Photo: Fotospeedy
Cian Shields will make his Formula 2 debut with PHM Racing at Losail next weekend, and stay with the team for the season finale a week later.
The 19-year-old Briton will become the third driver to pilot the team’s #25, and joins the grid in Qatar and Abu Dhabi after a lacklustre FIA Formula 3 campaign with Hitech GP that included a best finish of 14th and left him 30th in the standings.
“I’m looking forward to this fantastic opportunity and ready to make an impact with the team, giving it everything in these last races,” said Shields.
Taylor Barnard drove for PHM in the first 10 rounds of the F2 season, then got signed by McLaren to race in Formula E for the 2024-25 season. That would have required him to miss the F2 finale, and he decided to end his season four rounds early.
Although he had won the sprint race in Monaco, Barnard had only scored three times in a tough rookie campaign. His replacement Niels Koolen found F2 even tougher, and finished no higher than 19th in the rounds he did as his replacement.
Koolen had failed to score in Formula 4 and Formula Regional over the previous two years, and at the start of 2024 he made a surprise step up to single-seaters’ second tier in Indy Nxt where the non-FIA points system enabled him to score in every race he did.
He was only signed by PHM for two F2 rounds, and it was understood he would then be replaced if another driver if one could be found.
Like Koolen, Shields is only in his third year of car racing. As a rookie he took a reversed-grid race win and two second places in GB3, which put him 13th in the standings, then he stepped up to F3-level competition last year by racing in Euroformula. In a small grid, he won four races and was championship runner-up.