confident enough to make this jump, it will be a bit tough because in Formula 2, all the F1 teams are looking.

“In Formula 2, you come basically to deliver. You’ve got, I would say, two years to show what you can do. The third year is not as important – it’s not as attractive anymore as the second year, for example, so you must be then confident that you will be able to make a good job in this first two years to show up. Because after this, either way, you go to F1 or you go to another championship.

“The good thing of going into F3 is that you get more running, you get more time to prepare yourself to then jump into the F2 and then shine from the word go. It has its pros and cons, so I don’t know.

“For me, it was quite a good jump also because the cars were new, so this of course gave us also more opportunities to make a better job because everything has to start from zero, from scratch. I don’t know if I would recommend it. It depends on each driver’s situation, basically.”

By the time he made his F2 debut, Dürksen already had 160 single-seater races under his belt, a number higher than the totals of several series veterans. The last 20 of those, in his sophomore FR Europe season with Arden Motorsport, were crucial to his F2 success, he said – even if they were responsible for some of his worst finishes.

“People see the results, but they cannot see everything that happens behind the scenes, and this year [2023], I must say, was the year I learned the most and I grew up the most and I matured the most,” he said.

“Even if it was a tough year, I think that year was key for me to [be] able to make this jump and perform as I’m doing now. If I wouldn’t have this tough season, I don’t think I would be as prepared and as matured as I am now.”

Dürksen will return for his second F2 season this year at AIX Racing alongside Cian Shields. They will join the rest of the newly finalised 2025 F2 grid at pre-season testing in Barcelona from 24–26 February.

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency