The 2026 season of Formula 2 marks the 10th edition of the championship in its current guise. To mark the occasion, Feeder Series is bringing you a new series with interviews from those who have been there since the beginning, starting with championship CEO Bruno Michel.

By Cliona Sheerin

10 years. 249 races. Nine champions. Year on year, the stars of tomorrow come to the single-make FIA Formula 2 Championship to hone their raw speed and racecraft on iconic circuits around the world. Through it all, they experience, as a collective, the highs and lows of motorsport – and so much more.

The series has been continuously evolving in the years between the first race weekend in Bahrain in March 2017 dominated by future F1 race winner Charles Leclerc to the most recent bumper weekend of action across three races in Baku. And one person who has overseen it all is current CEO Bruno Michel, who had a hand in the creation of F2 and its predecessor series GP2.

“There’s been a lot of changes,” Michel told Feeder Series. “If you look at the situation 10 years ago, we had less than 12 events a year. We were racing mainly in Europe and in the Middle East. The visibility of F2 was not that big; the awareness of F2 was not that big at the time. We took a massive advantage of the way Formula 1 has been developing over the last 10 years as well under the leadership of Stefano Dominicalli and Liberty [Media].”

Liberty Media took over the commercial rights for the second tier of single-seater motorsport ahead of the 2017 season, in doing so rebranding the championship from the GP2 Series to Formula 2. The  Dallara GP2/11 – in circulation since 2011 – was retained as the 20-car field took to the Bahrain International Circuit for the first of 11 rounds, 10 of which ran in support of the Formula One World Championship with one standalone event in Jerez.

Nearly 10 seasons on, the series has raced on 22 tracks in 18 different countries. Both numbers are expected to increase by two next season following the recent announcement of the 2027 F2 calendar, with rounds to be held at Istanbul Park in Turkey and the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez in Mexico City.

Having F2 – and its younger sibling series F3 – on the undercard supporting F1 has become increasingly appealing for track promoters from an entertainment standpoint, Michel said. Not only does this give greater exposure to the championship itself, but it also raises the profile of the drivers putting on those performances as fans scout the next big thing to enter the F1 paddock.

“Most promoters would like F2 and F3 to be there because we bring something very big into the weekend because we come up with performances with very spectacular races. All of this has really changed the image we are having, and we are very happy about that,” he said.

“What’s important for me as well now is that a lot of fans know our drivers, knowing that they will be the stars of the future.… People know Câmara, people know Tsolov, people know Dunne because they want to know who is going to be the next Antonelli. And that is something we want to continue to do.”

This exposure means people will likely already be familiar with the first rookie confirmed for the 2027 F1 season, Rafael Câmara. The current F2 championship leader was announced to be joining Haas the day of the virtual roundtable with Michel, who views facilitating such graduations as a priority for the championship.

“If we look over the last 10 years, number one what is really nice to see is the number of drivers that went into Formula 1 coming from Formula 2. It’s something we are always happy to see,” he said. “When together Kimi, Isack, Ollie, Franco and Gabriel went to Formula 1 was an incredible achievement. Not only because we had an extremely strong year [in 2024] but because there were five seats available in Formula 1, which is always good news. That was really a great memory. And the other one was the year we had Lando, George and Alex coming into Formula 1. When we have this kind of track record, it’s always a great pleasure for us.”

Over the span of the last decade, 21 F2 graduates have made the step up, a figure soon to become 22 – the size of a full F2 grid – when Câmara takes to the Bahrain circuit with Haas next March. Twelve of those currently have seats on the F1 grid; among them are four F2 champions in Leclerc, George Russell, Oscar Piastri and Gabriel Bortoleto, plus current F1 championship leader Andrea Kimi Antonelli and defending champion Lando Norris.

In order to continue this trend into the next 10 years, the championship aims to provide cars that equip the drivers with the skills required to handle the technical demands of a modern F1 car. In line with this F1 season’s new set of active aerodynamics regulations, F2 will run an updated version of the F2 Dallara 2024 next season. From 2027 through the end of the 2029 season, the F2 car will feature a boost of downforce and drag to enable closer racing and replicate what a potential graduate might experience in an F1 car.

“Of course we want to continue to prepare drivers for Formula 1,” Michel said. “So we need to make sure that we have cars that are preparing them in a proper way. Whether it’s for F3 or F2, the development of the car and picking of the power unit for the future is really, really important to be in line with what they need to do.”

The changes to next year’s car will be incorporated into the existing chassis for cost-saving purposes, another key goal across all areas for the future of the championship in Michel’s eyes.

“I don’t think we will go into much more races for budget reasons as well,” he said. “We need to make sure that we still are having [events] that are financially sustainable for the teams. When you say that, okay, it’s a lot of things that need to work together and that are not always easy and compatible, but that’s really where we want to be.”

That level of collaboration must be sustained for the wheels of F2 to keep turning up and down the pit lane. Hundreds of personnel make the F2 championship what it is today, and we will be hearing more from them as the series continues over the coming weeks.

Header photo credit: FIA Formula 2 Championship / DAMS