Formula 2 2026

The category changed its name three times before settling on this one. There was a European Formula 2 championship from 1967 to 1984, an attempt to revive it between 2009 and 2012, and in between GP2, which was the real step below from 2005 to 2016. In 2017 the FIA reclaimed the label and GP2 became Formula 2.

Nine champions have come out of it since, and all nine ended up inside a Formula 1 team, some in race seats and some as reserves: Charles Leclerc in 2017, George Russell in 2018, Nyck de Vries, Mick Schumacher, Oscar Piastri in 2021, Felipe Drugovich, Théo Pourchaire, Gabriel Bortoleto and Leonardo Fornaroli. Prema and ART took the early ones; Invicta the last two.

The ban on champions has small print: it is not that they will not come back, it is that they may not for two years. Drugovich asked for it to be changed in 2022, having just won the title with three rounds to spare, precisely because winning here guarantees nothing above. Bruno Michel, who runs the championship, refused flatly. The class is built to empty itself.

Leonardo Fornaroli won the 2025 title with a single feature-race victory. Four sprints and one feature across fourteen rounds: the Italian was rarely the man to beat on any given weekend and still sealed it in Qatar with a round to spare, ahead of Jak Crawford and Luke Browning.

He was the first Italian champion since the series took the Formula 2 name, the fifth to win it as a rookie and the fifth to take the F3 and F2 titles in consecutive seasons. His team, Invicta Racing, also retained the teams' championship at the last race in Abu Dhabi: nobody since Prema had supplied both the drivers' and teams' champions in back-to-back years.

Then came the predictable destination. Fornaroli left for McLaren as a reserve driver, which is the other way up: the one that never appears in Sunday's photograph but counts on the CV all the same.

Colton Herta arrives in Formula 2 from IndyCar, with Hitech, and the reason is administrative rather than sporting. In 2022 a Formula 1 team wanted him and the FIA shut the door: his American results did not add up to the 40 superlicence points the rules demand to race up there. The Formula 2 title is worth those 40 in one go. He has crossed the Atlantic for a piece of paper.

The rest of the grid moves the usual way, upward from below. Rafael Câmara, the 2025 F3 champion, signs for Invicta. Nikola Tsolov also steps up from F3, to Campos. And Invicta, the reigning teams' champions, start the year with an entirely new line-up, which is normal here: the driver who works leaves, by definition.

On the housekeeping side, Hitech have ended their Toyota partnership after a single season.

Fourteen rounds, two of them on a continent where this series had never raced. Miami in May and Montreal three weeks later are Formula 2's first races in North America in its entire history, GP2 included: until now the championship moved between Europe, the Middle East, Baku and, since last year, Melbourne.

The calendar lost the two Middle Eastern rounds that used to open the season, and Imola gave up its slot to Madring, Madrid's new circuit, which debuts in September. Qatar and Yas Marina are still there, but right at the end.

What comes out of it is a year with two enormous holes: eight weeks between Australia and Miami, and another nine between Baku in late September and Qatar in late November. Two almost separate blocks with a small winter in between — and in a series of young drivers and small teams, that tells: whoever uses the break comes back a different driver.

Dallara builds the chassis and Mecachrome supplies the engine, a 3.4-litre turbocharged V6, and both are identical for all eleven teams. The current car, the Dallara F2 2024, arrived two seasons ago and is what will be on track all year: there is no development here, no mid-season upgrades and no team with more wind tunnel than the next.

The consequence of that formula defines the whole championship. If the car is the same for everyone, what separates two drivers is the pit stops, tyre management in the long race and what each of them dares to do on the opening lap. There is no better car to hide behind and no worse one to blame — which is precisely why Formula 1 reads these results and not others.

Technically, the series has spent years as a laboratory: the fuel was already 70% sustainable in 2025, and the stated target is fully synthetic fuel in 2027.