Photo: Dutch Photo Agency

Nico Hulkenberg recently lost his record for the most F1 race starts without a podium by setting a new record for the most starts before a maiden podium finish. Who has the equivalent in F1’s primary feeder series?

Most races without a podium

=9. Ricardo Teixeira ANGOLA 48 races
GP2 Asia (2009): 4 races, GP2 (2009-2013): 44 races   Best result: 1x 13th

Photo: GP2 Media Service

The Angolan spent four years in British Formula 3 with almost nothing to show for it before stepping up to GP2 via its Asia series in early 2009. He could do no better than 17th place, but committed to a full season in the main series with Trident.

In his rookie season he was so slow in Monaco that he actually failed to qualify for the races, although he ‘bounced back’ from that next time out at Istanbul Park with his personal-best finish of 14th place.

That was matched at three other circuits in 2009, then he stepped down to MotorSport Vision’s confusingly named FIA Formula 2 championship for 2010. A year working with Team Lotus in Formula 1 then followed, before he returned to action via GP2 in 2012. In the second round he claimed his best ever finish in the series, a 13th place which he would not get close to beating through the rest of the campaign or two outings in 2013.

=9. Tomas Kaiser SWEDEN 48 races
European F2 (1982-1984): 21 races, Int. F3000 (1985-1987): 27 races   Best result: 3x 4th

The Swede has spoken to Formula Scout before about his memories of European F2 prior to its demise as F1’s primary feeder series. It ran from 1967 to 1984, then was replaced by International Formula 3000 which ran through to 2004.

Kaiser debuted in 1982 in Thruxton’s BARC 200 race, then also drove at Hockenheim. The next year he suffered a lot of retirements, but finished a lapped eighth in the Rome Grand Prix and was seven laps down but classified in ninth at the Pau Grand Prix.

In 1984 he was ninth in the Deutschland Trophy at Hockenheim, two minutes behind the winner, a lapped seventh in Italy’s Rome and Mediterranean grands prix and eighth in its Adriatic Grand Prix.

In Britain he had improved form, coming eighth in the Donington Park 50,000 and then fourth in the Daily Mail Trophy at Brands Hatch. The race was red-flagged twice due to rain, and due to the restarted race being a full restart it meant the two portions of the race had to be added together to form the final result. Kaiser was third in the second part, but classified a distant fourth overall.

That fourth place was repeated in the next years in F3000, as Kaiser achieved the feat at Thruxton in 1985 and then in the Mediterranean GP in 1986.

8. Jason Tahincioglu TURKEY 50 races
GP2 (2006-2007): 40 races, GP2 Asia (2008): 10 races   Best result: 1x 8th

Photo: GP2 Media Service

Tahincioglu made his way up the single-seater ladder in part thanks to a surge of motorsport investment in his home nation. Not only did F1 visit the country for the first time while he was racing, but his father was also president of Turkey’s motorsport federation.

He was a backmarker in Formula Renault 2.0 UK (which was considered just above being an entry level slicks-and-wings series) for three years and never even finished a race in the top 10, yet had the financial backing to buy his way onto the GP2 grid for 2006 with Fisichella Motor Sport.

Tahincioglu actually failed to make the start on debut, then had three non-finishes and a disqualification. He usually qualified outside of the top 20 and always finished outside of the top 10, with a best result of 11th place as a rookie.

His sophomore season was even less competitive, bar qualifying 14th on home soil at Istanbul Park, and he finished 11th two more times in races where many retired. After that he joined BCN Competition for the inaugural GP2 Asia season, and in the Dubai Autodrome finale remarkably (considering his usual level) qualified 11th and finished the races in ninth and eighth.

7. Ferdinando Monfardini ITALY 51 races
Int. F3000 (2003-2004): 12 races, GP2 (2005-2006): 39 races   Best result: 1x 4th

Photo: GP2 Media Service

Monfardini drove for BCN in the final two rounds of the 2003 Int. F3000 season, and finished 10th at his second attempt.

That gave him the confidence to do the full 2004 season, and while there were two top-10 finishes he languished 20th in the standings behind many part-timers.

When the championship was replaced by GP2, Monfardini stuck about and his experience of high-downforce machinery helped him in the inaugural 2005 season. He had a breakthrough at the Nurburgring by charging from 22nd to sixth, but then had no further top-10 finishes until his final outing with Durango at Monza where he qualified eighth and finished eighth in the feature race then finished fourth (a position held by 0.045s) from reversed-grid pole in the sprint race.

Monfardini missed the next round and returned with Scuderia Coloni for the finale. DAMS was his next home, and in the 2006 season he finished sixth three times. The first two were at Barcelona where he charged up from 20th in the feature race.

6. Guido Dacco ITALY 60 races
European F2 (1980-1984): 48 races, Int. F3000 (1985-1987): 12 races   Best result: 1x 4th

Photo: Gruppo Piloti Civitavecchia

According to one source, the late Dacco liked to be known as older than he actually was. Which is fitting given the experience he accumulated in the second tier of single-seaters.

Having debuted in European F2 in 1980, his first results of note came two years later and the highlight was seventh in the Mediterranean GP. In 1983 he was sixth in the Rome GP and fourth in the Adriatic GP, but a lap down in both, and in 1984 it was a similar story as he was lapped in the seven races where he claimed top-10 finishes. Fifth place in the Adriatic GP was the top result this time.

When F3000 arrived, Dacco became a more competitive racer but due to being a bad qualifier had to make his way up the order all the time. He finished a distant fifth at Spa-Francorchamps and Dijon, and was sixth in the Mediterranean GP and at Zandvoort (where he was lapped). The top three were always out of reach on race day.

Dacco later raced in Indy Nxt, where he did stand on a podium, and then in IndyCar.

5. Rene Binder AUSTRIA 74 races
GP2/F2 (2012-2017): 74 races   Best result: 1x 6th

Photo: GP2 Media Service

Binder did 68 races in GP2, then four in Formula V8 3.5 before claiming his maiden podium in single-seaters’ second tier, but since the latter championship was a rival to F1’s primary feeder series his race-winning form there has no impact on this list.

The Austrian did three seasons in German F3 before finding form, and was a slow burner in GP2 as well. He started off with the uncompetitive Team Lazarus, doing three rounds in 2012 and getting a best finish of 13th.

His full season with them in 2013 started strongly, as he finished 11th and eighth in the opening two races at Sepang. In Monaco he lined up 22nd and second on the grid for the two races, and finished them in seventh and sixth. Although there were two more top-10 finishes that season, the only points he scored in the following two years were in the opening round of the 2014 season. He was usually uncompetitive, and split his 2015 campaign between Trident and MP Motorsport.

His first weekend with MP was at Monza, and he scored straight away with a 10th place and an eight. Binder never saw the points again.

4. Rodolfo Gonzalez VENEZUELA 80 races
GP2 (2009-2012): 64 races, GP2 Asia (2009-2011): 16 races   Best result: 1x 4th

Photo: Alastair Staley/GP2 Media Service

Venezuela’s state-owned oil company PDVSA funded Gonzalez’s single-seater career, and as with countryman Pastor Maldonado (who was GP2 champion) that opened several doors in F1 and kept them open.

The one-time podium-finisher in British F3 arrived in GP2 Asia with FMS in 2009 and was a backmarker until a monsoon-hit weekend at Sepang where he qualified 14th then made his way up the order to two top-10 results.

He went full-time in the main series with Arden the year after, and Monza was the only circuit he could get within 1.6 seconds of pole. At Spa-Francorchamps he came eighth in the feature race, putting him on reversed-grid pole for the sprint race. Gonzalez only lost out to Sergio Perez in the race’s first half, but at a mid-race restart fell to fourth and stayed there.

That result was never close to being matched. Gonzalez got two ninth places in Asia and two in the main series in 2011, his average qualifying position being lower than 20th in the latter, then a move to the Caterham Racing team in 2012 included a surprise at Bahrain where he was half a second off pole in seventh but his average qualifying position was still a lacklustre 19.4. His only top-10 finish was in a chaotic Monaco sprint race where he was a distant fifth and a majority of drivers retired.

The aforementioned F1 links started off with the young driver tests, driving for Team Lotus/Caterham (2010, ’11 & ’12), Force India (2012) and then Marussia (2013) who signed him as reserve driver and used him in nine F1 practice sessions.

3. Marino Sato JAPAN 81 races
F2 (2019-2022): 81 races   Best result: 4x 8th

Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd

Sato is one of several drivers in recent years to have struggled against their contemporaries, then increased their stock by racing in Euroformula and winning the title. But FIA European F3’s demise meant Sato was against Euroformula’s strongest ever field in 2019 and he still came out on top.

It turned out coming 16th in European F3’s 2018 season was more representative, as Sato only scored twice in his first 55 F2 races. With Trident he was one of the slowest drivers on the 2020 grid and was outside of the top 20 in 2021.

Moving to Virtuosi Racing for 2022 looked like it would unlock his underlying potential, as he was in the top 10 on outright and long-run pace in pre-season testing, but fundamentally Sato’s driving style was incompatible with the demands of F2’s Pirelli tyres. MP’s Clement Novalak had a similar problem, and the pair were the only full-time drivers on average not within a percent of the pole pace through the season. Sato was then 26th best in the field on race pace.

Ex-Formula E driver Tom Dillmann worked with Sato from day one of his F2 career on the issue, and by the end of 2022 the only positive that could be taken was Sato’s four top-10 finishes was twice the tally of the preceding years combined.

2. Daniel de Jong NETHERLANDS 90 races
GP2 (2012-2016): 90 races   Best result: 1x 7th

Photo: Zak Mauger/GP2 Series Media Service

“One more year,” said de Jong as he committed to a fifth GP2 season in early 2016. It was a rewarding decision, as his six points in the first five races matched what he had scored in his preceding 68 starts.

The majority of his GP2 experience came with MP, owned by his father Henk, so he had less need than some to think about how his budget and results would impact his chances of landing a seat each year.

De Jong raced for MP concurrently in the F3000-spec Auto GP during his first F2 campaigns to increase his experience of high-downforce single-seaters, but his podiums in the former did not translate into strong results in the latter.

He qualified sixth at Barcelona in 2015, and two weeks later in Monaco made the top 10 in qualifying for only the second time. However this came after crashing, which prevented rivals from improving late on.

On GP2’s chaotic first ever visit to Baku in 2016, de Jong finally finished high enough to benefit from a reversed grid, coming eighth in the feature race after a risky late pitstop paid off. From pole the next day he finished 14th.

His career-best result came in the 2013 Singapore sprint race, when he charged from 17th to seventh.

1. Amaury Cordeel BELGIUM 97 races
F2 (2022-2025): 93 races   Best result: 1x 4th

Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd

Victory in the final round of the 2018 Spanish Formula 4 season, a day before he became champion, was the last time Cordeel saw a podium. He’s shown his speed since then, albeit on public roads and via TikTok videos.

Fourth place was his best result from 47 Formula Regional races, then an 11th place was the highlight of 20 races in F3.

The lack of results was not the main concern once Cordeel was on the F2 grid though, as in his third weekend he got four penalty points and a 10-place grid penalty for overtaking in a zone where double waved yellows were during a red flag period.

He missed a race that weekend in Jeddah, then another at Imola where he made multiple rule infringements and picked up a further five penalty points. At Barcelona he was out of position on the formation lap, and not following the rules led to a 10s stop-go penalty and two penalty points that put him out of contention for a maiden points finish.

A collision in Baku led to a race ban after just six rounds, and he qualified a surprise seventh on his return at the Red Bull Ring but got more penalty points. Cordeel ended his and Van Amersfoort Racing’s first season in F2 with four top-seven finishes in the last five races, then was off the pace through 2023 with Virtuosi. The Red Bull Ring was an exception again.

Hitech GP was Cordeel’s home for 2024, and he led three races and scored in six feature races. At Imola he topped a test session and then qualified 10th, putting him on sprint race pole. He ran third until the final three laps, then in the feature race led 23 laps as he overcut almost the entire field. When he pitted, his rear-right tyre flew off and ended his race.

The 23-year-old joined Rodin Motorsport for 2025 at late notice, and has scored three points while his rookie team-mate Alex Dunne fights for the title.

Most races before maiden podium

10. Ritomo Miyata JAPAN 45 races
F2 (2024-2025): 14 races   Best result: 1x 2nd

Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd

A few weeks ago Toyota protege Miyata knocked Alberto Colombo, who raced in European F2 from 1973 to 1980 and made the podium three times, from this list with a breakthrough F2 event at Spa. He qualified second, finished eighth in the sprint race then was second in the feature race after the original top two drivers were hit with big penalties.

What makes Miyata’s inclusion in this list fascinating is that he’s already a champion of single-seaters’ top tier. He won the 2023 Super Formula title, then made the surprise switch to F2 as Toyota supported his dream of making it to F1.

A European Le Mans Series campaign was added to his schedule to boost his experience of F2 circuits, since his whole career had been Japan-based prior to last year. While Miyata shone in ELMS with two wins, he has struggled in F2.

He was just about in the top 20 on average single-lap and race pace as a rookie with Rodin, with two fifth places in Melbourne on his third F2 outing the highlight, and in the top 15 for both at the halfway point of this season with ART Grand Prix.

Miyata told media including Formula Scout that his confidence in the F2 car had grown two rounds prior to Spa and felt he had podium potential. He explained that switching teams meant he needed to learn even more for 2025, and reiterated to this writer that he had Toyota’s full support to stay in F2 despite the lack of results leading up to that.

9. Fairuz Fauzy MALAYSIA 46 races
GP2 (2005-2011): 62 races, GP2 Asia (2008-2011): 14 races   Best result: 1 win

Photo: GP2

After the Malaysian Grand Prix’s induction on the F1 calendar in 1999, it was only a few months before a Malaysian driver reached the pinnacle of single-seaters. Alex Yoong made it into SF, F1 and CART in the early 2000s, and Malaysian investment remained in F1 through the next decade, helping more drivers from his country embark on international racing careers.

Fauzy was the next big hope for the nation in open-wheel cars, although his results in British Formula Ford, FR2.0 UK and British F3 did little to suggest he had an F1 future. But when he arrived in GP2 in 2005 with a car sponsored by Malaysian petroleum company Petronas, it was clear he had the backing to make it to the top.

His rookie GP2 season with DAMS was lacklustre, with four top-10 results but no points under the sporting regulations of the time, but the week before the season finale he was already making his top-level debut as he represented Malaysia in the new nation-based A1GP series. He would go on to win there for his nation.

Fauzy went points-free in GP2 again 2006, then in 2008 joined the new Asia series and won in treacherous conditions at Sentul. This time it wasn’t rain, but rather the track literally falling apart and cars driving through dust clouds (which led to overheating engines).

After becoming a race-winner in A1GP, he was 2009 FR3.5 runner-up and the Malaysian-owned Team Lotus signed him as reserve driver when it joined F1 in 2010. They released him from his contract at the end of the year and Fauzy returned to GP2 and FR3.5 for 2011. One podium from 32 races that year was not enough to keep him on the single-seater map.

8. Roy Nissany ISRAEL 48 races
F2 (2018-2023): 119 races   Best result: 1x 3rd

Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd

The most experienced driver ever in single-seaters’ second tier took four wins and 10 other podiums in FR3.5 and its successor FV8 3.5, but in 119 F2 races claimed only one podium and two top-five finishes.

Seven years after his most successful FV8 3.5 campaign with Charouz Racing System, he reunited with the team in F2 two years ago and two ninth places in sprint races were the highlights of a points-free season.

Scoring nothing was a statistic Nissany has avoided until then, having scored at least one point in every year he has spent in F2 prior to 2023. In total he has 14 points finishes to his name, with eight of those coming in 2022 while driving for DAMS.

The year before that he had only scored three times with the team, but one of those was a third place in Monaco. Nissany started fourth for the first sprint race of the weekend, and was set to finish there before Christian Lundgaard suffered an engine failure ahead. He then had to hold off Campos Racing’s Ralph Boschung, who got a personal best result in fourth.

Nissany made his F1 test debut with Sauber while still in F3, where he had a best finish of sixth from 63 starts, then drove for Williams in 2019 post-season testing. After being signed as a test driver, he did six practice sessions across 2020 and ’21.

7. Simon Trummer SWITZERLAND 50 races
GP2 Final (2011): 2 races, GP2 (2012-2015): 72 races   Best result: 1x 2nd

Photo: Sam Bloxham/GP2 Series Media Service

Trummer was runner-up in FR2.0 Switzerland (which did not race in the country), made the podium in International Formula Master then joined GP3 for its inaugural season in 2010. He finished sixth in the first ever race, then it took until the end of the 2011 season to match that as he made the top five in each of the last three races with Arden.

The team rewarded him with a seat in the GP2 Final, a two-race contest at Yas Marina Circuit. It was a tricky debut, as he was 22nd in qualifying then got a grid penalty for causing a collision, but he made it up to 15th in the sprint race.

He then signed with Arden for a full season in GP2, and the team continuity did not give him an advantage. In Valencia he scored in both races, but there was only two other top-10 finishes.

Joining Rapax for 2013 proved instantly rewarding, as he started the season with three points finishes. But he was not a points contender until visiting the Hungaroring, where he was only the 15th fastest driver on track but nailed the overcut strategy to lead for a while and finish sixth from 17th on the grid. In 2012 the same strategy led to him leading laps.

Trummer led three successive feature races in 2013, but didn’t score again until his final start of the year.

2014 started badly too, as he qualified 21st at Bahrain then had to start from the pitlane after stalling on the pre-grid. But that enabled him to once again pull off the overcut on the harder compound tyres and he led until pitting with two laps to go. He then made his way up to seventh, far behind the podium finishers.

But the result put Trummer second on the sprint race grid, which was where he finished. Trummer returned to anonymity for the rest of 2014 and his two 2015 outings. He moved on to sportscars, and was IMSA’s LMP2 class runner-up in 2020.

6. Johnny Cecotto Jr VENEZUELA 52 races
GP2/F2 (2009-2017): 126 races, GP2 Asia (2009-2011): 6 races   Best result: 4 wins

Photo: Malcolm Griffiths/GP2 Series Media Service

The son of the 1975 350cc motorcycling world champion, F1 driver and DTM star of the same name, Cecotto was somewhat of a state-funded talent.

Although he drove second-tier machinery in just his second year of single-seaters, it was old F3000 cars in Euroseries 3000.

He made four starts there before entering GP2’s last two rounds of 2009. He also did a GP2 Asia round with Trident, in which he made the top seven in both races, and stayed with the team for the main series in 2010. Cecotto was inconsistent and only scored once, a fourth place in the Monaco sprint race. A sign of things to come.

In 2011 he went points-free in GP2 and GP2 Asia, then a move to reigning champion team Addax for 2012 resulted in being mired in the midfield once again until he rocked up to Monaco and claimed pole. He converted it into victory in the feature race, but then spun and caused a multi-car pile-up on lap one of the sprint race. Cecotto had a reputation for being a driver as likely to cause chaos as he was to get a strong result, and the Monaco weekend was the epitome of that.

Next time out in Valencia was a nightmare, then at Silverstone qualified and finished second. Next up was Hockenheim, where he qualified 18th but used local knowledge to choose slick tyres on a wet track in the feature race. He assumed the lead when everyone else chose to pit, then made his own compulsory pitstop and won by nine seconds.

Coecotto claimed Monaco pole again in 2013, duly crashed out on lap one of the feature race then was barred from the sprint.

That podium-free season was followed by his most competitive one in 2014. At Barcelona he qualified 16th, but was seventh after a chaotic first lap of the feature race. He led by lap eight, and it only took two laps following his pitstop to return to the front and take a convincing win. At the Red Bull Ring he took pole and won the sprint race, and three further podiums put him fifth in the standings. Over the next three years Cecotto drove for four teams, and across 22 races took another two podiums.

5. Max Chilton ENGLAND 53 races
GP2 Asia (2008-2011): 12 races, GP2 (2010-2012): 62 races, GP2 Final (2011): 2 races   Best result: 2 wins

Chilton winning in Singapore (Photo: GP2 Media Service)

Another driver whose father paved the way to the top via some large-scale financial investments in their son’s career, Chilton is also the younger brother of former British Touring Car star Tom Chilton.

In 2009 the younger Chilton came fourth in British F3 with Carlin, a team his father became majority shareholder of and thereon became a maintay in Chilton’s career.

Although he first raced in GP2 with Ocean Racing Technology, once Carlin arrived in the series in 2011 he was back in their line-up and came 20th in the standings that year. A singular fifth place was Chilton’s best result after 53 races in the second tier of single-seaters, but he and the team made a big jump up the order as 2012 began.

Chilton started the season by coming 0.064s shy of pole, and turned third on the grid into third in the race but was almost half a minute behind the winner as he was mostly defending. He was consistently in the points thereon, putting in an attacking drive en route to second in the Monaco sprint race and winning the Hungaroring feature race from pole.

A further pole and another feature race win meant he came fourth in the points, and with the Marussia F1 team sponsoring Carlin through 2012 it was no surprise that Chilton then stepped up to F1 with Russian-owned manufacturer. He lost his seat after two seasons, and returned to second-tier single-seaters and Carlin in Indy Nxt before a career in IndyCar.

4. Michael Herck ROMANIA 55 races
GP2 Asia (2008-2011): 31 races, GP2 (2008-2011): 69 races   Best result: 1x 2nd

Photo: GP2 Media Service

The 2004 FR1.6 Spain champion had gone points-free in several series before making it to GP2, with FMS handing him his debut in the 2008 Asia series. He was dreadfully off the pace, but so were several others so it masked how out of his depth Herck was.

Herck then joined David Price Racing partway through the main series and it took until the finale to be less than 2.2s slower than the poleman in qualifying. An 11th place was the best finish that year.

The 2008-09 GP2 Asia season was an improvement, but there were still many weekends being far off the pace. His father then bought DPR, which secured Herck’s place on the GP2 grid for two more years before the team left the series.

Silverstone was the highlight of the 2009 season, finishing ninth and eighth but scoring no points, and at the Algarve finale he led some laps as he rose went from 19th on the grid to sixth in the feature race before being disqualified.

Herck began 2010 on a high in GP2 Asia. Although he only qualified 19th at Yas Marina, he made it to the front using the overcut strategy then made on-track overtakes after pitting to finish seventh. Second on the sprint race was well utilised, as he took the lead on lap one and held it until being passed on the penultimate lap.

That form reappeared once in the main series, qualifying sixth in Valencia and converting that into an eighth and a third in the races, before he moved to Coloni for 2011 and came eighth in GP2 Asia with a career-best qualifying result of third.

3. Alexandre Negrao BRAZIL 58 races
GP2 (2005-2007): 64 races   Best result: 1x 2nd

Photo: GP2 Media Service

Negrao won the 2004 F3 Sudamericana title, and two F3 races at Spa marked his only European experience when he stepped up to GP2 with Piquet Sports.

His rookie season was full of ups and downs, epitomised by his second weekend in GP2 at Barcelona where he qualified 22nd but finished eighth in a feature race full of attrition, then went from pole down to 19th on lap one of the sprint race.

He next scored a point at the Hungaroring, where he rose from 18th to eighth in the feature race and this time dropped to 22nd from pole on the sprint race’s opening lap. Two seventh places at Spa put him 19th in the standings.

When he wasn’t retiring, Negrao had consistency in 2006 and scored in almost half of the feature races. He finished seventh in four of the first seven races, but never finished higher than fifth while team-mate Nelson Piquet Jr fought for the title.

Negrao began 2007 by qualifying second at Bahrain, 0.085s off pole, but fell to ninth on lap one and later retired. He completed no racing laps at Barcelona, was lapped in Monaco, had three more retirements and didn’t have a top-10 finish until race 11 of the season. He finally looked competitive again at Istanbul Park, where he started and finished seventh in the feature race then went from second to fourth before recovering back to second in the sprint race for a surprise first podium.

2. Julian Leal COLOMBIA 64 races
GP2 Asia (2011): 4 races, GP2 (2011-2015): 102 races, GP2 Final: (2 races)   Best result: 2x 2nd

Photo: Julianlealweb

Leal had plentiful experience of old F3000 cars by the time he debuted in FR3.5, where he came 20th in both of his seasons.

For 2011 he moved across to rival series GP2, and remained there for five years. He debut in GP2 Asia, taking a best finish of 17th, then in the main series finished ninth in two sprint races. It took 36 races in the car before Leal broke his points-scoring duck, and despite scoring nine points in 2012 he was still outside of the top 20 in the standings.

He moved to Racing Engineering for 2013, and got two sprint race podiums while improving his best feature race result to fifth. Meanwhile team-mate Fabio Leimer scored three times as many points and won the title.

Eager to still prove himself, Leal signed with Carlin for 2014 and began the campaign with his first two podiums. He qualified 12th for the Bahrain season opener, but boosted by a quick pitstop was able to climb up to second. The next day he went from seventh to third on lap one, then he and Trummer attacked that year’s champion Jolyon Palmer all race long.

Leal sat second in the standings after four races, then only scored four times in the remaining 18 races and dropped to 10th in the points table and was outscored to the same degree by his team-mate as in 2013. He remained with Carlin for 2015, but after reaching 100 races in the main GP2 series announced his ‘retirement’ from it and missed the last three rounds.

1. Ralph Boschung SWITZERLAND 76 races
F2 (2017-2023): 120 races   Best result: 1 win

Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd

Boschung ran out of budget one round before the end in his rookie F2 season in 2017, then suffered the same fate two rounds from the finish in 2018.

The funding dried up after five rounds in 2019, but he was able to return to return for two rounds later in the year, then in 2020 he only contested the season finale as a last-minute stand-in for Jack Aitken who had been summoned to race in F1.

The elusive prospect of a full season finally occurred in 2021 with Campos, and having greater financial stability was reflected in Boschung’s results. He came 10th in the standings and in the final two rounds claimed his first two podiums.

In Jeddah he qualified seventh, and made up four places at the start of the feature race before it was red flagged. When it was eventually restarted, only five laps were completed before race-ending red flags waved again with Boschung still third. A week later at Yas Marina he proved it was no fluke as he finished third from the front row in the second sprint race.

He started 2022 looking even stronger but after qualifying fourth and finishing the feature race in third at Imola his season was ruined by a neck injury that ruled him out for 12 races. On his second attempt at a comeback he made the podium, showing the potential that year could have held.

Fully recovered, and with a Campos team benefitting from a high-profile technical signing, Boschung began 2023 with the victory he had spent years pursuing, and even led the championship before a long points-free run that made for another ‘what if?’.

The post Who holds Hulkenberg’s F1 records in its primary feeder series? appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photos: Stephen Bounds

The often glorious and occasionally frustrating 18-year history of European F2 ended at Brands Hatch 40 years ago today. Those on the grid recall what it was like to race in the first of F1’s primary feeder series

Reflecting the series’ decline and fall, the 209th and last European Formula 2 event was brought to a premature end on September 23, 1984 as torrential rain caused havoc around Brands Hatch’s full Grand Prix layout. But after a season of crushing Ralt-Honda dominance, it was perhaps appropriate that in the championship’s final act Philippe Streiff should take a deserved maiden win for underfinanced private constructor AGS, powered by the category-defining engine from BMW.

Formula Scout spoke to some of the protagonists from that day to hear their memories and to understand why the demise of F2 in Europe provoked mixed emotions.

Although the category had been in existence since 1948, with the Formula 1 world championship even being run to F2 regulations in 1952 and 1953, it was not until 1967 that a European championship was established.

Arguably, the period in the late 1960s and early 1970s was European F2’s heyday as F1-experienced names such as Jochen Rindt and Jackie Stewart, designated as non-scoring “graded” drivers, competed against the top junior talent of the day.

By the 1980s, the category and the championship were struggling to maintain both sporting and commercial relevance. Top drivers such as Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna and Nelson Piquet had bypassed F1 by jumping straight from Formula 3 to F1.

Unlike today, races were held separately from F1 events, and the television coverage and spectator attendances were minimal. The calendars comprised of a delightful and eclectic mix of circuits, and the 1984 season featured just two contemporary F1 venues (Brands Hatch and Hockenheim), alongside circuits now relegated to hosting Formula 4 races at best such as Misano and Vallelunga. And four of the 11 rounds were in Britain.

Photo: Roger Gascoigne

It did boast the Mediterranean and Pau grands prix however, and the traditional Easter Monday event at Thruxton which had live television coverage on the BBC. Silverstone’s race awarded the BRDC International Trophy, which had ran for F1 cars only four years prior.

Increased costs and a lack of competition and coverage meant that the writing had been on the wall for some time, and the decision was made to create a new category for 1985. It was to be known as Formula 3000, as cars had three-litre engines.

F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone had seen an opportunity with the Cosworth DFV units that were becoming obsolete at the top level as 1.5L turbocharged engines took over, and so European F2 came to a sad end after 18 seasons. Japanese F2 followed suite by transitioning into an F3000 series in 1987.

The teams arrived at Brands Hatch with a mix of sadness at European F2’s demise, and relief and anticipation for the new formula. There was a general feeling that the championship and the regulations had simply run out of steam.

The works Ralt-Honda team had dominated in 1984, continuing where it had left off in 1983, with its drivers Mike Thackwell and Roberto Moreno having wrapped up the first two places in the championship long before the paddock arrived in Kent.

With access to the Williams wind tunnel, Ron Tauranac had developed the ultimate chassis for the F2 regulations, the Honda V6-powered Ralt RH6/84, and it had steamrollered the opposition in the hands of its exclusive user: the factory Ralt team.

Of the 10 rounds held before Brands Hatch, Thackwell had won seven and Moreno won two, the only blemish coming at Hockenheim when both cars hit problems, allowing Pascal Fabre’s March-BMW to take victory.

BMW’s M11 engine had been a mainstay of European F2 from the start, bar the 1972 season, with 95 rounds won using its power and every single race in 1975.

Eddie Cheever in 1977

The Bavarian manufacturer entered F1 in 1981, and when it withdrew its F2 works support in 1984 its ageing engine was no longer a match for Honda’s V6. Honda itself was in the first year of its co-operation with Williams, but had prepared the engines in Japan while operational running was entrusted to John Judd.

Dominance by one team or car-engine combination was not unusual in those days of multiple chassis, multiple engine suppliers and a choice of tyres. But whereas March and BMW had always been happy to sell their equipment to customers, Ralt and Honda guarded their exclusivity tightly.

In 1984 there were regularly six of March’s new 842 design on the grid, allied to the BMW engine. Three of those were entered by Onyx Racing, which had F3 graduate Emanuele Pirro and Thierry Tassin [pictured above] fronting its line-up.

Pirro came to the final round on a high after earning his first podium with a second place in the previous race at Donington Park. Now one of motorsport’s busiest sexagenarians, he was then the youngest driver in the F2 field aged 22.

Tassin had been a frontrunner in British F3, before graduating to F2 in 1982. Pole on his fourth appearance on the Nurburgring Nordschleife left an impression, and almost led to a Ligier seat in F1, but the Avon-shod Toleman-Hart became increasingly uncompetitive.

“All of a sudden, we were more than one second off the pace. And the dream of going to Ligier more or less disappeared,” he says without regret.

Tassin was combining his F2 appearances with “driving for BMW in the European Touring Car Championship because I won the Spa 24 Hours in 1983”, the first of four triumphs at the Belgian endurance classic

For the last race they were joined by 42-year-old Derek Bell, reviving his relationship with team boss Mike Earle whose Church Farm Racing team had run Bell to his first European F2 podium back in 1968.

Derek Bell at Brands Hatch

“Mike Earle, who ran Onyx Racing, had worked with me and he lived in our village [Pagham]. So, he asked me to come: ‘DB. You’ve got to come and get this last race, blah, blah blah.’ So I said ‘okay’ and I went along,” Bell told Formula Scout.

His F2 debut had come in 1968’s season-opening round at Hockenheim, in the race that claimed the life of two-time F1 world champion Jim Clark, and his performances early that year caught the attention of Enzo Ferrari who recruited him to race for Ferrari’s own F2 team then handed Bell his F1 debut at September’s Italian Grand Prix.

Bell went on to be 1970 European F2 runner-up, before making his name in sportscars. When he made his F2 return, after 10 years away, he was at the pinnacle of his career as a works Porsche driver with three outright Le Mans 24 Hour wins to his name already.

“It was really strange, he was a driver of another generation, but I always had the utmost respect for Derek, so it was a privilege to hang around with him,” recalls Pirro. “Derek was living just across the road from the team in Bognor Regis so I got to know him.”

Tassin has similar memories of working with Bell: “[He] was very well known, very popular because of his Le Mans wins with Jacky Ickx and so on. It was really a pleasure to have him in the team. He was a really friendly person. And it’s tough when you’re doing endurance racing to be back in F2 with all the young drivers mainly concentrating on single-seaters, but he enjoyed it.”

He also has good memories of taking the F2 car to test at Goodwood, which was not far from Onyx’s base and had held F2 races before the European championship’s creation.

“[Onyx’s base was] near the beach. Goodwood in F2 was quite a track because it’s not really a testing circuit where you can go and avoid to have problem and have escape roads. If you have the slightest problem or you go off, you’re going in the [grass] banking. It was really tough and dangerous to go testing there.”

Thackwell on some fresh Bridgestones

BS Automotive was another team to couple the March 842 with BMW engines, and its line-up was led by fourth-year F2 driver Christian Danner. In addition to the March contingent, the M11 units powered entries from French constructors AGS and Martini as well as the F1-bound Minardi. But those outfits knew they were up against it.

“All the non-Honda teams had a significant disadvantage in 1983 and in ’84,” is Danner’s assessment of those times.

“The Hondas were so much faster than the rest of the field. Years later, when I was developing a Mugen F1 engine and did a lot of testing for Bridgestone in Japan, I was working with the chief engineer of that F2 engine programme, and he told me that that F2 engine, which was a V6, had about 80bhp more than the BMW.”

Pirro agrees: “They were a stronger package, probably more because of the engine. It was definitely a more powerful engine but by how much I don’t know. But the March was a really a very good car.”

Indeed, he goes as far as to say that the March 842 was “one of three best cars I ever drove, with the McLaren MP4-4 [F1 car] and the Audi R8 [Le Mans prototype]”.

To further complicate matters, Bridgestone and Michelin were fighting a tyre war, with all teams except Onyx starting the season on the former. Ralt switched to Bridgestones for the last two rounds in preparation for their use in F3000.

Pirro believes that the Bridgestones weren’t a match for the Michelins, although the Japanese firm was rapidly closing the gap. Indeed, Ralt seemed to lose its advantage initially after switching at Donington.

“The gap between us and the Ralts once they switched to Bridgestones shrunk a lot. And they were not really in another league like they were before. This is why I made the first podium of the of the season on the second last race,” he recalls.

Photo: Roger Gascoigne

However by the finale the Bridgestones seemed to be gaining the edge, aided by a private test at Brands Hatch beforehand

With the title long since decided, the eight rows of cars that lined up on September 23 to contest the Daily Mail Trophy on the circuit’s full Grand Prix layout on September 23 1984 had something else at stake: victory in the final ever European F2 race.

The Ralts filled the front row, with poleman Moreno [pictured above] almost two seconds faster than Pirro in third. Streiff, the quickest Michelin runner, was back on the third row.

Dark clouds loomed overhead, but the race began dry. Moreno fluffed his start, caught out by Brands Hatch’s famous sloping grid, allowing Thackwell to surge into the lead ahead of Pirro and Tassin [pictured top].

Moreno dropped to fourth but quickly disposed of both Marches just as Thackwell pulled off in a plume of smoke, the oil catching out Pirro and Tassin to allow Streiff into second. Just as the Michelin runners began to suffer in the dry conditions, “it began raining like hell and lots of cars went off, and so did I” remembers BS Automotive’s Tomas Kaiser.

Inevitably, the race was red-flagged after 31 of the planned 50 laps. In those days, some rounds were decided by aggregate times from races that were split in two, and Moreno had an advantage of 19s over Streiff, with Tassin and Pirro just behind.

When the race restarted under intensifying rain, it was quickly apparent that Bridgestone’s wet tyres were no match for Michelin’s, which suddenly came into their own.

As Danner relates: “When the rain started, everybody thought that Bridgestone would walk away with it, because they’ve got such good wet tyres, but come the wet weather, the Michelin was so superior it was unbelievable. Nobody could believe that a standard customer tyre from Michelin was able to beat the wonderful wet tyre from Bridgestone.”

The front page of the race programme

Not just beat but annihilate. Moreno had been demoted to seventh on-the-road in under a lap and within just four Streiff had completely overhauled the deficit from before the red flags to take the aggregate race lead.

Michel Ferte was flying in his Martini-BMW, passing Kaiser for second on-track and beginning to chase after Streiff with his car control in the torrential rain a sight to behold. He was just 1.3s down on Streiff when the clerk of the course called an end to the race, the championship and ultimately European F2 three laps earlier than scheduled.

Ferte had overhauled a one-and-a-half minute gap to Moreno to take second overall, with Moreno just 2.46s ahead of the remarkable Kaiser on aggregate, who had been outstanding in the wet conditions.

Kaiser remembers that a spectating Keke Rosberg complimented him on his race “and that made me very happy”, and team boss Bob Sparshott was so impressed with my “coming onto the main straight with opposite lock” that he kept talking about it for their next two seasons together in Int. F3000.

Bell came home in a respectable ninth. “All I remember was it rained. I was usually good at the rain,” he told Formula Scout.

“John Watson was there to watch it and he was a good friend of mine and he said ‘DB, don’t forget drive in a longer gear’ to use third where you normally would be spinning wheels in second in the wet. I mean, I always did that anyway, because I’d learned that in my early days in sportscars. I don’t know where I finished, but I did finish.”

Sadly, Streiff and Ferte are no longer alive. Streiff made his F1 debut with Renault a month after Brands Hatch, then reurned to AGS for the 1985 Int. F3000 season. The team later made it to F1 too, and Streiff was its sole driver in 1988. He never got to race the team’s updated car for 1989 as a pre-season testing crash at Autodromo Nelson Piquet left him paralysed and in a wheelchair until his death in 2022.

Photo: Roger Gascoigne

Ferte went on to take nine F3000 podiums and was 1991 Le Mans 24H runner-up. He passed away in 2023 after a long illness.

Thackwell [pictured above] was the dominant final champion of European F2, and his reward at the end of 1984 was two races in CART. But instead of tackling single-seaters’ top tier in 1985, he instead continued with Ralt. He won the inaugural F3000 race at Silverstone, and despite a further two wins, three second places and six poles he missed out on the title to Danner.

From 1980 to 2009, Thackwell held the record for being the youngest ever driver to race in F1. But after his debut aged 19 he only attempted to qualify for three more races and in 1987 turned his back on motorsport aged 26.

Moreno went to Japanese F2, CART, then returned to Ralt in ’87 to race in Int. F3000. He won the Mediterranean GP that year, and the title in 1988 with Bromley Motorsport. His F1 career was spent mostly with underfinanced teams, but enjoyed a brief spell at Benetton where he made the podium before being rudely dumped to make way for Michael Schumacher.

Pirro spent three years in F1 before conquering touring car racing and then sportscars with Audi, for whom he won the Le Mans 24H five times. He was director of McLaren’s Driver Development Programme for a year, responsible for bringing in current F2 points leader Gabriel Bortoleto, and after leaving the role this April joined the FIA to become president of its Single-Seater Committee.

Tassin [pictured below] retired from the cockpit in 2002 but maintainted his links to BMW, and is now sporting director for W Racing Team which runs the BMW M Hybrid V8 hypercar in the World Endurance Championship.

After his F2 return, Bell won Le Mans another two times and became a two-time World Sportcar champion.

Photo: BMW

Kaiser continued into F3000 with BS Automotive, and in ’87 came close to getting into F1 after putting together a deal with Jackie Oliver to race for Arrows. However there were complications in getting the required superlicence, so before signing with Arrows went to see Ecclestone, then at the helm of Brabham as well as the Formula One Constructors’ Association.

“During that chat, Bernie said: ‘No, you’re not driving for Jackie Oliver, you’re driving for me. So we’re going to the workshop, we’ll do the seat and you’re going to be in one of the best cars and team-mate to Riccardo Patrese.’”

Ecclestone assured Kaiser that he and Max Mosley would sort out the superlicence problem, and hatched an elaborate plan for Kaiser to turn up in Brazil for the first race “’just with a plain white helmet and we’ll see where you end up’”.

Still without the superlicence, and seeing Andrea de Cesaris occupying Brabham’s second car, he flew back to Europe.

At the same time, he had been in discussions with Eddie Jordan to “prepare a F3000 car for Silverstone in case I wouldn’t be in the F1 car”. Though he joined Jordan for 1987, he realised his “head was in F1, and my arms and legs were in a F3000 car”. After half a season he left Jordan to reunite with BS Automotive, before ending his racing career to focus on supporting Swedish athletes through the Hello Sweden organisation, whose colours he carried in 1984.

So, a championship that had produced so many F1 drivers came to a damp, premature and rather ignominious end. Despite the criticism, it had nevertheless played a key role in developing many top drivers.

“A sad day. Not in that very moment, because nobody really knew what was coming,” dwelled Pirro.

“Personally, I recall it as a good season because the car we had, the March, was a very good car, so from a driving standpoint, I really enjoyed it. With hindsight, it took really quite some time before the F3000 became a nice car to drive, and F2 was, in my opinion a really great category, nimble cars, very strong engines, high [revs per minute].

Emanuele Pirro

“F2 played an instrumental role as the footstep of F1, so it took a while until F3000 got this heritage, and so with hindsight it was a sad day because it was the end of a wonderful chapter.”

Unsurprisingly, given his 1985 title success, Danner feels positively about the end of the first of F1’s primary feeder series and the start of the second: “In ‘84 I had a good year in F2, but it wasn’t a winning year because of [Ralt-Honda superiority]. So, for me it was good that F3000 came because then I could actually finally benefit from what I learned the hard way in F2.”

One time when testing the F3000 car at Snetterton, engineer Ralph Bellamy proposed an idea to Danner.

“[Bellamy proposed] ‘we try something which I think is going to be the future of flat bottom racing cars’, and he put rake in the car. I just couldn’t believe the difference it made to have the rake in the car and therefore have more aerodynamic downforce.”

The change from F2 to F3000 entailed more than larger engines and a name change. F2 cars utilised ground effect to create downforce, while F3000 had flat-bottomed machinery. Eventually ground effect was outlawed across all of single-seaters.

Both concepts had their positives, as Kaiser explains: “It was a fantastic car to drive because it was doing ground effects and when you got things right with the sliding skirts under the side pods, it was just a fantastic car to drive but on the other hand when it changed to F3000, you got Cosworth engines and no ground effect so that was very spectacular also to drive, but it was totally different.”

Int. F3000 ran until 2004, and as a spec series from 1996 onwards, then it was replaced on F1’s support bill by GP2. That also had spec chassis and engine suppliers, but it briefly held category status when its second and third-generation cars were used in multiple series from 2008 to 2011, then in 2017 the FIA became more involved and rebranded GP2 as F2.

The F2 name would not be revived for the premier second-tier championship until 2017, by which time spec cars were de rigueur across junior single-seaters.

Most round wins in European F2

The post How and why European F2 went out in a splash 40 years ago appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: Campos Racing

Juan Manuel Correa returned to the F2 podium last weekend five years after his previous podium appearance. Who else has waited more than three years between podiums in F1’s primary feeder series?

The vast majority of Formula 2 drivers do not stay in the championship for more than three full seasons, as their chances of making it to Formula 1 are unlikely to improve with a fourth campaign and convincing their sponsors to fund their lack of career progress can be very difficult. But some have raced in F1’s primary feeder series over the course of half a decade or more, and there are 10 drivers who waited three years or even longer between top-three finishes.

Three-time F1 world champion Jack Brabham finished seond in Austria’s Flugplatzrennen (Airfield Race) in the inaugural European F2 season in 1967, then three seasons (and 1,156 days) later contested the same race and was second again in the first of two heats that decided the overall winner.

Peter Gethin came 12th in an incomplete European F2 campaign in 1968, and after a few years as a McLaren F1 driver decided to return to junior single-seaters in 1972 as a factory Chevron driver. He had finished third in 1968’s season-closing Rome Grand Prix at Vallelunga, and 1,287 days later won the Pau Grand Prix.

Roberto Merhi was looking for a way back into F1 when he joined MP Motorsport for the 2018 F2 season, and despite making the podium in the Monaco feature race he did not see out the year with the team and later joined Campos Racing who he made the podium with in the season finale at Yas Marina Circuit. He returned to F2, Campos and the podium halfway through 2022, finishing third in the Red Bull Ring feature race on his comeback weekend 1,324 days after his last podium.

Jochen Mass had more than proven himself in F2 and F1, having been European championship runner-up in the former in 1973 and winning for McLaren in the latter in ’75, when he made a two-round return to European F2 in 1977 to contest his home races in Germany with March. He won the Germany Trophy at Hockenheim (1,330 days on from his last podium), then was victorious in the Nurburgring’s Eifelrennen race too.

Photo: Goossens & team-mate Fernando Alonso

After two seasons in a row of coming third in International Formula 3000, Marc Goossens headed to Super Formula for 1997 to achieve his dream of becoming a professional racing driver but he mostly struggled in the Japanese series. He failed to score as a rookie, and in his sophomore campaign he did make the podium but was more prone to retiring. To keep his single-seater career going he stepped back down to Int. F3000 in 1999, but had a points-free season there too.

In 2000 he landed a seat at Team Astromega for the last four rounds, and after setting the fastest lap in the penultimate race at the Hungaroring he ended a 1,443-day wait for an F3000 podium in the Spa-Francorchamps finale by finishing second.

5. Jean-Pierre Beltoise FRANCE 1,590 days

Beltoise made the podium three times in the inaugural European F2 season, and was champion in 1968 with three wins. Thereon he was ineligible for points as a graded driver (as the likes of Brabham was too), but he stil contested most of the 1969 season and claimed a win and three other podiums. His outings over the four years following that were far less successful, and by 1973 he was eligible for points again. In his first four rounds he took two poles and a fastest lap, but also failed to qualify for one race and didn’t finish the others. He returned to the paddock for the Albi Grand Prix late in the season, and finished a few seconds behind the winner in third, with the fastest lap to boot too.

4. Jean-Pierre Jarier FRANCE 1,667 days

A two-time podium-finisher in 1971 and then European F2 champion in ’73, Jarier spent his next years toiling away in the F1 midfield with Shadow. He decided to do two F2 rounds in 1977, then four the year after as his F1 commitments downscaled. He reminded everyone of his talents by finishing third in the Germany Trophy, and landed himself a Tyrrell F1 seat for 1979 that resulted in two podiums and a career-best 11th in the standings.

3. Juan Manuel Correa ECUADOR 1,828 days

Photo by Jerry Andre / LAT Images

The Charouz Racing System team had impressed in its first F2 season in 2018, but the arrival of a new car the year after presented another big challenge to the team and its rookie driver Correa. He finished 16th on debut, then in the second round in Baku surprised by coming from 17th on the grid to finish seventh in the feature race. That put him second on the sprint race grid, and he held his position to take a maiden podium. Four more non-scores followed, then at Paul Ricard he had a similar weekend to Baku as he converted 12th on the grid into seventh in the feature race, and was sprint race runner-up.

But then another six non-scores followed before his racing career almost came to an end as he was involved in the horrific accident at Spa-Francorchamps that claimed the life of Anthoine Hubert and broke Correa’s legs and spine. He returned to racing in 2021 via FIA Formula 3, then stepped back up to F2 at the end of 2022. The 24-year-old has been there ever since, and after a track limits penalty cost him a sprint race podium last Saturday he made up for it by coming from eighth on the grid to finish third in the feature race.

2. John Surtees ENGLAND 1,919 days

Surtees entered eight European F2 rounds: four in 1967 and four in 1972. He was a factory Lola driver, and already an F1 world champion, when he had his first go at the championship and he finished third in Silverstone’s BARC 200 then was Eifelrennen runner-up. He failed to qualify for the Guards’ Trophy at Brands Hatch, and five years later also failed to qualify for the London Trophy around Crystal Palace and Rouen’s grand prix. This time he was in his own Surtees TS10 car.

A month later he won Imola’s grand prix, which was one of his last ever races in contemporary single-seaters.

1. Lamberto Leoni ITALY 2,851 days

Any F1 fans will know Leoni for failing to qualify for the 1977 Italian Grand Prix while driving for Surtees, then a year later failing to qualify for two races after being signed by Ensign. He did qualify for the Brazilian Grand Prix, but transmission issues meant he could not race, and so his sole F1 start was in the Argentinian Grand Prix where his engine gave up 29 laps in.

But before reaching F1, Leoni had shown the potential to be a racing star. He finished third on his European F2 debut in 1975’s season-opening Estoril Grand Prix, but failed to score through the rest of that campaign. In 1977 he had three DNQs, but once he switched to a more competitive team he ended up winning the Adriatic Grand Prix at Misano.

With his F1 career going nowhere, Leoni made further F2 outings in 1979, 1982, ’83 and ’84, with pole position for the 1983 German Trophy being his next highlight in the championship.

European F2 was succeeded by Int. F3000 in 1985, and Leoni stayed in the paddock. That year he made the podium with two different teams, and his third place finish in the Pau GP came almost eight years after his Misano win. Three months later, and after switching from PMC Motorsport to Corbari Italia, he took another third place at the track now known as the Red Bull RIng.

Leoni did two more Int. F300 seasons after that, but came agnosingly short of any more podiums as he finished fourth in the last three races of 1987.

The post The longest gaps between podiums in F1’s primary feeder series appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd

Rodin Motorsport’s Ritomo Miyata topped the times in a slower afternoon session on day two of Formula 2’s in-season testing at Barcelona.

Track temperature was higher than in the morning session, but still far from what is expected in June when the championship will race at the circuit. The session was mainly devoted to race runs as well as testing different set-up configurations, with only four drivers doing a qualifying simulation.

The red flag was waved 15 minutes into the session as Franco Colapinto ran off-the-track at turn seven. His car was recovered and returned to the pit-lane without any visible damage, and was out on track again in the last hour to end the session with 37 laps on the board.

Hitech GP, Campos Racing and Trident went out on track early once green flag conditions returned to complete race simulations. Other teams followed later on.

Van Amersfoort Racing’s Enzo Fittipaldi led the charts for most of the session with a laptime of 1m26.807s, which he lowered to 1m25.719s in the last hour to be fifth fastest in the end.

With two new sets of the soft compound remaining, Rodin and Invicta racing sent their drivers out on track for a full qualifying simulation with over half-an-hour remaining.

Miyata was fastest followed by Maloney, with Invicta’s Gabriel Bortoleto slotting in-between them at the end of the first run.

Only the McLaren F1 junior was able to improve his laptime on the second run. He did so by tiny 0.053 seconds, which was not enough to beat Miyata’s benchmark.

Afternoon session results

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Photo: Toyota Gazoo Racing

Ritomo Miyata has joined the list of drivers who won a top-level single-seater title then raced in junior series

Nearly every young driver starts their single-seater career dreaming of one day reaching Formula 1, IndyCar, Super Formula or maybe even Formula E. Some make it to these top-level professional series but then lose their place there and have to prove themselves again in a second-tier series to earn back their place on the grid alongside the best of the best.

Others make it to the pinnacle of single-seater racing then realise it’s not quite for them and switch to sportscar racing, where it’s more viable to have a long-term career as a paid driver, then there is an unexpected list of drivers who have conquered the very top rung of the single-seater ladder and following their title success have then headed down the ladder to a junior series.

After a decade of no surprises of that kind, this year Toyota sent Super Formula champion Ritomo Miyata to Formula 2. Under Toyota’s ‘Challenge Program’ driver development scheme linked to its World Endurance Championship team, Miyata has moved over to Europe to race in both F2 and the European Le Mans Series. Miyata is already a champion at the top level of GT racing (in Super GT), so it could also be considered a step down that he is spending this year in the second tier of prototype sportscars as well as second-tier single-seaters. Considering Ryo Hirakawa’s McLaren F1 reserve driver role, there could also be ambitions for Miyata to compete in a different top-tier series in future.

Miyata is the first ever SF champion to head down the ladder, and so far none of FE’s champions have done it although Nelson Piquet Jr raced in Indy Nxt two weeks before he claimed the inaugural FE title in 2015.

F1 champions were racing F2 cars in the 1950s because those machines were used in F1, then in the 1960s the Tasman Series – a championship run in Australia and New Zealand – took advantage of the off-season during the Northern Hemisphere winters to attract big F1 names and often in modified F1 cars.

After wrapping up the the 1960 F1 world championship title early, Jack Brabham did a few F2 races. He would later become an F2 and Tasman regular to show off his own Brabham racing cars, and down under he raced modified Brabham F1 cars in 1964, ’65 and ’66, a Formula Junior car in 1967 and ’68 and a car specifically designed for the series in 1969.

Phil Hill succeeded him as world champion in 1961 with Ferrari, and in 1965 he joined the Tasman Series in a Bruce McLaren-designed Cooper T70. The basis of the car was a 1963 F1 chassis, but McLaren had made design revisions specifically to have a lightweight model suitable for Tasman races.

Graham Hill won his first F1 title in 1962, and made Tasman Series appearances in a modified Brabham F1 car in 1964, in a Lotus F2 car in 1967 and then another modified F1 car in 1968.

In addition to defending his first F1 title, Jim Clark raced and won in the British F2 championship in 1964. Since that proved a success, he decided to add more to his plate in 1965 and he was F1, British F2, French F2 and Tasman Series champion. He continued in smaller single-seaters for several more years, and was a race-winner in European F2 in 1967.

One of his rivals in that series was 1964 F1 champion John Surtees, who took several podiums and then returned to European F2 in 1972 in a car designed and run by his own Surtees team and won the Imola Grand Prix.

Finally, Denny Hulme followed up F1 world championship success in 1967 by driving a Brabham F2 car to a Tasman Series podium in 1968.

All of the above also took part in specially organised races for F2 cars in Europe (and won quite a few of them) which were one-off events rather than part of junior series. F2 series on the continent also changed their regulations to introduce a driver grading system that made the F1 stars ineligible to score points.

Only one IndyCar champion has ventured back down the ladder, and that is Roger McCluskey. He won the 1973 USAC Championship Car season through consistency, as he had one victory that season, and in his 20-year career at American single-seater racing’s top level he only won five races in total. His final season was in 1979, and that year he also made a cameo in the USAC Mini-Indy Series (now known as Indy Nxt).

F2 races won by top-tier single-seater champions

The post The top-tier champions who stepped down to junior single-seaters appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photos: LAT Images & Formula Motorsport Ltd

Ollie Bearman claimed pole, won both races and set fastest lap in the sprint in the most recent F2 round in Baku. Looking back through the history of F1’s primary feeder series, who else has won twice in a weekend?

Aside from title success, one of the greatest things you can achieve in Formula 2 is to win both races at a single event. It’s a feat made difficult by the use of a reversed grid for the sprint race, meaning a driver will never get to start on pole for that and the feature race unless there were a lot of penalties, and with the most recent three rounds of the 2023 season having all taken place on temporary circuits it has made it even harder for a driver to come from 10th on the grid in either race to win.

Ollie Bearman became the first rookie to do the double since fellow Prema driver Oscar Piastri in Jeddah two years ago, although that year F2 utilised a three-race format and Piastri won the second sprint race from third on the grid and then the feature race from pole.

Earlier that year Hitech GP’s Juri Vips came from third and second on the grid respectively to win the second sprint race and feature race in Baku, although he was not really a rookie having already raced at the top level with a 2019 Super Formula cameo and having done four F2 rounds in 2020.

Baku was also the location of rookie Antonio Giovinazzi’s 2016 double, which marked Prema’s first wins in the secondary tier of single-seater racing as it joined GP2. The series was renamed F2 a year later, before actually using a new F2 car in 2018.

Modern F2’s only other double winner is Felipe Drugovich, who was unbeaten at Barcelona en route to the 2022 title.

A driver winning both races in a weekend was more common in the early days of GP2 when the weekend format was different. Rather than reverse the results of qualifying for the Saturday sprint race, then hold the feature race on Sunday, instead the feature race was on Saturday and then the top eight finishers from that were reversed to form the front of the sprint race grid.

Drugovich en route to his Barcelona double

Nico Rosberg wrapped up the inaugural GP2 title in 2005 by winning twice at Bahrain, then the next year there were double winners in four of the 11 rounds. Lewis Hamilton was unbeaten at the Nurburgring and in front of his home fans at Silverstone, while fierce title rival Nelson Piquet Jr won twice at the Hungaroring. For both drivers it marked a three-race victory run as Hamilton had won the sole Monaco race prior to the Nurburgring round while Piquet won the Istanbul Park feature race after his Hungaroring double. However his winning spree wasn’t enough to beat Hamilton to the title.

The season ended with two wins for Giorgio Pantano at Monza, putting him fourth in the standings despite missing three rounds and scoring in less than half of the season’s races.

The GP2 Asia series was launched at the start of 2008 for teams to race during winter, and Romain Grosjean kicked things off by winning the two first ever races at Dubai Autodrome. A year later a 21-year-old Nico Hulkenberg kickstarted a title challenge in the main series by rocketing to pole and winning twice at Niurbugring then there wasn’t another double victor again until 2012 when Davide Valsecchi claimed pole and won twice at Bahrain. A week later he won another feature race at the track.

Before GP2 was International Formula 3000, which stuck to a single-race format all the way from 1985 to 2004. Preceding that was the European F2 championship, and it did have two-race weekends but a very different format to GP2.

Not every round in the series was a double-header, but a circuit that almost always featured with two races was Hockenheim. Points from a round held there were awarded based on the aggregated results of two races, which meant if you won twice you definitely recieved the points for victory. But if there were different winners, then it could be a driver who finished second and third for example whose combined time across two races was quickest and therefore scored the most points.

The last time this format appeared was at the 1979 Rhein Cup, and Project Four Racing’s Stephen South dominated the opening 20-lapper over team-mate Derek Daly then led him home by 1.68 seconds in the follow-up race.

Hulkenberg celebrates first GP2 win at the Nurburgring

Earlier in the year their team-mate Keke Rosberg won both races of the Germany Trophy at Hockenheim by a combined margin of 27.2s over Toleman’s Rad Dougall. Project Four’s team principal Ron Dennis merged his outfit with McLaren at the end of 1980 and was at the helm there for several decades, and Toleman moved up to Formula 1 at the same time.

Bruno Giacomelli won twice to claim the Germany Trophy in 1978, Jochen Mass did the same in 1977, and factory March driver Hans-Joachim Stuck did the double twice for the Germany Trophy and the Rhein Cup in 1976. Stuck also claimed the Germany Trophy in the same fashion in 1974. Remarkably, Rosberg managed to win the 1977 Mediterranean Grand Prix at Enna-Pergusa by 49.8s despite finishing second in both races.

Nine of the 14 rounds in 1975 were double-headers awarding points using the aggregate format, but only in three of them did the same driver win both races. Maurizio Flammini achieved it at Mugello, Michel Leclere won Zolder’s Future Cup and Vittorio Brambilla won the Rome Grand Prix at Vallelunga. Patrick Depailler was the Rome GP victor the year prior, while Jean-Pierre Jabouille won the Rhein Cup.

Going further back into European F2’s history brings up more names, but many who claimed their victories in different fashions to the drivers of the second half of the 1970s and then the stars of the 21st century.

The series began in 1967 at Snetterton using two quick-fire heat races, which all drivers competed in, that then set the grid for the points-scoring Guards 100 race. Roy Winkelmann Racing’s Jochen Rindt won the first ever heat, and retired from the second with an ignition problem. But with his heat win being marginally faster than Denny Hulme’s, it meant he got to start from pole for the final. Lotus’s Graham Hill (already an F1 world champion) challenged him throughout the race, and Rindt triumphed in a photo finish by less than a tenth of a second.

On lap one a crash between Andrew Fletcher and Chris Irwin sent the latter somersaulting before his Lola turned into a fireball, but thankfully people stood on the pit straight were able to run to his car, douse the flames and pull him out to save his life.

Cystal Palace, 1970

Round two took place three days later at Silverstone using the aggregate format, with Rindt winning twice. Hill was his only opposition in race one before his rear suspension dismounted and he had to retire, and he only got his car repaired in time for race two due to the start being postponed by five minutes as the television broadcasters were slightly behind schedule!

Tyrrell’s Jacky Ickx won the single heat and the main race at the Zandvoort Grand Prix, and also won the aggregated Rome GP. His team-mate Jackie Stewart did the double to win the aggregated Mediterranean GP, and at Brands Hatch the field was split into two for the heats. Rindt won his heat, then was comfortably victorious in the points-scoring Guards Trophy race.

Jean-Pierre Beltoise started the 1968 season by winning the aggregated Germany Trophy, Rindt won his heat and the final at Thruxton and at Crystal Palace as well as winning both races on Austria’s Tulln-Langenlebarn airfield circuit (which he did again in 1969), and Ferrari’s Ernesto “Tino” Brambilla won the aggregated Rome GP.

Frank Williams Racing Cars, the predecessor to the current Williams F1 team, ran Piers Courage to victory at the aggregated Mediterranean GP in 1969 in a new Brabham BT30, and Matra’s Johnny Servoz-Gavin ended the season with Rome GP victory.

A colossal 35 cars turned up for the 1970 season opener at Thruxton, requiring the field to be split for the heats. Rindt took pole for and won the second heat, then in the final added another BARC 200 win to his CV. Reigning F1 world champion Stewart then came to London to thrill his home fans in a John Coombs-run Brabham at Crystal Palace, winning his heat and the London Trophy, but there is some disagreement in historical sources over whether that was a championship round.

A year later Thruxton proved even more popular, with 40 cars fighting over 30 places in the final. Hill won his heat, then just pipped Ronnie Peterson by 0.6s to win the BARC 200. Rising star Emerson Fittipaldi won the London Trophy, and Peterson started a winning run at the Rouen-les-Essarts Grand Prix that took him to the title.

Jarier fends off Gethin to win Kanonloppet at Karlskoga

Peterson continued his form into 1972 with BARC 200 victory, while Jean-Pierre Jaussaud won the aggregated Germany Trophy. The Pau Grand Prix switched to becoming a multiple-race weekend that year, as it still is now, and Peter Gethin won the titular race of the event after being closely matched with Patrick Depailler.

Fittipaldi won the Rhein Cup by a massive 1m26.4s on aggregate, and two weeks later won the Rouen GP too.

Mallory Park hosted the Radio Luxembourg F2 Trophy to kick off the 1973 season and Jean-Pierre Jarier won both races. On a dominant march to the title he did the double at Hockenheim, Nivelles, Rouen, Mantorp Park, Karlskoga and Enna too.

The other double victors of 1973 were Mass, who won the Swedish Gold Cup at Kinnekullering and the Rhein Cup for F1 world champion John Surtees’ fledgling manufacturer team, and Roger Williamson who won the Monza Lottery Grand Prix.

Double winners in F1’s primary feeder series

Key: FR (feature race), SR (sprint race)

The post How often do drivers do the double win in F1’s primary feeder series? appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: Ida Wood

The idea of a Formula 1 race in London holds appeal to many, but no modern proposals have seen reality. But for Formula 2, racing in the city used to be a regular part of the calendar at Crystal Palace

Last weekend, Formula 2 teams had to work from a makeshift paddock as they raced at a temporary circuit known for its tight confines and elevation changes. And they were doing the same exactly 50 years previous, except the last weekend of May in 1972 wasn’t spent in Monaco but in Crystal Palace, South London.

Round five of the European F2 championship (which would be succeeded by two series before today’s F2) was the 20th edition of the London Trophy and it took place on Bank Holiday Monday on the roads of Crystal Palace Park. The track had eight named corners, but it was more accurate to say it had 11 direction changes and changes in elevation that rivalled Macau, Monaco and even Spa-Francorchamps. In the 1930s there had been an additional loop to the track that added even more challenges, but post-war the layout used focused on being a high-speed challenge between the trees and grandstands.

The pit straight was initially on the east side of the circuit, but by 1960 it had moved to the higher ground of the west which was also a safer option given the tightness of the roads on the other side.

In its most commonly used configuration (and the one you can find on the rFactor 2 game), the track started on the not entirely straight Terrace Straight before straying left in a corner that would be flatout before drivers hit the brakes for North Tower Corner. While not technically a hairpin, the tight bend turned drivers right to almost head back in the direction they’d come but while twisting around the topography of the park to actually head downhill and into a blisteringly quick section.

The Glade was a left-hander that continued the descent and was quite brief so to actually go through without lifting was risky with the slip angle of cars on skinny tyres, and Formula 3 still had wing-free cars light on dowforce by its final visit.

After the sharp turn that isn’t, the next corner is Park Curve. Like many corners, it doesn’t look too intimidating on a track walk but has several key features that posed huge challenges. One, at least in the 2020s, is that the track surface is not super smooth asphalt but a rougher textured surface with a top layer that would definitely be prone to break-up with regular racing. The smaller stones that could be pulled out of the surface by cars sliding through what is effectively a mini esses would then make it utterly critical for drivers to then have all four wheels gripping and a very slow slip angle (so the car is travelling in the same direction as the tyres) to actually make Park Curve without hurtling into the trees on the outside.

So to enter the corner is tough enough, and with the continued descent the rear end would still want to stick out, but you then have to have the car absolutely straight on exit because of two key factors:

1) It will decompress as the road drops down again and you definitely need to be heading in a straight line for the descent of New Link.

2) It could decompress to the point, if enough speed is carried, that it could go airborne over the crest and therefore you really don’t want to be landing heading in any direction other than that of the track.

There is a car’s width of grass on the outside all the way through from Park Curve down the hill, but that’s such a low-grip surface that allowing the rear-left wheel to stray out to there could spell immediate trouble and particularly in the wet.

You can check out the below Twitter thread for some modern-day images of the corner, but cameras really do not do the sudden drop justice. And suffice to say that a low ride-height may be better for downforce and grip through the first sector but the compression at the bottom of the New Link hill could quite easily break a chassis that is running too low or too lightly-sprung on suspension as the floor crashes into the ground.

Bottom of hill and tight entry to Stadium Curve onto Stradium Straight which starts wide but is barely two-wide by the end… pic.twitter.com/KUcg6Q7KEm

— Ida (@wood_ida_) June 15, 2021

The consideration of mechanical sympathy versus the importance of laptime is an issue here because everything from New Link to the Stadium Curve at the bottom and then to the end of the Stadium Straight is under acceleration so plenty of time can be won or lost depending on the speed drivers arrive at.

In the low-downforce machinery of yesteryear, would lifting (and even a light dab of the brakes) to get a more precise turn in and therefore a higher chance of a straighter exit at Park Curve be better or would carrying more speed by staying on the throttle take less time from the top to the bottom without having to apply some steering on the run down the hill?

The short but fast Stadium Straight gets narrower as you go along it in its present-day form, and the speed only builds up so you have to hit the brakes on the approach to the twin-apex Ramp Bend right-hander that heads uphill. A wide entry means that the radius of the corner could be approached as if it was just one corner, but means going in harder on the brakes so the entry speed is low enough to then return the throttle as you go through the corner, or a tighter line requires a gradual turn-in and deceleration before the car scrubs further speed with more steering input just before the second apex so the inside kerb can almost be scrubbed and the exit of the corner can be straight-lined.

Interestingly the corner has always been banked, but its use outside of racing and re-paving in the last 50 years has left it with a severe crowning that means it is unevenly banked. The steeper banking on the inside will help with turn-in, but cars would still have to drift to the less banked left-hand side of the track exiting the second apex to have a better entry for Anerley Ramp and the aggressive surface changes between the two corners.

There is a crest at the top of Anerley, as well as another surface change, and the track goes left through the mostly straight Maxim Rise which starts slightly downhill but then heads up in the form of esses towards South Tower Corner, the final named corner of the lap. The direction changes could all be mostly straight-lined, but old races showed that drivers tended to do a fair bit of turning to hit all the apexes on their way back up the hill.

South Tower Corner today, with the original layout in orange

South Tower Corner back in the 1960s and ’70s was another banked right-hander that brought the cars onto the pit straight. Now the road that was the track extends a little further uphill into a T junction where ‘South Tower’ would a tight turn that heads back downhill slightly but also onto another corner, a sweeping left-hander, to get in the direction of the pit straight.

Mike Hailwood’s lap record, set in 1972 on European F2’s final visit, was a 48.4s and had an average speed of 103.39mph. Given F2 is 3.8s faster around Imola now than it was on the Italian track’s chicane-free 1972 layout, it’s crazy to think what laptimes would be like at Crystal Palace if downforce-laden junior single-seaters visited today.

But racing there had ceased by 1974 as it had become too dangerous for cars, even for the safety standards of the day.

Before its closure there were some iconic battles, including James Hunt and Dave Morgan’s infamous fight for second place in the 1970 Daily Express Trophy. The BRSCC British F3 round was comfortably won by Lotus’s David Walker, while the five-car fight for second ended at South Tower Corner on the last lap as Hunt and Morgan collided.

Hunt’s car came to rest in the middle of the pit straight and he then went over to Morgan and pushed him over, with marshals and others hanging near the pitwall preventing their altercation from going further before Hunt walked away. A year later Hunt won the Chris Moore Memorial Trophy at the circuit in an evening race held on a Friday. While it wasn’t quite Singapore, punters at the time did call it a night-time street race.

In 1954 the Crystal Palace Trophy ran as a non-championship F1 race, won by Scuderia Ambrosiana’s Ferrari-driving Reg Parnell, and in support was 500cc F3 which entertained over 20,000 fans with a thrilling fight for second place in its first race.

F1 cars disputed the trophy again in 1962 – when the BARC’s Formula Junior championship ran in support and despite a measly entry list (although RAC regulations often capped grid sizes) held three thrilling races – and prior to the creation of the world championship there was grand prix racing in the park in 1937, when Thai prince B. Bira won the London Grand Prix in his ERA in July and then had over 25,000 watch him win in a handicap final for the Imperial Trophy later that year.

Photo: McLaren Racing

The little-known Jochen Rindt made his first impact on the international racing scene in 1964 when he held off F1 world champion Graham Hill to win the London Trophy – then a round of the British F2 championship – in a Brabham BT20, and four years later the ‘F2 King’ won it again once it was part of the European F2 calendar as a packed one-day meeting where he dominated his heat after a mid-race rain shower came and then lapped all but one driver in the final.

He wasn’t the only F1 world champion to become ‘King of the Palace’, as Emerson Fittipaldi emerged victorious in the 1971 edition which had an entry list of 57 cars and required several sessions to decide who would actually race.

Fittipaldi had tested at Snetterton beforehand to prepare for the event, while many of his rivals had hopped off to contest the Nurburgring 1000km sportscar race over the weekend before F2’s Monday race.

Ronnie Peterson and Henri Pescarolo had the better of him in their heat, but had a broken fuel pipe and exhaust manifold respectively that contributed to them not finishing and handed the Brazilian victory.

From pole in the points-scoring final he was beaten into North Tower Corner by Tim Schenken, and somehow Peterson came from the penultimate row of the grid to end the first lap in fourth. Fittipaldi took the lead back on lap four, and Peterson was waved into third by fellow March driver Jean-Pierre Jarier. Once there he hunted down Schenken, and his flamboyant attempts to pass the Australian allowed Fittipaldi to break away up front.

Peterson eventually passed Schenken but didn’t eat into Fittipaldi’s lead as the battle for second actually continued. Even when Fittipaldi’s car started sounding odd with a fault in the ignition system, there was enough of a gap to the two behind, particularly with lapped traffic playing a part, that meant he held on to win by 4.4 seconds.

The winners’ list at Crystal Palace (in full below) reads like a ‘who’s who’ of the top names of several different eras of single-seater racing, from pre-war all the way through to the era of television superstars such as Fittipaldi, Hunt and Jody Scheckter (pictured above in 1972), all three F1 champions.

Street circuit racing returned to England in 1986 with the creation of the Birmingham Superprix, a round of European F2’s successor International Formula 3000, but there were only five editions of the event, and Formula E’s Battersea Park circuit only saw use in 2015 and 2016 before local political pressure and failed promises in terms of event clean-up meant it was retired too. The London E-Prix did return last year though, with a track running around and inside Exhibition Centre London.

And for the last decade, motorsport has returned to Crystal Palace. Sprint events were held through the final years of the 1990s and then again in the 2010s, on two occasions with 500cc F3 cars. What Formula Scout would love to see is a modern single-seater car to tackle the track, whether that be Formula Ford 1600 (as illustrated at the top of this article), F3 or even F2.

Crystal Palace’s junior single-seater event winners

The post The London street circuit with a big F2 history that still exists today appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photos: Team Ikuzawa

Sir Frank Williams’ two eponymous companies are best known for their Formula 1 successes, but it was in junior single-seaters where his name first made waves in the motorsport world

From 1964 to 1966, Frank Williams was a budding Formula 3 driver who initially ran himself and then drove for Jochen Rindt Racing as he took his career to Scandinavia. After limited success further south in Europe, bar a podium in a club race at Snetterton, he was soon bringing in top 10 results in events like the Valvoline Cup at Ring Djursland (having started from pole), the Prix de Paris at the fearsome oval and public road-combining Autodrome de Linas-Montlhery, and in the Swedish F3 championship.

Things got even better in his second season with Rindt, when he comfortably won the second edition of Sweden’s Knustorp Cup and came third in the Skarpnacksloppet race, as well as fifth in the Helsinki Speed Games and took pole for the Valvoline Cup again – but didn’t get to the final after trouble in the heats.

Running his own cars, or buying and selling them, became of greater interest afterwards and by 1968 the Frank Williams Racing Cars (FWRC) team was active in Formula 2 and F3 across Europe.

Piers Courage came sixth in the European F2 standings in the team’s first season, the highlight of which was second place in the Mediterranean Grand Prix at Enna-Pergusa. Later in the year they took their Brabham BT23C to South America and came third in the Argentinian F2 series thanks to winning the Argentine Airlines Grand Prix, and the Lottery Grand Prix at Monza also went the team’s way as Jonathan Williams (no relation) pipped Roy Winklemann Racing’s Alan Rees and The Chequered Flag team’s Robin Widdows at the line.

Courage came third in the Reims and Albi grands prix that year, the French events not included in the European championship, and a year later he repeated his Reims result and made the podium of the Pau and Limborg grands prix.

Frank Williams Racing Cars in European F2

The Limborg GP at Zolder was a strong one for FWRC, as Courage was sandwiched between his team-mates Jacky Ickx and Graham McRae. Courage went one better at Enna in 1969, but this time he wasn’t eligible for points in European F2, and then Richard Attwood was runner-up in the F2 class and sixth overall in the German Grand Prix, but as a round of the Formula 1 world championship he wasn’t eligible to score in an F2 car.

There was then a break from F2 for FWRC as F1 took priority, but the team took a hit when Courage died at the wheel in a horror accident during the Dutch Grand Prix.

F2 entries resumed in 1971, with Derek Bell aptly bringing home a podium in the Jochen Rindt Memorial Trophy, after Rindt had been another to die while racing in F1 in 1970, and Pescarolo dominated a non-championship event at Mallory Park.

A return to South America resulted in eighth place in the Brazilian F2 series for Carlos Pace and a Bogota Grand Prix podium in Colombian F2 for Bell, and each claimed strong results in Italy as Pace won the Imola Grand Prix and came third in Vallelunga’s Madunina Grand Prix, while Bell was Lottery GP runner-up.

F2 was scaled back again though in 1972 as funding from French oil company Motul meant resources were not only moved back into attending as much of the F1 season as possible but also designing and building chassis for it in-house.

That also brought an end to FWRC’s time running Brabham cars in F3, where it had also been achieving success and adding a page to motorsport history.

Tetsu Ikuzawa was the first Japanese driver post-war to race full-time in Europe and he was one of Frank Williams’ first inspired hires when he brought him into his F3 line-up mid-season in 1968.

He went on to finish fourth in BRSCC British F3, winning at Brands Hatch, Oulton Park and twice at Mallory with the first of those awarding the Nottingham Trophy.

His trailblazing success went beyond the championship, as he won the Martini F3 Trophy at Silverstone, was second in the Zandvoort Trophy and third in the International Speed Cup supporting F2’s Reims GP which Courage made the podium of.

FWRC had a substantial European presence in F3, running Patrick Champin and Jean-Francois Gerbault to seventh and eighth in French F3 and also taking them to Belgium, Italy and Spain while drivers such as Malcolm Guthrie and Richard Burton were signed for races in Finland and Sweden.

Ikuzawa changed teams in 1969, and John Kendall was brought in for part-time campaigns in Britain over the next two years before the workshop space in Reading became fully dedicated to F1.

Walter Wolf bought into FWRC ahead of the 1976 season, but after a year of shared ownership Williams left the company after Wolf had reduced his role in the racing team. For 1977 he and Patrick Head set up Williams Grand Prix Engineering, now known as Williams Racing, and they returned to F1 immediately. By 1980 they were world champions.

In 2009 the Williams name returned to F2, as the FIA revived the moniker for a new single-make series being created. Jonathan Palmer’s MotorSport Vision company successfully won the rights to turn F2 into reality, and enlisted Williams to develop a new car for a series that was to be a lower-cost equivalent to F3 (although marketed as a rival to GP2 and Formula Renault 3.5 hence the F2 moniker) and a step up from MSV’s similarly centrally-run Formula Palmer Audi series.

Palmer had an existing relationship with Williams as he made his F1 debut as a driver with the team back in 1983, and the partnership with Audi from FPA continued into the new F2 series which sat primarily on the World Touring Car Championship support bill and therefore raced further afield than its rivals, going to the Czech Republic and Morocco.

The FPA champion was awarded an F2 test, while the F2 champion each year got a free F1 test drive with Williams. The recipients of these were Andy Soucek, Dean Stoneman, Mirko Bortolotti and Luciano Bacheta.

Frank Williams Racing Cars wins

At the same time, there was behind-the-scenes changes occurring at Williams with plans to publicly list the company to increase its shares value and turn around flailing fortunes both on-track and financially after the global financial crisis.

Toto Wolff had bought into the team in 2009, and he was influential in its increased support of young drivers on an individual basis. Williams had always been known for taking brave but inspired calls on signing rookie drivers, British F3 race-winner Jenson Button in 2000 and IndyCar champions Juan Pablo Montoya and Jacques Villeneuve being superstar-sized examples, and those success stories paved the way for rivals McLaren and Red Bull to take similar risks in the years since.

Nico Rosberg, another Williams rookie-turned-F1 world champion, started working at single-seaters’ top level on the factory floor (now in Grove) and a few years later that integration was formalised as a process with another Nico. His namesake Nico Hulkenberg, who like Rosberg got a first F1 test with Williams after winning the Formula BMW ADAC title, was signed as test driver for 2008 but also was given work experience in various departments of the team.

That process was repeated with Valtteri Bottas from 2010 to 2012, with a GP3 title being won in the middle, and like his predecessors he was promoted to a race seat after serving his apprenticeship on the simulator and in the office.

Bottas was managed by Wolff, who was also married to Susie Wolff who became Williams’ next development driver after seven years in the DTM. She eventually got moved into a test driver position, and Alex Lynn took her old place in 2015.

Lynn had orchestrated his own move away from the Red Bull Junior Team, after just a single year there in which he had won the GP3 title, and represented Williams alongside racing in GP2. Formula Scout understands his role became increasingly simulator-heavy in 2016 as he in-effect started doing F3 development work for Williams’ new test driver Lance Stroll, who did end up dominating that year’s FIA European F3 championship after being fast but erratic the previous season.

It was Stroll who ended up in an F1 race seat in 2017, and there was more support on the simulator side in 2018 when Oliver Rowland was signed as the team’s ‘official young driver’ despite being older than Stroll and team-mate Sergey Sirotkin.

Photo: Williams Racing

By this point being an affiliated young driver looked very different to how it had for Hulkenberg and Bottas, but Rowland’s signing – given he was light on racing commitments that year – enabled the team to evaluate what worked best for drivers but also the team itself and in 2019 the Williams Driver Academy was created by Marc Harris, husband of deputy team principal Claire Williams and the day-to-day operator of the company after Frank had moved into a more upstairs role in 2013.

Jamie Chadwick was officially the first signing, with Dan Ticktum arriving at the end of 2019 and just a few months after being dropped by Red Bull. His fellow F2 racer Roy Nissany was added not long after, and FIA F3 Championship race-winner Logan Sargeant has recently been signed after Ticktum was dropped for reasons not believed to be linked to an infamous livestream.

During this time Williams has changed ownership, with the family no longer involved in the team, but the signing of Sargeant last month – and the continued support of injured reserve driver Jack Aitken – suggests that Sir Frank’s legacy will continue to be felt in junior single-seaters as well as in F1.

CV

Name: Frank Williams   D/O/B April 16, 1942   Country England

Car Racing
1966: Knutstorp Cup winner, 3rd in XVI Skarpnacksloppet, 5th in Helsinki Speed Games, 6th in Enna-Pergusa GP, 14th in Finnish GP – 4th in F3 class, 12th in Lottery GP
1965: 6th in Valvoline Cup, 9th in Prix de Paris, NC in Swedish F3 (foreigners couldn’t score it seems), 11th in Frontieres GP
1964: 8th in Caserta Car Race, 11th in Wunstorf Airfield Race

The post The junior success that set Frank Williams on the path to dominate F1 appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: Paul Kooyman

In the 1970s, a young Italian went from entry-level single-seaters through to Formula 3, Formula 2 and then Formula 1 in the space of just over one-and-a-half years. Riccardo Patrese tells his story to Formula Scout

There’s not many racing drivers who can claim to have successfully transitioned from a totally different sport, although Chris Hoy became a European Le Mans Series LMP3 champion after a record-breaking cycling career, but the man who sets the template for all who follow is Riccardo Patrese. And he happens to be the ninth most experienced Formula 1 driver in history.

Patrese skied and swum competitively in parallel to his karting career as a teenager, with the latter culminating in winning the world championship title in 1974. That success didn’t automatically make motorsport Patrese’s long-term future, as he saw little point in continuing karting beyond that point.

But Scuderia Nettuno came calling off the back the karting title and pointed him towards single-seater racing in the form of Formula Italia. The single-spec series used Abarth cars and engines, with a long-nose design and no aerodynamic appendages.

Patrese juggled his maiden car racing campaign with university, not expecting his racing career to go much further without a financial boost, but in finishing second in FItalia behind Bruno Giacomelli he earned the chance to race in F3 for 1976.

“Forget what’s happening now,” Patrese says to Formula Scout, referring to the current junior single-seater landscape.

“I had the offer from Trivellato Racing to come drive for them for the European Formula 3 championship. I accepted it. Of course. Because he [Jacopo Trivellato] offered me to go and race in European F3. Because he trusted me to be good.”

Trivellato had been the Italian importer for racing car constructor March, but for 1976 he defected to Chevron and had factory support to run its new B34 model in FIA European F3 as a one-car entry.

“At the end we did a one-day test at a circuit called Casale Monferrato. One-day test,” Patrese says of his pre-season mileage.

Photo: Riccardo Patrese

“And we went straight to Nurburgring. The old Nurburgring. It was a bit different to what is happening now that you make, especially in Formula 4, 3000 kilometres in wintertime of testing before racing. It was completely different to [that]. So I had to adapt to the car very quickly. And then on the top of that, the first race was at the Nurburgring. And that was a big challenge, but it went quite well I think.”

Over the April 3/4 weekend, the German and European F3 championships got their seasons underway on the Nordschleife.

The German F3 race ran on the Saturday, meaning Patrese got to rack up some important experience on the 22.84km layout before Sunday’s European F3 opener.

“It was good weather for the German race that was on Saturday, and I managed to finish second that race. Then following that, it was grey, grey sky on Sunday. We started dry, and I went into the lead, and then came a little bit of rain, and I slowed down a little bit because, you know, first race, first moment that I drove the car in wet conditions with slicks. And I finished third. But it was still a good result.”

Patrese had come 0.4 seconds short of victory in his German series cameo, and finished 23.1s behind the winner on Sunday.

“It was good experience, but difficult. But I managed to do it, and I took the car home safe and we got the podium. And the following race we were in Zandvoort and I won. So the start of the championship was good, and even the end was good because I came champion that year.

“We did Nordschleife, Enna-Pergusa, at Monza I won the Lottery Grand Prix, but the guy that won me the lira, never came to thank me. Because of course I was together with the ticket that won, in those days you won 500 million lira, which is like €1 million now.

“The car was the B34, and that was just for F3. And the B35 was for Formula 2, or Formula Atlantic. The car was the same in the European F2 championship or in the Atlantic championship or even in the Pacific, because there was also a championship that was called Formula Pacific. And the same car was used in all of these three championships.

“For sure in those days aerodynamics was very poor, and all the grip came from the tyres and mechanical set-up that you had. In the wet I think it was a challenge, because a lot of [it] was done from the driver. The way that you could adapt to the car, and you could drive in difficult conditions, so let’s say that it was hard work.

“You could change suspension, I mean geometry, roll-bars, shock absorbers, everything you could do – I mean it was free to do everything you wanted [when you were racing].

“You could change springs and rollbars during the sessions. If you had to change the shock absorbers maybe you could change between one to another section. It was quite quick to make adjustments to the car.”

All this set-up variation was the kind of learning that young drivers don’t quite get today in the lower rungs of single-seaters, particularly when so much of the decision-making is done outside of the car and aerodynamics has a greater influence.

“There was [car] development. We did some changes, like we changed I remember the set-up of the shocks,” Patrese adds.

“There was no aerodynamics basically in those days, so not much to do really. Two types of tyres from Goodyear. Two compounds. A softer, and one harder. So we could have it a little bit softer or harder depending on the weather or the asphalt that we got. So there was much less possibility to do things. We are talking F3, not Formula 1.

“Even in F1, when I came in ‘77, if you compare the car that I drove the first year in ‘77, and you compare the car of now, it’s like here to Mars.”

Using the softer Goodyear compound tyre was actually crucial to his season, as Trivellato got hold of the grippier compound for the Vallelunga season finale and it contributed to Patrese taking pole for the first heat race. He went into that round a couple of points behind factory March driver Conny Andersson, and Andersson got ahead of him off the line in their heat.

However drama ensued as the Swede was deemed to have jumped the start and he was handed a one-minute penalty. He therefore spent much of the 10-lap race keeping Patrese behind him – and some would say holding up – in the hope that delaying the Italian would prevent the title from going his rival’s way. Instead, the penalty dropped Andersson to 18th and meant he didn’t get through to the points-paying final while Patrese did and with the title now in his sights.

Patrese finished second in the 32-lap title decider to Gianfranco Brancatelli, enough to match Andersson on dropped scores.

“My big battle was with Conny,” Patrese recalls. “We finished on the same points, but I think I had one more win than him and because of that I was champion.”

It actually came down to third place countback, with both having four wins (Patrese winning the Enna-Pergusa Grand Prix and the Hessenpreis at Germany’s Kassel-Calden airport circuit in addition to Zandvoort and Monza) and two second places. Patrese made the podium’s bottom step twice in points-scoring races, while Andersson only did once.

“So it was really a very tight fight, but there were drivers that were like Bracatelli, sometimes Giacomelli came and drove with the March, but was busy with the British championship. But he came sometimes to drive in the middle of us. Rupert Keegan was there too, there were good drivers.”

It wasn’t only the European title that Patrese won, as in the same race he was crowned Italian F3 champion too.

“Now Mr Trivellato said ‘OK, now you are champion in F3, I give you a F2 to drive’. I said ‘thank you very much’. “

After bringing a lot of eyes onto F3 in 1976, Patrese did the same in European F2 in 1977. He came sixth and fifth in the opening two rounds, leading the Chevron charge, and then came third in Hockenheim’s Deutschland Trophy. After that was the Nordschleife, a circuit he actually knew, for the 205km-long Eifelrennen race.

“I got the pole at Nurburgring, at the beginning of May. I was 2.8 seconds in front of all the rest of the field. And in the field there were F1 drivers like Jochen Mass, Clay Regazzoni, Alan Jones. Because of that, the following Monday I got a call from Shadow, I tested the week after at Paul Ricard. I did 300km, and they said afterwards ‘OK, we go to Monaco and you debut there’, and I was in F1.

“It was not like now that you need the millions and millions and millions to go to F1.”

Patrese ended up retiring on the second lap at the Nordschleife, but once again the impact preceded the outcome. Three weeks later he was racing in F1 aged 23, just two years, one months and 22 days on from his single-seater debut.

“It was the period of [designer] Tony Southgate. It was not the best car in F1, but in those days, and in the end the opportunity came because Tom Pryce was killed in the accident at the South Africa Grand Prix. Because of that terrible accident, there was a free place and they asked me to replace him.”

Patrese drove his Shadow DN8 to ninth on his debut, and he got eight more chances in the car over the rest of the year. He scored his first point in the season finale, the Japanese Grand Prix, then flew straight back to England to complete his F2 campaign. Second places at Mugello, Rouen and Nogaro helped him to fourth in the European standings (while also winning the Italian title), and after that he flew all the way back to Japan to contest the Super Formula finale at Suzuka and won it.

He would remain Asia for the Macau Grand Prix, which ran to FPacific regulations at the time. As described by Patrese, the Bob Harper Racing-run Chevron B40 he drove was a very similar car to what he had stepped up to F2 in.

Photo: Paul Kooyman

“In effect, when I drove in Macau in 1977 the car was the same car that I drove in F2 but had a FPacific engine that was a little bit with less power, something like that,” Patrese says. “F2 had 300 horspower, here we had 240-something.”

While the challenging Guia circuit hasn’t changed too much since the 1970s, there were some notable differences.

“The circuit they didn’t change much, but at least now you have the barriers,” Patrese worryingly points out.

“In the first year I went there, there was no barriers. So when we were going up the hill there, for the very fast Esses, I remember that I was doing the walk of the track and there was a small wall about 40cm high, and I said ‘OK, for sure now it can be there’ because maybe it was Monday or Tuesday before the race so [I was thinking] ‘for sure they’ve put a rail or something, because you could see below there were cars, homes, houses.

“Maybe 20 metres [below] that there were houses. So I said ‘ah, for sure they’ll put a rail just for that’. But no, they didn’t put a rail. We raced with only that small wall, and if somebody was touching or going off, we were flying on the top of the houses. So it was also that quite a challenge. In those days, safety was not a big matter. We went, we raced, and [didn’t worry].”

Patrese took pole, and nabbed a cash prize in doing so, then drove one of the most unbelievable and sensational races to win. Alan Jones took the lead at first, but he then had mechanical trouble and was hit by Patrese, which ruined his race further and also sent Patrese to the back of the field. On top of that, the Italian had a lengthy pitstop and was then shown the black flag. He stayed on track though and fought his way back up the order before then lapping his opposition once in the lead.

In 1978 he returned to Macau to become a two-time winner of the grand prix, and cameoed in SFormula (then known as Japanese F2) again too, but he had also already established himself in F1 with Arrows and in sportscars too.

“From the driving point of view F2 was very similar because the F1 aerodynamics was very poor. But a lot more power.

“Because I went in one year I went from the 160hp of the F3 then to the 300 of F2 and the 550 of F1. With the more power the car was moving a lot. But in the end, that was not a big problem. I think if you are good, then you needed to drive everything. A part then of my career I also drove prototypes, endurance races; I won many six-hour and 1000km races. When you are good, you are good [in everything]. With the wheel, in the end [if] you are good you drive everything [too].”

Patrese’s F1 career ran all the way to 1993, and he did the GP Masters series in 2005 and ’06 for ex-F1 stars. Now, he’s following the fledgling single-seater career of his F4-driving son Lorenzo, who has also switched across from another sport.

“I don’t enjoy watching because I suffer a lot,” Patrese admits. “When I look at Lorenzo driving, I suffer. Not because I’m afraid of safety, [but] because you know all the fighting and I would like to see him always at the best if it’s possible.”

That fighting aspect of racing in F4 does get Patrese’s approval, despite the costs of modern entry-level junior single-seaters.

“F4 prepares very well for fighting, you know. Sometimes in F1 you don’t see much fights, here you see a lot of fights. So it’s a logical consequence from karting, because also there you are really having to fight hard. So, in the end, yes [F4 cars prepare drivers well.

“I think the car is very basic, and difficult to drive. The car is quite physical. If you jump to the next step, I think from the driving point of view it’s easier. Because you have more downforce, OK then that doesn’t mean that then you are the quickest, but from the driving side I think when you go the step forward it’s a little bit easier.”

And what of Patrese Jr’s own racing accomplishments? “His start in F4 is promising. He has a lot of passion.

“I never asked him to drive, because he was born as a rider, not as a driver. He’s quite good on showjumping with horses.

Photo: ACI Sport

“He was in the Italian team in the European championship in France only three years ago. And in karting he started very late compared to the other guys, because he started when he was 11.

“Usually they start in karting when they are seven, eight. My wish was him to go and ride, because I like also myself riding now. But he wanted to drive, so we started with karting, and then yes OK we started with F4, and then you needed to fight because if you want [to race], you need to have budget, because you have to spend money, especially at the beginning. So we will see [where he goes].

“You cannot predict anything from the formula point of view, because from here it is a cost, and then if you go the next step it’s a cost, and then even more and even more as you go. It’s important that he makes good results, I think, and then maybe somebody puts an eye on him.”

The younger Patrese did five races with AKM Motorsport last year in Italian F4, then has returned to the team for a full campaign in 2021. In the Paul Ricard season opener he claimed his first point, and is currently 14th in the standings.

“Let’s say that from the sporting point of view and the agonism, he started when he was seven,” says his father.

“So when he came here, he was already prepared to have pressure and fight for the good result. Especially in horse riding, he was in the national team and he was doing national cup, so it means he was in a team of four riders and he was competing for Italy. So you have also the responsibility to be there for your nation. I think it was taught there to have pressure, let’s say he didn’t start when he started karting from this pressure point of view, he had this already in his baggage.

“Now he has to make a little bit of experience, as normal, because you know for example he still has to improve the start. You can make pole position, but if you don’t start too well then you lose all the advantage you had. So he needs to raise his game, but I think he has a lot of will and a lot of passion, and that is the most important thing. Because it’s not my will that he has to be a racing driver, it’s his!”

Photo: ACI Sport

The post Riccardo Patrese on his rapid rise to F1 appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photos: Formula Motorsport Limited

Theo Pourchaire is now the youngest ever winner of a Formula 2 race at 17 years old, but who else joins him in the pantheon of teenaged winners in Formula 1’s primary feeder and support series?

In the 55 seasons that a secondary tier of single-seater racing in Europe has existed with the primary focus of sending drivers to Formula 1, there has been surprisingly few teenaged winners of races.

There were actually teenagers racing in F1 prior to the creation of the European Formula 2 championship in 1967, and many of the ones that have reached the pinnacle of motorsport in the years since have gone on to great success.

At first European F2 actually catered for F1 drivers too, with the stars of the day flitting between the world championship and then racking up results (but by no means easily) against the rising stars of the day. In fact it was more popular initially to go to F1 first and then develop your abilities further in F2.

That championship lasted until 1984, when shrinking entry lists led to the series closing down and the FIA creating what would eventually be named International Formula 3000 to replace it in 1985. A similar fate befell that too, with F3000 being shut down in 2004 after several years of pressure from F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone and GP2 – created in co-operation with Renault F1 team principal Flavio Briatore and Bruno Michel – launched in its place.

GP2 technically ran through to the end of 2017, with a rebrand to the F2 name for its final season before it actually became a new championship recognised by the FIA in 2018 and introduced the Dallara F2 2018 car it still races with today. That vehicle has ended up being driven by a lot of young prospects, several who feature on this list of the youngest ever to win in the history of F1’s primary feeder series.

This discludes GP2 Asia, where Sergio Perez and Luiz Razia won aged 19, and all non-championship races.

Not quite making the list but certainly making a mark on racing history are six drivers who all won in European F2/Int. F3000/GP2/F2 when they had yet to reach their 20th birthdays.

Doing that by just one day was elusive junior single-seater racing legend Mike Thackwell, who at the time of his first win in the second tier was already the youngest ever person to race in F1. His 1980 Canadian Grand Prix start took four years to follow up on, but between those appearances he established himself as a European F2 star. Thackwell’s first win came in the prestigious BRDC International Trophy race at Silverstone that opened the 1981 season, and he won it as a factory Ralt driver.

Nine days younger when he took his first F2 win was fellow Antipodean Oscar Piastri, who triumphed on just his second start at Bahrain back in March.

Fizzling with teenaged promise but then failing to truly deliver on that in GP2 and F1 were Sergey Sirotkin and Esteban Gutierrez, while Javier Villa‘s name was briefly on F1’s lips after a breakthrough GP2 win at Magny-Cours in 2007 but his later career took him to roofed machinery.

Similarly, Rafaele Marciello drove superbly in the series and he won in his rookie season in 2014 but a combination of being at the wrong place at the wrong time and Ferrari politics meant he never had an F1 career and instead became a sportscar great and GT World Challenge Europe champion with Mercedes-Benz.

Tarso Marques BRAZIL 19 years, 8 months & 5 days
1995 Estoril

Best known for somehow beating Minardi team-mate Fernando Alonso in the 2001 F1 standings, Marques was one of many Brazilians to test their racing fortunes with European teams in the late 1990s with ambitious steps up the single-seater ladder.

In two years he went from the small cars of Formula Chevrolet Brazil to the F1-style Reynard-Cosworth of Int. F3000, with zero success outside of his home country before his upwards move, but actually embedded himself well in Europe.

That integration into a new racing environment brought him level with his more talented peers, and while his rookie F3000 season with Vortex Motorsport aged 18 was difficult he actually came an impressive 12th in the points with a fastest lap to his name and a fourth place at Magny-Cours.

Admittedly there wasn’t standout names finishing behind him, but neither was anyone expecting him to perform that well.

Marques moved to DAMS for his second season, and improved to fifth in the standings despite scoring in only three of eight rounds. He started the year with fastest lap at Silverstone, followed by a maiden podium at Barcelona and then a surprise pole in Pau.

That breakthrough lasted about 220 metres in the grand prix before a violent and painful crash with fellow front-row man and team-mate Guillaume Gomez. That dissapointment was followed by two more retirements, but Marques did rebound.

At Spa-Francorchamps he finished fifth, then he took pole by over half a second at Estoril. The race was his too, and the 19-year-old lapped all but the top eight as he drove to what would be his biggest and last single-seater win.

In 1996 he moved up to F1 briefly with Minardi, coming fourth in the final ever non-championship event, then returned to the Italian team in 1997 and 2001, with IndyCar spells in between. His next racing podium was a Stock Car Brasil win in 2006.

Sebastien Buemi SWITZERLAND 19 years, 7 months & 22 days
2008 Magny-Cours sprint race

It was fortitious, but ultimately it’s unlikely Buemi would ever have got to F1 was it not for his 21st to first charge at Magny-Cours halfway through a GP2 season where his driving was coming under scrutiny.

The Arden driver, who had basically a full season of GP2 experience after a half-season in 2007 and an early 2008 GP2 Asia campaign, already had two sprint race podiums to his name but both had come from starting near the front.

At Magny-Cours he qualified fifth but that became a penalised ninth on the grid, and used an undercut strategy in the feature race to try to get a strong result. That ended in retirement, and left him 21st on the sprint race grid.

A damp track from pre-race rain added an extra variable to allow Buemi to recover, and with nothing to lose he opted to start the race on slick tyres while many at the front started on the full wet compound.

The wet tyre runners made stronger starts, but a dry line emerged quick enough to send much of the front half of the field into the pits to change – perhaps too late. Others lost it on their own on a tricky track surface, or clattered into one another.

Buemi’s team-mate Yelmer Buurman also made the right tyre choice from the off, although he got to start considerably higher up the grid, while iSport’s Bruno Senna was charging up from 23rd place before he encountered technical issues.

The victory battle came down to a straight fight between Arden’s drivers once the pitstops had played out, and it took a whole lap of side-by-side action for Buemi to successfully pass Buurman. He pulled away at a second per lap after achieving that to take a 6.639s win, with the rest of the field over 20s behind.

Buemi won another sprint race in 2008, then got his F1 calling with a Toro Rosso team impressed by his technical ability.

Charles Leclerc MONACO 19 years, 6 months & 0 days
2017 Bahrain sprint race

Leclerc came back from a mid-race pitstop to win the sprint race at the abrasive Bahrain circuit in 2017, immediately marking himself out in F2.

He was one of four drivers to make a pitstop during the race, expertly using the medium compound Pirellis to build a lead of 9.4s before moving onto softs to attack for the final nine laps of the race and making 13 overtakes.

Luca Ghiotto and Oliver Rowland completed the podium, 1.5 and 2.8 seconds behind the winner, after both being passed in the final two laps of the race and not having the grip to compete for the win.

Leclerc started in sixth, a position which effectively became fifth when polesitter Nobuharu Matsushita was forced to start in the pitlane with pre-race mechanical issues, but had a superb launch to move up to third on the first lap of 23.

He then passed Alex Albon at Turn 4 on lap four after an early safety car period when Norman Nato spun off with a puncture. Leclerc overtook early leader Ghiotto on lap nine, and went on to build his lead before the sensational post-pitstop fight to the front to counter the issues he was having with tyre life which ruined his chances of a win in the feature.

Eddie Cheever USA 19 years, 5 months & 16 days
1977 Rouen-les-Essarts Grand Prix

Eddie Cheever in 1977

Ron Dennis’s Project Four Racing team had factory BMW engines, top chassis from Ralt and a line-up consisting of a baby faced Cheever and former Fittipaldi F1 driver Ingo Hoffmann in 1977.

Hoffmann’s experience had nothing against the sheer ability of Cheever, who came second in the Jochen Rindt Trophy race at Thruxton early in the season after a frantic podium battle and then really made his name known in the famous Eifelrennen on the full 20.83-kilometre Nordschleife.

Although he qualified down the order on the daunting track, he was far more confident in the race and made his way to second place within two laps. The driver he was chasing for the win was 30-year-old Jochen Mass, already an established F1 name with McLaren.

Mass’s experience made him a ‘graded’ driver ineligible for points, and according to reports at the time Cheever used a mature head and decided to just sit in Mass’s mirrors for the remaining seven laps of the race. Mass did open the gap towards the end though, suggesting he had as much in reserve as Cheever did, but it was Cheever who took the points for victory.

It wasn’t until four rounds later at the fast, flowing and equally scary Rouen circuit in France that Cheever took his actual first win, following another podium at Vallelunga, but it was with just as mature a display as he’d shown in Germany.

This time it was keeping a cool head while others crashed that sent Cheever up the order after another lowly qualifying.

The first corners of the track were all downhill and didn’t require braking, meaning there was little time for drivers to react when on the opening lap the frontrunners slowed and those behind concertinaed down the Rouen hill.

Rene Arnoux and Patrick Tambay crashed immediately, and Cheever timed his approach to not only get through the chaos safely but move up the order and into victory contention. Once in the lead he kept a steady pace, but at the same time pulled away while more of his rivals faltered.

After 38 laps he finished 7.6s clear of Trivellato Racing’s Riccardo Patrese and Ecurie Elf’s Didier Pironi to become the first ever teenager to win at this level of single-seater racing. Cheever ended up as title runner-up that year, and stayed in F2 for another two seasons before establishing his presence in F1 and later becoming an IndyCar race-winner and team boss.

Sergio Sette Camara BRAZIL 19 years, 3 months & 4 days
2017 Spa-Francorchamps sprint race

A fast start earned Sette Camara his first car racing win at Spa in 2017, as Leclerc came from 19th on the grid to finish fifth.

MP Motorsport driver Sette Camara ended Saturday’s feature race set for reversed grid pole for the sprint, but the exclusion of Leclerc and Oliver Rowland promoted him to sixth and put him third on the sprint race grid behind Nato and Roberto Merhi.

He almost immediately took the lead however, shooting between the top two after a superb getaway. Fellow second-row starter Nyck de Vries dived to the inside of Nato at La Source, and completed the move into Les Combes.

Sette Camara soon built a one-second margin over de Vries, and had doubled that before the safety car came out on lap 15 of 18 after a huge shunt for Nobuharu Matsushita at Raidillon.

The clean-up was almost completed in time for one final lap of racing, but Sette Camara ultimately did not have to worry about a restart. From the rear of the grid Leclerc got up to 14th on the first lap, was in eighth by lap six, and finished in fifth.

Liam Lawson NEW ZEALAND 19 years, 1 month & 16 days
2021 Bahrain sprint race 1

Lawson fended off fellow Red Bull junior Jehan Daruvala to win the opening reversed-grid race of the 2021 season at Bahrain.

He went from third to first on the run down to Turn 1 on the opening lap, passing reversed grid polesitter Theo Pourchaire and David Beckmann.

Lawson set the fastest lap on lap two to build an early race lead, while Pourchaire and Beckmann squabbled for second. Pourchaire emerged in front and he held that position until his ART Grand Prix-run car ground to a halt with 10 laps to go.

Daruvala dispatched Beckmann around the outside of Turn 4 at the halfway stage in the race and closed in on Lawson but couldn’t find a way past the Kiwi. In the proccess, Lawson became just the 13th driver ever to win on their first F2/F3000/GP2/F2 series start, after Jochen Rindt, Dave Morgan, Gerard Larrousse, Stefan Bellof, Johnny Herbert, Jordi Gene, Ricardo Rosset, Stephane Sarrazin, Heikki Kovalainen, Alvaro Parente, Charles Pic and Stoffel Vandoorne.

Fernando Alonso SPAIN 19 years, 0 months & 28 days
2000 Spa-Francorchamps

Alonso had already won six races and the title in Formula Open by Nissan in 1999, which would evolve into the GP2-rivalling Formula Renault 3.5 series, and so had already proven himself at this level when he moved to Int. F3000 for 2000.

He joined Belgian team Astromega, a proven outfit over the previous years, but his season didn’t get off to a strong start with a spin on the way to ninth in his first race at Imola, then a non-compliant engine mounting got him excluded from the next round at Silverstone after qualifying sixth.

After that was his home race at Barcelona, but on the second lap he collided with Sebastien Bourdais and spun down from 13th to 22nd, then in his recovery drive collided with Kristian Kolby and spun again, eventually finishing 15th.

A multi-car crash wiped him out on lap one at the Nurburgring, but he had reason to smile as two days later he was announced as a Minardi F1 test driver.

Next up on the calendar was Monaco. From 13th on the grid there he was never going to score highly, and he had his race compromised when Darren Manning crashed ahead of him. But he was consistently showing strong race pace, and high attrition led to an eighth place finish alongside taking the fastest lap.

At Magny-Cours he qualified third, and was then running fifth before a fuel pump failure sent him into retirement and down to 21st in the standings. Two weeks later at the A1 Ring (now the Red Bull Ring), he qualified 15th but charged up the order in the first half of the race and earned his first point in sixth place.

He hadn’t quite unlocked good luck yet though, with another retirement at Hockenheim meaning he was still 21st in the points with two races to go. The penultimate round was at the Hungaroring, and after qualifying third Alonso pressured Bruno Junqueira all the way for the win but came 0.595s short.

There was just one more chance for Alonso to break his victory duck, and he made the most of it. The Spaniard took pole for the Spa season finale, then dominated the race and took fastest lap to end the season fourth in the standings.

Christian Lundgaard DENMARK 18 years, 11 months & 20 days
2020 Red Bull Ring sprint race 2

After two rounds of the 2021 season, Alpine junior Lundgaard is yet to score the same amount of points as he earned with his first win in 2020, taking victory in the support race to the Styrian Grand Prix.

In the previous day’s rain-soaked feature race he had worked his way through the field before a mistake at Turn 6 blunted a potential podium charge.

He started the sprint race from third on the grid and passed ART Grand Prix team-mate Marcus Armstrong for second at Turn 1 on the opening lap. A virtual safety car period meant Lundgaard had to wait to race for the lead, but he wasted little time following the restart, and dived down the inside of polesitter Dan Ticktum at Turn 3 on the second lap after the restart.

FIA Formula 3 Championship graduate Lundgaard fired in two successive fastest laps to build an advantage over Ticktum in excess of the one second needed to escape DRS range. From then on he maintained a gap of around two seconds to win.

It was a particularly impressive display by the rookie as he has missed the pre-season test at Bahrain due to being in quarantine brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the lockdown period limited his access to ART GP too to learn the car with a model of the new-for-2020 18-inch tyres on the team’s simulator. But over the opening two rounds at the Red Bull Ring he had the second best race pace behind Ticktum, and had a clear peak pace advantage over long runs.

Lando Norris ENGLAND 18 years, 4 months & 25 days
2018 Bahrain feature race

Standing in at the struggling Campos Racing team at the 2017 season finale meant when Norris lined up on pole for 2018’s first race he didn’t have the opportunity to become a winning debutant, but he did become the first to win in F2’s current car.

The Carlin driver dominated the Bahrain season opener, while Artem Markelov charged through to third from a pitlane start.

A stall on the warm-up lap for Markelov meant the Russian Time driver started from the pits, while Norris led the field away and pulled out a lead of nine seconds within the first nine laps.

A troublesome pitstop cut that lead down, but we built the advantage back up to 8.321 seconds by the chequered flag, with team-mate Sette Camara completing a Carlin one-two on the team’s series return.

He earned that spot after a spectacular late battle with Markelov who extended his first stint longer than anyone else, jumped up the order with the overcut strategy and then had a tyre life advantage late on.

While Norris broke the race-winner age record, sat at the top of the standings for half of the season and earned a McLaren F1 seat for 2019, he didn’t actually visit the podium’s top step again in F2 and lost the title to ART GP’s George Russell.

Theo Pourchaire FRANCE 17 years, 9 months & 2 days
2021 Monaco feature race

Formula Scout discussed with Pourchaire at the start of 2021 that he potentially had a record-breaking year ahead of him, but the French 17-year-old wasn’t particularly interested in the stats. That changed somewhat last weekend.

From pole he expertly controlled the Monaco feature race, only dropping out of the lead during the pitstop phase.

His only challenge for the win came early on when Robert Shwartzman put him under pressure, but it wasn’t long before Pourchire managed to shake off the Prema driver and extend a gap to the rest of the field.

That then extended further when a problem during Shwartzman’s pitstop dropped him out of contention for the lead.

The second half of the race was riddled with VSC periods, but Pourchaire edged out a gap while green flags were waved to finish 2.894s ahead of Prema’s Piastri.

“It was amazing, the race was so stressful because I was under pressure,” Pourchaire said after victory.

“Monaco is unique, you cannot make a mistake in Monaco, so I was so concentrated. We had the perfect race; I was fast in the second part of the race and we had a really good strategy.”

The feature race performance capped off a weekend that began with Pourchaire becoming the youngest ever polesitter not only in F1’s primary support series but the whole of single-seater racing’s second tier of competition. He beat the benchmark set by Alonso at Jarama during his title-winning FOpen by Nissan season by 17 days.

More classic GP2/F2
Kanonloppet 1973: The last time F2 held a three-race weekend
The F2 winners who started further back than Matsushita
Junior series in Monaco: From the sublime to the ridiculous
How to make the fastest junior single-seater in the world
Reliving the first ever GP2 weekend: Imola 2005
The strange story of the support series that supported itself
Top 10 GP2 drivers that F1 missed out on
Giacomo Ricci: The GP2 underdog leading F2’s dark horse

The post The youngest ever winners in F1’s primary feeder series appeared first on Formula Scout.