Formula 2 visited Europe for the first time in 2026 in Monaco last weekend. Rafael Câmara took pole on Friday before Noel León scored victory in the sprint race and Nikola Tsolov won the feature. Feeder Series analyses four things we learned from the weekend’s action.

By Martin Lloyd

In Monaco, it is often assumed that there will be little action beyond qualifying. But on Sunday, F2 brought a brilliant strategic battle that saw on-track changes in the podium positions until the final lap.

Points leader Gabriele Minì topped the practice timesheets, before Câmara set the fastest lap in the first group in the customary two-part qualifying session. Tsolov topped the second group but finished one and a half tenths behind Câmara, meaning that the first group started in the odd-numbered positions. León’s win on Saturday was his second consecutive sprint victory, before Tsolov finished a dream weekend for Campos with his triumph on Sunday.

• Pre-weekend media roundtable: The highs and lows of Monaco, as told by F2 drivers
• Qualifying report and quotes: Câmara survives touch with wall to snatch maiden F2 pole in Monaco
• Sprint race report and quotes: León seals strategic F2 sprint win on Monaco streets
• Feature race report and quotes: Tsolov takes third F2 win as Câmara falters in Monaco

1. Tsolov’s sensational start continues

Three wins in the first four rounds.

It’s not a bad start to Nikola Tsolov’s first full F2 season. The Red Bull junior driver may have been expected to take some time to adjust to the championship, time that most top drivers – including recent champions Gabriel Bortoleto and Leonardo Fornaroli – have needed. Sure, there’s a long way to go – but Tsolov is the fastest driver to reach three wins in an F2 season since Felipe Drugovich in 2022. 

The Bulgarian boasts a remarkable record. After three rounds, this writer looked at his statistics and marvelled at his literal win-or-bust scorecard – that is, a ‘bust’ being a finish outside the points. That continued at Monte Carlo. After he finished 10th in Saturday’s sprint, Tsolov ran second for the majority of Sunday’s feature. His Campos Racing team made the decision to attempt to undercut race leader Rafael Câmara, a decision that paid off when the Invicta Racing driver struggled immensely to warm up his tyres and lost what was a comfortable lead margin. So slow was Câmara that Tsolov was able to draw alongside on the start-finish straight, taking the outside line approaching Sainte Dévote. 

In trying to defend, Câmara misjudged his braking point and locked up heavily, going straight into the escape road. As a result, Tsolov was promoted to first place, and he kept it until the flag to maintain that polar record. It was an incredibly calm, assured, error-free display from a driver that previously had a reputation for incidents. Tsolov’s growth is clear to see, and the next step for him will be to start scoring even when he is not on the top step of the podium. 

For now, his extreme penchant for winning has taken him to second in the standings, just one point behind points leader Gabriele Minì. Of course, he is not the first driver to start a season well, and there is still a long way to go for him to become a championship contender. But the Monte Carlo weekend will surely prove a highlight for both him and the Campos team when they look back at the rest of the season. Couple this with León’s lights-to-flag sprint race win, and the weekend was near perfect for the Valencia-based team.

2. Câmara’s brutal disappointment exposes Monaco’s strategic risks

On the other side of the coin was Câmara. The Brazilian had looked set to romp to his first win in the series, making his first real stamp on the upcoming title battle. But 25 points for first – or even 18 for second – disappeared in one split second, with one mistake. Except they didn’t, really: they disappeared in a disastrous strategic choice on Invicta’s part and struggles to warm tyres on Câmara’s. 

The differential between the warm soft tyres on which the top 10 started and the ice-cold supersofts to which they switched mid-race was remarkable. Câmara had a colossal 12-second advantage on Tsolov while climbing Beau Rivage immediately after his pit stop, yet he would not return to the famous hill on the next lap after losing out in their battle. That seems a remarkable sentence to write, yet the scenario would have felt much more surreal in the moment for Câmara and Invicta.

This is a team that has become all-conquering in F2, known for making the right calls and fine-tuning every detail of how the car will perform. The extent of tyre warm-up issues that drivers across the field experienced on Sunday morning was naturally unexpected. Indeed, Invicta may have wanted to avoid pitting Câmara for fear that he would emerge into traffic, with Tsolov only six tenths ahead of the yet-to-pit Mari Boya and Colton Herta on the ascent of Beau Rivage. But the error exposes the difficulties of predicting strategy in Monte Carlo and dispels the notion of the Norfolk-based team’s infallibility.

After the pain of losing a likely feature race win last year to a badly timed safety car, Sunday’s outcome was another difficult watch for the Invicta team. They have proven that they have enough speed to challenge regularly up front with Câmara, and Sunday improvements from experienced teammate Joshua Dürksen could lift them into their expected championship contention. But another tough weekend in the Principality, with zero points scored on Saturday or Sunday, was the worst-case scenario for Invicta at the start of an intense European season in which form, confidence and momentum play a critical role.

3. Rodin continue surge towards first 

After the horror shows of Melbourne and Miami, Rodin needed two big points hauls in the third and fourth rounds at Montréal and Monte Carlo. To have scored 80 points in those two rounds, 29 more than any other team, is an exceptional effort that reflects the obvious potential that the team have held since the start of the season. After all, their line-up features two of the bravest and fastest drivers on the grid in Stenshorne and Dunne in a car package that has regularly competed for race wins since its introduction in 2024.

While their Monte Carlo showing may not quite evoke the joyful scenes at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve two weeks ago, a haul of 31 points is still impressive. The Rodins filled the second row of the grid, and Stenshorne picked up a respectable sixth place in the reverse-grid sprint race. In the feature, he dropped one spot from his grid slot to finish fifth, but Dunne rose by one to finish second.

The groundwork for the strong weekend was laid on Friday, when they locked out the second row for the feature race on a track  notoriously difficult for overtaking. Still, their strong execution is noteworthy given that Rodin have thrown points away from good grid slots elsewhere this year.

There is much still to do this season, but in these two rounds, Rodin have risen from eighth to second in the teams’ standings, 11 behind leaders Campos. It’s an excellent recovery after a very difficult start to 2026.

4. DAMS’ subtle form shines through again

DAMS are fifth in the 2026 F2 teams’ championship. They haven’t won a race yet this year with their all-new pairing of Dino Beganovic and Roman Bilinski, yet they are quietly putting together one of the most impressive campaigns of any team in the series. 

Beganovic is sixth in the standings on 43 points, five points behind third-placed Stenshorne, but he could be much higher. In Melbourne, the Swede started on pole in the feature race but suffered an awful getaway and eventually retired from second place with engine issues. In Miami, he was second in the feature race. In Montréal, he was set for the same result with 12 laps remaining, only to be forced out of the race again by a technical issue.

In Monte Carlo, he was back on the podium with a third-place finish that he snatched from the hands of former DAMS driver Kush Maini with a last-lap pass at the Nouvelle Chicane. Though Beganovic went straight on at the chicane, so did Maini, and neither was penalised. Couple this with a first-ever podium in the series for Bilinski, who finished second in the sprint race, and an image emerges of a team firmly in their stride.

Beganovic is surely in his best, most consistent form since his 2022 FR Europe title win. This is not a surprise after he impressed in his first two F2 rounds with DAMS at the tail end of 2024, when he scored  three top-seven finishes. While Bilinski is only 17th in the standings on 11 points, he is adjusting to the series, taking his first double points score this weekend. A small further upturn in form on the Polish-British driver’s part – coupled with a continuation of Beganovic’s strong results – could make DAMS veritable teams’ championship contenders.

A title-contending team doesn’t necessarily need two regular race winners; in 2024, Maini only won one race for Invicta but scored 74 points, enough to support drivers’ champion Bortoleto as the pair delivered the teams’ title. Sure, DAMS are currently 53 points away from points leaders Rodin, so improvements are needed. But with 10 rounds remaining, a bit more speed and a bit more reliability could see DAMS finally fighting for their first teams’ title since 2019.

Results and standings after round 4 at the Circuit de Monaco

Results	P1	P2	P3
Qualifying Group A	Rafael Câmara, 1:20.923	Alex Dunne, +0.110s	Dino Beganovic, +0.176s
Qualifying Group B	Nikola Tsolov, 1:21.053	Martinius Stenshorne, +0.221s	Kush Maini, +0.285s
Sprint race (30 laps)	Noel León, 43:06.407	Roman Bilinski, +3.406s	Gabriele Minì, +4.002s
Feature race (42 laps)	Nikola Tsolov, 1:00:19.442	Alex Dunne, +9.013s	Dino Beganovic, +26.471s

Standings	Drivers	Teams
P1	Gabriele Minì, 63	Campos Racing, 107
P2	Nikola Tsolov, 62	Rodin Motorsport, 96
P3	Martinius Stenshorne, 48	MP Motorsport, 75
P4	Alex Dunne, 48	Invicta Racing, 60
P5	Noel León, 45	DAMS, 54
P6	Dino Beganovic, 43	Hitech, 46
P7	Rafael Câmara, 39	ART Grand Prix, 41
P8	Laurens van Hoepen, 33	Trident, 33
P9	Ritomo Miyata, 30	Prema Racing, 30
P10	Kush Maini, 28	AIX Racing, 20

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency