Not every year in junior series is a stand out. The natural cycles of talent can leave some Formula 2 years short.
The 2022 season, however, had a strong crop of rookies running at the front of the points and enough experienced drivers for that to be proven on merit.Felipe Drugovich and Théo Pourchaire’s title fight was done with by Monza, but the five-way battle for third place to the last round in Abu Dhabi showed how competitive the field was. In total, 12 different drivers claimed race wins across the season and six succeeded in claiming a pole position. Here’s the ten that stood out, to RaceFans.
10 – Richard Verschoor – Trident
Despite starting the year strong with a win in the Bahrain sprint race, Verschoor wasn’t able to carry on the promising form. Scoring 96% of Trident’s points and bringing home four podiums was muted by a long, mid-season failure to score points.
9 – Frederik Vesti – ART
However, despite not scoring in the first two rounds, Vesti had a breakthrough podium in the Barcelona feature race, before going on to win the sprint in Baku. Pole in Spielberg didn’t quite translate into victory but Vesti’s performance in Monza saw him secure second in both races – an extremely tricky accomplishment with F2’s partially reversed grid.
8 – Enzo Fittipaldi – Charouz
Consistently scoring kept Fittipaldi high up in the standings, however a disappointing final round saw him come away with no extra points – the only thing keeping him down.
Fittipaldi’s on-track performances also got stronger and stronger. From looking initially a little lost in the F2 pack and without much wheel-to-wheel form, by the end of the season he was slicing through the pack on a regular basis.
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7 – Jehan Daruvala – Prema
It wasn’t to be. Although F2 is a spec series, sometimes teams get it more right or wrong and Prema’s years of being right had apparently run out. Both drivers struggled for qualifying pace and previously strong reliability faded away.
Daruvala was able to use his prior F2 experience to make more of it than Hauger and although Hauger took two sprint wins, it was Daruvala’s Monza feature win that felt more like a statement.
6 – Théo Pourchaire – ART
Coming into F2 extremely young have only just turned 17 and immediately being in line to contest a title in 2021 has possibly not flattered Pourchaire. Across the season, he talked about immense pressure he had put himself under that led to him making mistakes, as well as being haunted by a violent crash in Jeddah at the end of the 2021 season.
Reliability can knock any drivers’ confidence and Pourchaire suffered from it, including a retirement in the final race due to a mechanical issue that seemed to summarise his season.
His season unravelled from the Red Bull Ring onwards. Poor qualifying saw him often involved in contact in races and despite a final win of the year in the Hungary feature race, all hope of catching up to Drugovich seemed fairly lost. He scored just two points in the final three rounds, finishing 101 points behind Drugovich in the standings.
5 – Liam Lawson – Carlin
Consistent podiums and no gigantic errors made Lawson’s season solid but he was outperformed by his rookie team mate at Carlin, Logan Sargeant, in races and qualifying until an end-of-season up-tick in form saw him take third place by just a single point. A modern Formula 2 car is difficult to drive and first practice outings for both Red Bull and AlphaTauri will have only driven home that better equipment is out there but until the final weekend in Abu Dhabi, Lawson looked solidly midfield for most of the year.
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4 – Jack Doohan – Virtuosi
Marino Sato was as comprehensively drubbed at Virtuosi by Doohan as Clement Novalak was by Drugovich at MP. All the more impressive with Doohan being the less experienced of the two and yet able to claim pole in the very first round in Bahrain.
As is the way with Formula 2, that didn’t easily translate into a race win and Doohan had to watch Drugovich take wins from his second pole in Barcelona, before finally taking the top step for the first time during the Silverstone sprint race.
Doohan has, overall, arguably been the most front-running of the high-placed rookies this season. His main flaw has been not taking wins from his multiple pole positions but otherwise his confidence with the F2 car and speed has been obvious.
3 – Logan Sargeant – Carlin
Five retirements in the last six rounds of the year gave Lawson the chance to catch up and snatch third by a point, but Sargeant’s consistent qualifying and race performances otherwise kept him deservedly in line for a superlicence. Winning both the Silverstone and Red Bull Ring feature races, in particular, showed his strengths as a driver and resisting pressure to make sure he secured fourth during the final round shows he can handle the heat at critical points.
2 – Ayumu Iwasa – DAMS
One of the final Honda Formula Dream Project intakes to the programme and without Red Bull seemingly needing to please the manufacturer anymore, Iwasa’s chances might have looked a bit slim. However, his rookie season in F2 has been a revelation.
After finishing 12th in Formula 3 last year, Iwasa seemed to really find his feet in F2. A breakthrough podium in the sprint race in Barcelona turned into a frustrating mid-season run, but he returned to form from Silverstone onwards, taking his first victory in the Paul Ricard feature race. Making team mate Roy Nissany look ordinary might, arguably, not be Formula 2’s greatest challenge, but Iwasa’s results are DAMS’ strongest since 2019.
1 – Felipe Drugovich – MP
Right to the final corner of the final lap, Drugovich proved how much more he could extract from the tricky Formula 2 car than any other driver. MP’s engineering shouldn’t be given all the credit for his performance, with team mate Clement Novalak struggling to find similar pace in the car and Drugovich scoring 87% of the points to take the team’s title.
Patient, hardworking and clean on track, Drugovich avoided radio meltdowns, collisions disastrous traffic or poor strategy calls to take a well-earned title. F2 could definitely be accused of having concealed some talents with reliability problems in both clutch and engine and some erratic team errors during races – such as botched pit stops that saw drivers leaving with tyres unattached but Drugovich’s season was largely flawless and maybe without the pressure of a junior programme (only that of journalists asking him when he would join one) he was more free to enjoy focusing purely on F2.
A superb weekend in Barcelona saw him take both wins and fastest lap, after which the title was pretty much his to run away with. Despite only taking another two wins, Drugovich’s strong qualifying performances put him in line for points in every race and he only finished outside the top ten twice across the whole season. Consistently making the most of MP’s performance, Drugovich is an extremely worthy champion and the 2022 standout driver.
And the rest…
Juri Vips has no one but himself to blame for losing his place on Red Bull’s young driver programme after using a racial slur during a live video broadcast. Often very quick, Vips squandered a few changes for wins and pole positions, but was able to complete his season after Hitech opted to keep him on.
Ralph Boschung deserves praise for his bravery – if, perhaps, not his wisdom – in racing on despite the discouragement of a doctor, by his own admission due to the health problems he suffered during 2022. Facet Syndrome, a severe spinal neck condition, forced him out of the Barcelona feature race and several subsequent rounds. Nonetheless, he returned with a sprint race podium in Belgium and a 15th place finish in the standings that reflects the strength of his performances when he could put them in.
Last year’s FIA Formula 3 champion Dennis Hauger struggled to adapt to F2 at first, it seemed. The Prema car definitely not working any magic for him in the first few rounds and a combination of bad qualifying and ending up in the more push-and-shove part of the pack seeing him struggle in a number of rounds. Wins in Monaco and Baku, however, proved he hadn’t lost any talent and despite struggling at times to score points he was able to end the season with two solid fourth places in Abu Dhabi.
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Formula 2
- Marti steps up to Formula 2 as Campos and Rodin Carlin confirm 2024 line-ups
- Doohan wins finale as battling Vesti can’t keep Pourchaire from the title
- Vesti takes title fight with Pourchaire down to the wire with crucial sprint race win
- Mercedes’ Aron replaces Novalak for Formula 2 finale
- Paraguay’s Duerksen to leap from FREC to Formula 2 in 2024
Nitin Patel (@nitin24)
3rd December 2022, 15:49
I had high hopes for Hauger after his performance in F3 last year. I hope he is able to figure out his issues and get on top of them next year!
Miani
3rd December 2022, 18:34
Sargeant had his moments but Doohan was faster most of the time in my opinion, and considering Sargeant is much older and more experienced it makes no sense for him to be ahead. Also Daruvala ahead of Enzo is a joke, a bad Prema is still much better than a Charouz.
1. Drugovich
2. Pourchaire
3. Doohan
4. Sargeant
5. Iwasa
6. Lawson
7. Fittipaldi
8. Veschoor
9. Vesti
10. Daruvala
Janith
3rd December 2022, 22:43
Everyone can have their own opinion. But the actual championship standings may be a better ranking than all of them
Erkr
3rd December 2022, 23:55
It’s Facet Joint Syndrome, which by definition isn’t limited to the cervical spine, not is it necessarily severe
M
3rd December 2022, 23:58
Sargeant is an American, in a sport trying desperately to promote an American. Money isn’t pushing a Kiwi.
It will be a battle of the they-are-there-for-their-nationalities next year with Zhou.
Kek
4th December 2022, 0:04
But you have to admit, Liam has been disappointing this year. Imagine a kiwi driving for McLaren instead of Oscar
M
4th December 2022, 5:22
Liam finished 3rd in F2. Like Zhou, or Tsunoda, or Albon.
Now they take 4th?
Pony
4th December 2022, 8:38
Tsunoda was a rookie, Albon was closer to Russell compared to Drugovich, Zhou I understand. Logan was set due to F1 politics
KA
7th December 2022, 21:09
His qualifying let him down, along with wheels coming off in pit lane and numerous mechanical failures. The writer really went after lawson and continued talking about him in Sargents paragraph. Wheel to wheel there wasn’t anyone better than Liam, and he didn’t get tangled up in anything silly this year. To say Sargent out raced him is ridiculous, Sargent threw it off the road many times
Mashiat (@mashiat)
4th December 2022, 10:09
Hauger won the feature race in Baku, and should have won in Saudi as well if his team didn’t colossally mess up. Daruvala’s win in Monza was just pure luck due to the timing of a SC. And how Pourchaire is 6th behind Lawson I don’t understand, both in their 2nd year of F2, but Pourchaire was far superior and if not for reliability would have been even more well clear in the points.
sFk
7th December 2022, 21:12
Pourchaire far superior? 2 points in the final 3 rounds, unforced errors causing dnf’s. It’s like you think Lawson didn’t have several mechanical dnf’s and he almost caught up an 80 point deficit. He would’ve caught him too if the safety car hadn’t been called at Monza after Lawson who was leading the feature race been called as the top 3 passed the control like and the other 19 got a free pit stop