Italian Grand Prix F2 – Mid-season review!

Formula 2 remains faithful to what it has been offering us for several years despite the changes in regulations. We are midway through the season and the championship is far from decided!

This year we will have 8 meetings and 4 of them have already taken place (Bahrain, Monaco, Baku and Silverstone). At this stage of the season, the top 5 are separated by only 23 points! (65 points is the maximum a driver can score in a race weekend). The Australian rookie, Oscar Piastri, leads the championship with just 5 points ahead of experienced Guanyu Zhou (With 2 drivers at the top of the championship, the Alpine Academy is well represented in Formula 2)

In this first half of the championship, 12 races have already taken place (8 sprints and 4 long races) and out of these 12 races, we have had 8 different winners including 6 who are in the top six positions of the drivers’ standings.

The TOP of this half of the season

We are obliged to be chauvinistic and to talk about our only French representative Théo Pourchaire! Théo, just turned 18, has passed his high school diploma and above all, has achieved his first pole position and victory in F2! The native of Grasse mastered his Monegasque weekend with almost half a second ahead of his pursuer Robert Shwartzman. By winning the feature race and consequently his first victory in Formula 2, he became the youngest winner in the discipline (17 years and 8 months). At mid-season, he is in 6th place in the championship with 65 points, 37 points ahead of his teammate Christian Lundgaard, who is a repeat student. With this 6th place in the championship, the young Frenchman positions himself as the second best rookie of the championship.

I won MONACOOOOOOO 🇲🇨🎉
I still can’t believe it, what a crazy race weekend. Big thanks to all of you who supported me 🙏🏻#MonacoGP #tp21 #F2 pic.twitter.com/iK5yVQbIsF

— Théo Pourchaire (@TPourchaire) May 23, 2021

Speaking of rookies, leader Oscar Piastri is showing all his talent this season despite only one victory. The young Australian demonstrates great consistency and has been a regular on the podium this season (5 times, at least once every weekend!)

On his side, Chinese driver Guanyu Zhou, who is already in his 3rd season in the Formula 1 feeder series, has understood how to approach his race weekends despite some inconsistent results. He currently sits in second place in the championship, right behind the Australian Rookie.

The FLOPS of this half of the season

Three drivers are part of an academy and disappoint in this season:

Jehan Daruvala, a Red Bull junior driver and repeating in F2, is struggling to stand out. He is the lowest ranked driver in the Red Bull junior program in the championship. His results are too inconsistent (28 points in Bahrain, only one point in Monaco, 24 in Baku and 3 in Silverstone). He still has 2 podium finishes but more is expected from a repeating driver.

Christian Lundgaard, a driver from the Alpine Academy and 12th in the championship, is being widely overshadowed by his 18-year-old French teammate. Also a repeat student, he struggles to show himself at the front of the pack. Despite a podium in the second race of the season and another one in race 1 at Silverstone, the Danish driver has only finished in the top 10 on 4 occasions despite the reversed grids… Can we say that he has the cursed second seat at ART Grand Prix?

Marcus Armstrong, a driver from the Ferrari Driver Academy, has been struggling for 2 seasons in F2 and still has not found his footing in this championship. Last year, towards the end of the season, he was nearly 100 points behind his teammate Christian Lungaard and finished in a modest 13th place. Today, it’s the same story, as he is in 14th place in the overall standings with 2 podiums and a 7th place finish in race 1 in Baku, followed by zero points in the other 9 races …

Finally, the last FLOP is a FLOP that endures in F2 as well as in the other promotion formulas.

The F2 lost many drivers during the season, due to substantial budgets requested by the teams. We think in particular of Richard Verschoor who is having a very good season at MP Motorsport (3 podiums including 1 victory at Silverstone) and who has confirmed exclusively to Motors Inside that he will probably not finish the season.

The same goes for Gianluca Petecof, the regional formula champion who had to withdraw from the championship. Meanwhile, Alessio Deledda, a driver for HWA Racelab, will be present throughout the year thanks to his family fortune. (Alessio Deledda and Guilherme Samaia are the only drivers who have not scored any points since the beginning of the season…)

See you this weekend for the 5th round of the championship to follow on Motors Inside!