The 2025 Formula 2 season produced 18 different podium finishers, 12 different winners and a second successive rookie champion. With the season finale in Abu Dhabi behind us, Feeder Series ranks the top 10 drivers of the series’ ninth season under the F2 moniker.

By Calla Kra-Caskey and Martin Lloyd

10) Joshua Dürksen (P9, 107 points)

Joshua Dürksen bookended his sophomore F2 season with victories, becoming the first F2 driver to win the first and last race of a season in series history. The middle of his season, however, was a different story, as the Paraguayan driver finished in the points just twice between round three in Jeddah and round 10 in Hungary. With these mixed results, he eventually finished ninth in the standings, taking all 107 of AIX Racing’s points. 

After his strong end to 2024 and his victory in the Melbourne sprint – the only race held that weekend – Dürksen looked ready to put up a competitive season. In Bahrain, he was disqualified from a sprint race podium before taking 10th in the feature race. His results went downhill from there, giving him just 12 points across the next eight rounds. Dürksen often narrowly missed out on the top 10, finishing 11th or 12th seven times in that span. 

The AIX driver’s season turned around after the summer break in Monza, where he stood on the podium in both races. He then took a feature race podium in Baku; a sprint podium in Lusail; and podiums in both Abu Dhabi races, including an impressive victory from eighth on the grid in the feature. His results, in fact, are quite similar to last year’s: very strong results in the final four rounds of the season, plus a bright spot in Austria. That points to a combination of AIX’s and Dürksen’s strengths, which often show up at power circuits. 

Next year, Dürksen moves to Invicta Racing, the top team in this F2 era. With a definite car upgrade from the AIX machine he’s been driving, he’ll have a chance to fight for the title depending on whether he can see off F3 champion teammate Rafael Câmara. It’ll be the most important challenge of his career to date. Calla Kra-Caskey

9) Dino Beganovic (P7, 116 points) 

Dino Beganovic stepped up to F2 for his first full season after an impressive two-round stint with DAMS at the end of 2024. The Swedish driver couldn’t hit the same heights as Hitech teammate Luke Browning did, finishing 46 points behind the Briton, but nonetheless showed flashes of quality that marked him out as a potential championship contender in 2026.

The 21-year-old started the year inconsistently, with third places in the Bahrain sprint race and Imola feature but only one other points score in the first 12 races. This made for difficult reading for Beganovic, with Browning regularly featuring on the podium in the first half of the season, but the Ferrari junior’s pace was evident from his pole position at Imola. From Spielberg onwards, Beganovic delivered much more regularly, enabling him to rocket up the drivers’ standings to seventh place by the end of the season. 

A particular highlight was his double podium in Baku, where he took his first F2 win in the sprint race and then finished third in the feature. A return to DAMS beckons for 2026, and Beganovic may be confident of further improvement ahead of his second F2 season. The French team took Jak Crawford to fifth- and second-place finishes in the standings in his two seasons with the team. Martin Lloyd

8) Pepe Martí (P8, 112 points) 

Pepe Martí spent his second F2 year pretty evenly matched with Campos Racing and Red Bull Junior Team stablemate Arvid Lindblad. While Lindblad was promoted to F1, Martí’s strong performance also sealed him a professional drive. Following round 12 in Baku, he departed the series – and the Red Bull stable – for a Formula E seat with Cupra Kiro. 

Martí’s sophomore season was certainly an improvement from his rather disappointing first year. He started 2025 off strong, taking a win in the Bahrain sprint race and a podium in the Jeddah sprint. He took two more victories later in the season at the Spielberg and Budapest sprints. His only non-reverse-grid podium came in Monza, where he recovered from 15th on the grid to finish third. 

Although Martí was ahead of Lindblad by three points when he left the series after Baku, he was outqualified by the British driver nine races to three during their time as teammates. They traded spots in the standings over the course of the season, but several late-season incidents involving Lindblad helped the Spanish driver to pull ahead. 

Martí ultimately finished eighth in the standings after missing the final two rounds. His F1 dreams seem to have come to an end, but a Formula E seat alongside fellow former Red Bull junior Dan Ticktum is nothing to sniff at. CKC

7) Victor Martins (P11, 97 points)

Victor Martins can be considered, with qualifications, one of the unluckiest F2 drivers of recent times. When given the opportunity and the machinery, Martins was a consistent frontrunner in his three F2 seasons – but the stars very rarely aligned for him.

The 2022 F3 champion spent much of 2025 at the front of the field, particularly on Fridays. The Frenchman qualified on the front two rows in nine of the 14 rounds but often failed to finish in those positions. He was often blighted by bad luck, whether that be the cancellation of the Melbourne feature race,  which he was due to start on pole;  a stall from third on the grid at Imola; or his role as the innocent victim of a first-corner collision with Alex Dunne at Monaco.

Meanwhile, Martins was often blighted by the poor race pace of his ART Grand Prix machine. The French team, with whom he has raced for five of the past six years, have seemingly struggled to master the Dallara F2 2024. 

His season, therefore, was full of what-if scenarios, but there were some bright spots on race days. Most notably, he won the Lusail feature race – a just reward for two difficult seasons in which he was expected to challenge for the title. The 24-year-old Williams junior ended his troubled stint in F2 earlier this month, with a move to the Alpine Hypercar project a possibility. ML 

6) Arvid Lindblad (P6, 134 points)

Like Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli, Lindblad has been fast-tracked through the F1 junior ladder. A year behind the Italian driver, the 18-year-old too made his F2 debut with astronomical expectations and an F1 seat practically promised to him before he even drove in Melbourne. And again like Antonelli, Lindblad finished sixth in the championship. He’ll graduate to F1 next year with Racing Bulls, joining his prodigy predecessor on the grid. 

Lindblad started the year strong and looked like a possible title contender, at least early in the season. He became the youngest F2 race winner with his sprint victory in Jeddah and finished in the top 10 for the first 11 races of the year. That streak ended with his pole-to-win display at the Barcelona feature race, at which point he was just eight points off the championship lead, behind Dunne and Richard Verschoor. 

But in the second part of the season, his title charge fell apart. Bad luck certainly played a part – at the Spa feature race, for instance, he was promoted to victory after Dunne received a penalty before being disqualified for tyre pressures that were too low. He also made mistakes of his own, however, including a disastrous Monza feature race in which he crashed after a safety car restart. 

Lindblad outqualified his more experienced Campos teammate for most of the season, but despite his relatively strong qualifying record, four of his five podiums still came in the reverse-grid sprint races. The last of those podiums was a sprint win in Abu Dhabi, allowing him to close his F2 season and junior single-seater career on a high. 

Based on the expectations upon him, Lindblad had a disappointing season. Nevertheless, the 18-year-old impressed Red Bull enough for an F1 promotion. Just three and a half years out from karting, he’ll attempt to prove himself on the biggest stage in motorsport. CKC

5) Richard Verschoor (P3, 170 points)

After four years of trying, Richard Verschoor finally fought for an F2 championship in 2025. The Dutchman took the highly unconventional step of remaining in the championship for a fifth season, becoming the most experienced driver in the series’ history in doing so, and enjoyed his most successful campaign.

He moved back to MP Motorsport on a full-time basis for the first time since 2021, winning four races and took two additional podiums. He finished third with 170 points, beating his personal record from 2023 by 62 points even if 2025 featured one more race. But Verschoor’s form tailed off markedly in the second half of the season. Having taken the points lead at Spielberg, he lost it with two non-scores at Spa and struggled to keep pace with new leader Leonardo Fornaroli. 

As an F2 veteran of 129 race starts, Verschoor would have been expected to put up a stronger fight. He made key mistakes, including his Monza qualifying crash that landed him outside the top 10, that stopped him from challenging Fornaroli more closely or beating Crawford to second place. Still, Verschoor took the joint-most race wins of any driver and outscored teammate Oliver Goethe by 133 points. 

The 25-year-old also secured a spot on the McLaren Driver Development Programme for 2026, joining an F1 team for the first time and making the season a success despite his championship disappointment. Verschoor will race in the European Le Mans Series next season with Duqueine Team in the LMP2 class. ML

4) Alex Dunne (P5, 150 points)

Alex Dunne finished his rookie F2 year fifth in the standings with two victories and two pole positions, but those numbers don’t tell the full story of his season. Dunne looked fast from the outset, and a strong early few rounds meant he briefly led the championship. On the other hand, he hasn’t shedded his reputation for on-track incidents, and that – combined with a string of misfortune – meant the title was just out of reach this year. 

Dunne’s first F2 points came with his feature race victory in Bahrain, a statement from fourth on the grid with an eight-second winning margin. Two rounds later, he became the first repeat winner in the Imola feature race, this time starting from fifth. The next week, he took his first pole position, edging out Martins around the streets of Monaco. With a poor start and an overly ambitious move in the first corner, however, Dunne caused a pile-up that collected nearly half the grid, prompting a penalty in Spain – plus massive blowback online. 

In the Barcelona round, second in the sprint and fifth in the feature pushed the Irishman into the championship lead, a great response to the round prior. But it didn’t last. He was disqualified from second in the Spielberg feature for plank wear, dropped from victory to ninth for a starting procedure infringement in Spa after taking pole by over four tenths of a second, taken out of the Monza feature race by Lindblad, and knocked out of fourth place by an errant Fornaroli in Baku. 

Simultaneously, Dunne obtained impressive results in several F1 practice outings, including finishing fourth when he took the wheel of Lando Norris’ McLaren in Austria. The 20-year-old departed the McLaren junior team in October, however, seeing no F1 future with the team. He was briefly rumored to be joining Red Bull’s junior squad before negotiations were understood to have collapsed, and he is now reportedly being courted by Alpine. 

Dunne’s second F2 season next year will be of utmost importance. His pace is already clear, so if he can sort out his racecraft in his return to the series with Rodin next year, an F2 championship – and possibly even an F1 seat should he collect the mandatory Super Licence points and impress the right people – could certainly be in his future. CKC

3) Jak Crawford (P2, 175 points)

Jak Crawford entered this season aiming to deliver a full title challenge for the first time. His 2024 fifth-place finish set Crawford up for championship contention in 2025, with the DAMS driver finally bringing his clear potential to a title battle for the first time. He took four wins on his way to second place in the standings, revitalising his season after a difficult opening period of not scoring in the first four races. 

The Aston Martin–affiliated driver was expected to mount a championship challenge ahead of the new season. He first showed his form with three podium finishes from the third through the fifth rounds. This period included wins at Imola and Monaco, although the latter was largely due to a well-timed transition from a virtual safety car to the full safety car, allowing him to take a pit stop with a lower time loss than his rivals who were ahead of him. 

Crawford continued this form into mid-summer, finishing third in the Spielberg sprint and then winning the Silverstone feature race. But four non-scores at Spa and Monza, interrupted by a double podium at Budapest, made the title win a long shot. His feature race win at Baku briefly reignited hope and sent him to second in the standings, but another poor round at Lusail ensured that he was left to fight for second place at the final round at Yas Marina.

Two points scores – alongside Verschoor’s and Browning’s poor performances – enabled Crawford to keep second place in the final standings. He eventually finished 36 points behind Fornaroli, a strong yet disappointing result given that this was his third year in the series. ML

2) Luke Browning (P4, 162 points)

Although he ultimately finished fourth, Luke Browning put together an impressive and consistent F2 season this year for Hitech. He took nine podiums, with five coming in the feature races, and managed one victory and one pole position. 

The hallmark of Browning’s season was his consistency, which was evident from the opening rounds of the season. The British driver was technically not a rookie, having participated in three F2 rounds at the end of last year, but he immediately performed as though he had several years of F2 experience under his belt. In the first five rounds, he took five podiums, including an impressive run at Imola in which he took third in the sprint race and second in the feature. 

His pace cooled off a bit after that, and he was involved in incidents in Barcelona, Spielberg and Spa. But some of his most impressive drives came in the middle of the season – namely, two stellar wet-weather podiums at the Silverstone and Spa feature races. In Monza, he managed to convert his first F2 pole position into his first victory in the series. 

Browning couldn’t quite keep pace with championship winner Fornaroli, ending the season with 162 points to the Italian driver’s 211, and an uncharacteristically off-pace final two rounds in Lusail and Abu Dhabi meant he finished behind Crawford and Verschoor in the standings. But weighing his experience against theirs, Browning was right among them for the top drivers of the season. He’ll graduate from F2 after just one season, with a Super Formula seat looking likely and a possible reserve drive at Williams in the cards. CKC

1) Leonardo Fornaroli (P1, 211 points)

In 2025, Leonardo Fornaroli was undoubtedly the class of the F2 field. He entered the season with the Invicta machinery that won both 2024 titles, but his triumph was by no means a foregone conclusion. 

The Italian driver’s dramatic 2024 F3 title win set the stage for an anticipated assault on F2 in 2025, and he started strongly with second place in the Melbourne sprint. From there, Fornaroli never looked back. 

At the start of the weekend, Fornaroli’s Invicta team were largely technically infallible, helping him to find the right setup balance to qualify in the top 10 in every single round. From there, he scored in all but two of the 25 races that took place before his title win was confirmed. He only won one feature race, in Hungary, but his points-scoring was so steady that his rivals could hardly keep up. 

Unlike predecessor Gabriel Bortoleto, he needed no adjustment period to the series and set a consistent level of performance from the first round. His two retirements in Barcelona and Spielberg did not throw him off course, and it was only once the title was confirmed at Lusail that his form dipped at Yas Marina. 

While some drivers may have had greater raw pace – Dunne in qualifying at Spa springs to mind – Fornaroli’s metronomic form was unmatchable. He rarely made the erratic mistakes of others, while Invicta’s machinery was strong at every circuit. Perhaps Fornaroli’s greatest achievement was in beating teammate Roman Staněk by 106 points despite their equal head-to-head qualifying record. Fornaroli and Invicta made for a formidable combination, and both became worthy champions. ML

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency