Oliver Goethe has endured a difficult first full season in Formula 2. After his late-season switch to F2 last year, his 2025 campaign has been a struggle, with the MP Motorsport driver sitting 16th in the drivers’ standings after 10 rounds. He spoke to Feeder Series about his campaign so far and where he feels he still needs to improve. 

By Martin Lloyd 

Goethe’s move to F2 came about in August 2024, when Franco Colapinto was called up by Williams Racing to compete in F1 and MP Motorsport needed a replacement driver. In stepping up from F3 on short notice, Goethe – then seventh with Campos Racing, 35 points off the championship lead – abandoned his slim hopes of mounting a title challenge in the Monza finale.

A year on, he does not regret giving up his shot at a higher F3 finish.

“In our heads, in the long run, it was the better decision to make,” Goethe told Feeder Series at Silverstone. “It gave me a bit of experience for this year, which could also help me a lot at the end of this season having been to those tracks already.

“Of course, I was technically in the fight for the championship or in the fight for the top three, being more realistic. It was not easy to miss the final round, but in the end, we know my position would’ve been around top five in the championship if I had an okay weekend in Monza, and we didn’t want to miss this opportunity to get a bit of a head start in F2.” 

In those four rounds at the end of 2024, Goethe scored points in two feature races, with a best result of fourth at Lusail.

This was a positive introduction to F2 for Goethe ahead of his first full season in 2025. But he has found the going tough since then, with just 23 points accrued so far and a current position of 16th in the drivers’ standings.

By contrast, teammate Richard Verschoor is contending for the title and has taken two feature race wins. 

While Verschoor has qualified in the top 10 at all but three events, Goethe has had the inverse scorecard, placing 11th or lower in all but three sessions. Incredibly, those weekends are perfect opposites: MP has put one of their cars in the top 10 at every event, but never both of them. Goethe has been the lead car and top-10 qualifier only at Imola, Spa and Budapest, and he feels that this qualifying weakness has been a key factor in his disappointing record so far this season.

“It’s been strange because my results at the end of last year were probably even better than this year,” Goethe said. “We’re missing some pace in qualifying, which is the trend of this year, but the race pace is really strong, so the potential is there to do something really good. 

“It’s very frustrating because we know if we qualify well, I’ll be in the fight for podiums and wins. It’s so close even if it doesn’t seem it.”

Goethe’s qualifying is improving. Since this interview took place, he qualified 10th at Spa and sixth at Budapest. He converted those into three points finishes in the four races that took place across the two weekends, having scored on only two occasions up to that point.

The 20-year-old identified the issue as one of restraint, feeling that he already had the outright pace to challenge at the sharp end of the field. 

“For qualifying, I need to be more on the limit because we haven’t had the pace in particular in qualifying,” he said. “We need to make sure we do everything we can to get into that top 10 and start the momentum and give me confidence there. 

“Once you’re in the top 10, you can fight for good positions in both races, and that’s the important part of the weekend. Our approach is very focused on that right now.”

Goethe has had an uptick in performance, but it has come too late for him to challenge for a high championship placement. He needs to find the form that he showed when he burst onto the F3 scene as a mid-season substitute for Campos in 2022, when he led the field at Spa in his second-ever feature race before finishing fourth.

That year, he also won the Euroformula Open championship with Motopark. In the following F3 season, he finished eighth in a full campaign with Trident, taking a feature race win at Silverstone. 

Goethe joined the Red Bull Junior Team towards the end of the year and moved to Campos for 2024. He scored in all but three races before his move to F2 and took three podiums, including a sprint victory in Imola.

In F3, Goethe has already proved his ability to score points consistently, but he needs to find more points finishes to secure another year in the second tier.

“Of course it would be nice to get a decent final position in the championship,” Goethe said.  “But for the rest of this season, my goal is to do the best that I can each race and to show Red Bull and to show the team – to show sponsors, to show everyone – that I can do it, also myself. 

“I need some good results for the rest of the year. That’s the goal, just to show that I’m capable of fighting at the top. Then we see what happens for next year, but I need some good results to be able to continue for anyone.”

Goethe is one of three Red Bull Junior Team drivers currently competing in F2, alongside Campos drivers Pepe Martí, currently sixth in the standings, and Arvid Lindblad, currently seventh. The German driver doesn’t feel that his status as a Red Bull driver puts extra pressure on him. 

“I don’t think it’s necessarily pressure from Red Bull,” Goethe added. “The goal is to get to Formula 1, so even if I wasn’t with Red Bull, I’d need to get results. The pressure’s on for everyone. I don’t look at it as an added pressure; I look at it as a motivation because I want to impress them and to get the results for them to be able to give me the chance one day.”

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency