It is the first race week of 2025 as the F1 season begins in Melbourne. There’s a lot to look forward to – Lewis Hamilton’s first season in the Scuderia red, Max Verstappen’s bid to win a fifth straight World Drivers’ Title and of course, six rookies on the grid.
Kimi Antonelli at Mercedes, Ollie Bearman at Haas, Jack Doohan at Alpine, Isack Hadjar at Racing Bulls, Liam Lawson at Red Bull and Gabriel Bortoleto at Sauber make up the rookie class of 2025 – the largest since 2001 when the grid had four rookies.
Transitioning to F1 is a tough task, even if you have excelled in the lower driving classes. The likes of Logan Sargeant and Nyck de Vries can attest to that and here we’re looking at how Formula 2 champions have fared in the premier class of motor racing.
With expectations high around Bortoleto, we looked at the F1 careers of former F2 World Champions and the numbers make for an interesting reading.
A note on Formula 2 Classification
We looked at 31 different seasons of the racing series that is now recognised as the FIA Formula 2 Championship. The series, unlike F1, has not been continuous and has been scrapped from classification multiple times for a myriad of reasons.
The seasons we’ve taken into consideration are 1960, 1967-1984, 2009-2012 and 2017-2024. From 1967-1984, the European Formula Two championship series introduced by the FIA was considered.
We also took into consideration the GP2 results from 2005 to 2016, before it was rebranded to what is currently known as the FIA Formula 2 Championship.
F2 Champions who won the World Drivers’ Championship
While F2/GP2 champions have gone on to be stalwarts and fan favourites in F1, an interesting statistic is that only three F2/GP2 champions went on to win the World Drivers’ Championship.
Jack Brabham won the inaugural F2 Championship and won three World Drivers’ Championships in 1959,1960 and 1966. Nico Rosberg won the WDC title in 2016. The most successful of those three, however, is Lewis Hamilton who has a record-tying seven WDC titles to his name
In terms of numbers, that’s three World Drivers’ Champions from 43.
That is not to say others weren’t close. Jacky Ickx, who won the 1967 Formula Two championship, finished second in the World Drivers’ Championship thrice. Charles Leclerc who won the 2017 F2 championship, finished second in the World Drivers’ Championship in 2022. The late Ronnie Peterson finished second in the World Drivers’ Championship twice – in 1971 and 1978.
F2/GP2 Champions who won an F1 Grand Prix
The numbers make for a better reading when we consider F2/GP2 champions who won at least one Grand Prix. 16 of 43 F2/GP2 champions went on to win a Grand Prix while driving in F1.
Only four of them, however, won 10 or more Grands Prix – Hamilton, Rosberg, Brabham and Peterson.
Jacky Ickx and Rene Arnoux came close to that figure, with eight and seven grands prix wins. Charles Leclerc can go beyond 10 wins as he currently has tallied eight grands prix wins in his career.
In terms of win totals, no one comes close to Hamilton’s F1 record 105 wins, with Rosberg being a distant second with 23 grands prix won, followed by Brabham (14) and Peterson (10).
F2/GP2 Champions with an F1 Podium
22 F2/GP2 world champions have featured on an F1 Grand Prix podium at least once in their career with the most recent one being Oscar Piastri, who’s already been on 10 podiums.
Hamilton unsurprisingly leads this statistic with 202 podiums (another F1 record) followed by former teammate Rosberg (57), Leclerc (43), Jacques Laffite (32) and Brabham (31). It should also be noted that Hamilton, Rosberg and Leclerc have been racing in an era where we have over 20 grands prix in a season, as compared to a time when the number would be under 10.
Of 43 F2 champions, 16 ended up getting at least one pole position in their F1 career.
F2/GP2 Champions who never made it to F1
While most F2 champions ended up having strong careers in F1, there are a few who never made the step up. The F2 champions from 2009 to 2012 – not a single one of them tallied an F1 entry, which can be attributed to the superior talent that emerged from the GP2 series at the time – Nico Hulkenberg, Pastor Maldonado and Romain Grosjean – among other factors.
It’s not been smooth sailing for all GP2 winners either as Davide Velsecchi and Fabio Leimer never tallied an F1 entry. Leimer participated in one FP session in his career. Velsecchi at one point was linked heavily with a seat with Lotus but it never materialised as the team ended up going with Heikki Kovaleinen.
Another recent case is that of Felipe Drugovich who is currently serving as a reserve driver for Aston Martin and has been in the reserve driver pools for McLaren. His compatriot Bortoleto, on the other hand, will be racing as a full-time driver for Sauber this season.
Methodology
- We extracted the list of F2 Champions from this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formula_Two#Formula_Two_champions
- The list of GP2 champions was extracted from this source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GP2_Series#Champions
- We then checked their F1 records and created a table to chart out the career performances, considering the following data points:
- F1 Entries
- Pole Positions
- Podiums
- Grands Prix won
- World Drivers’ Championships
