Heading into the Hungarian Grand Prix weekend, Roman Staněk has secured three podiums in his last three Formula 2 rounds – no mean feat for a driver who had not finished on the rostrum for more than a year before. Feeder Series spoke to Staněk, his Invicta Racing teammate Leonardo Fornaroli and Invicta team principal James Robinson to find out what’s made the Czech driver tick.

By Martin Lloyd

It was just before lunchtime on the Saturday of the Silverstone weekend when Feeder Series spoke to Staněk. His performances were improving, with a season’s best fourth place in qualifying at Barcelona followed by third place in the Austria sprint.

What needed to happen for a proper breakthrough result, this writer asked? Staněk had clear pace but had been unable to show it as yet over the course of a full race weekend. 

“It’s a difficult question,” Staněk said. “You have to be a bit lucky, as I said, with the car. You have to have the car spot-on for the pace because the race is long, so many laps, and the pace must be very good. And also from my driving, everyone makes mistakes and it’s quite difficult to take care of the tyres.”

In his final sentence, Staněk alluded to the tyre struggles that he endured in the Barcelona feature race. Having run fourth early on, he pushed too hard at the start of his hard-tyre stint. That led to severe degradation in the latter part of the race, and Staněk dropped down the order to an eventual finishing position of 11th. This compounded a tough day for Invicta, with Fornaroli serving a 10-second stop-go penalty for a starting procedure infringement and eventually retiring because of an incorrectly fitted tyre. 

Staněk’s best opportunity for a strong feature race result in 2025 had passed him by, but Invicta stood by him. It could have been perceived as a risk to have signed Staněk in the first place given that his F2 record featured 18th- and 22nd-place finishes in the drivers’ standings. But team principal James Robinson was steadfast in his belief in new recruit Staněk from the start of the season. At Silverstone, he told Feeder Series more about the qualities that the 21-year-old has brought to the team. 

“We know he has the potential,” Robinson said. “He definitely has the speed. His technical feedback has been outstanding. The way he works with the engineers, the way he’s able to articulate how the car is behaving, is really impressive. One of the best I’ve ever seen from any racing driver.

“Where he has struggled sometimes has been executing against that,” he added. “We know he has that ability. It’s just a case of delivering it consistently and just executing from mind into inputs that go into the car.”

That execution still needed work at Silverstone. While Staněk secured third in the sprint race, joining first-time winner Fornaroli on the podium, he spun out of the feature race after making a misjudged pit stop for dry tyres. He had been running seventh before the stop.  

Three weeks later, the championship moved to Spa, undoubtedly Staněk’s best weekend of the season so far. He qualified third, finished sixth in the sprint and then won the feature race, taking home a haul of 28 points. Granted, both Alex Dunne and Arvid Lindblad finished ahead of him on the road on Sunday, but each received post-race penalties for technical infringements. Ritomo Miyata also looked to have more pace, but his lap 16 spin dropped him behind Staněk. 

Still, Staněk profited when others faltered, even if he did not have the pace to win on the road. Through consistent progress while at Invicta, he had finally mastered the execution that Robinson had pointed out.

“The first two years I was with Trident and that was tricky. It was very difficult. I didn’t learn as much as here with these guys. They’ve helped me massively. They have a very good racing mentality which I love,” he said in the post–feature race press conference at Spa.

“At the beginning of the year, I did some mistakes. [I was] unlucky. I struggled to actually perform at the top. Now seems to be a bit better, but every day we can improve.”

Teammate and championship leader Fornaroli boasts a record of just two non-scores in 17 races, and the challenge for Staněk now is to lengthen his own consistent run of form. While he is likely out of drivers’ championship contention – he sits 10th in the standings on 57 points, 68 behind Fornaroli – he has a vital role to play in the teams’ standings. Invicta took a 13-point lead over Campos at Spa with their double win, marking the first time this season that the reigning champions have led the way. 

“It’s very nice to have him as a teammate,” Fornaroli said about Staněk when speaking to Feeder Series at Silverstone. “We’ve known each other for three years because we were together in Trident in different categories. We are very good friends, so it’s very nice to be [together] this year. He also has a lot of experience. He is a very quick driver so I learn a lot from him. He is very, very quick in the high-speed sections.”

With the support of Invicta, Roman Staněk has gone from being a driver most often found in the bottom half of the field to one who regularly competes for podiums. With his win in Belgium, Staněk has now taken his breakthrough result. His task now is to sustain Invicta’s fight to retain their teams’ championship. 

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency