Formula Scout Top 50 Drivers of 2023: 30-21

Continuing our countdown of the junior single-seater drivers who impressed Formula Scout’s writers the most in 2023

30. Ugo Ugochukwu

New entry • Consistently strong second F4 season included Euro F4 title

The McLaren junior’s second year in Formula 4 featured a combined total of 11 wins and 15 other podium finishes across three different series with Prema.

In F4 United Arab Emirates he kicked things off with two wins in a row, followed by two third places and then another victory. But his form fell back after that, with his sizeable points lead being lost in the season’s second half. He ended the campaign with another win, but by that point was third in the points table.

Ugochukwu started the Italian F4 season by also winning straight away, and took four podiums from his first six races. His longest podium-free run was the first two races at Spa-Francorchamps, then after that he was consistently finishing in the top three. There were only two wins in the next 13 races with six second places, but as Prema’s pace seemed to tail off against US Racing, Ugochukwu led its challenge and finished second in the standings.

Could the 16-year-old go one better in Euro 4? He won the opening two races in the short nine-race campaign, and two further podiums then victory in the season finale made him champion.

Although he heads to Formula Regional in 2024, he ended 2023 by making his Formula 3 debut in the Macau Grand Prix. He qualified ninth, crashed early in the qualification race then rose from the back to finish 15th in the main race.

29. Tim Tramnitz

Re-entry (20th in 2021) • Third in FREC as he clinched Red Bull backing

Tramnitz made a significant step forward in performance compared to his 2022 season as he moved to R-ace GP. However, that was not enough to beat his brilliant rookie teammate Martinius Stenshorne to second in 2023 FREC standings. He was the season’s fastest qualifier, just edging Andrea Kimi Antonelli, but incidents at the Hungaroring and Monza cost him valuable points.

After an unfortunate opening round at Imola, the German made a cameo at Euroformula’s season opener at Estoril with the Motopark-run CryptoTower Racing Team. He was second twice and third once, becoming the series’ first championship leader of the year.

He returned to FREC invigorated by those results and scored a double win in the second round at Barcelona. A poor weekend at the Hungaroring was followed by two second places and his third pole position of the year at Spa-Francorchamps, and he would step on the podium three more times in the next five races.

After that, he never cut the points distance to the championship top two. In fact, he and Stenshorne had the exact same results across the remaining six races, which meant Tramnitz finished 22 points behind him despite taking a win and a second place in the last round on home soil at Hockenheim.

Tramnitz’s results were good enough to be signed up by Red Bull for its junior team, and he is expected to drive in FIA F3 next season.

28. Callum Voisin

New entry • Consistency and late-season wins key to GB3 title

Voisin’s second year in single-seaters and second in GB3 resulted in the title, taken with a tally of just two wins but with 11 podiums in total and six poles.

It was that consistency that took Voisin to the crown, earning him the points lead for the first time when he took his fifth podium from the first eight races. His first win of the year did not come until the 16th race of the season, and the next was in the final round and key to title success.

In any of the previous five seasons Voisin’s points haul would have made him championship title runner-up, but in perhaps the most competitive field to-date he was the only series sophomore to up his game this year and took the reward of that.

In many ways it was a campaign reminiscent of another Carlin driver with Anglo-Swiss connections, Clement Novalak, some four years earlier. Now, Voisin is looking for the budget to make a similar step up to F3.

27. Alex Dunne

Down 14 • GB3 runner-up starred on F3 debut in Macau

Dunne’s domination of British F4 in 2022 was impressive, but it was race-winning form in Italian F4 that marked him out as a driver who could match the best on the continent. He didn’t have the chance to follow up on that for most of this year, instead staying in Britain to race in GB3.

It was a sensible decision, as he won five races and almost the title as a rookie with Hitech GP. Although he only got one top-five finish in the first two rounds, he then won twice at Spa-Francorchamps, was on the podium at Snetterton and later took another double win at the series’ other European venue Zandvoort. Dunne finished 16th in the third race there, leaving him 17 points off the top heading into Donington Park’s season finale.

That gap grew in race one there despite Dunne taking his sixth podium of the season, then victory in race two set up a final race showdown. Dunne beat his title rival but it wasn’t enough to overtake him in the points, meaning he finished as championship runner-up.

He then stepped up to F3 for the Macau Grand Prix, starring to finish second in the qualification race before he crashed in the main race. With any justice, he will get the chance to race in the category full-time next year.

26. Evan Giltaire

New entry • Car racing rookie took impressive French F4 crown

Giltaire was still starring in karting at the start of this year, but only the accomplishments of his maiden car racing campaign are considered in this list and they were impressive enough to make him the highest placing single-seater rookie of 2023.

The 17-year-old started the French F4 season as he meant to go on, taking pole and victory on his debut, finishing fourth in the reversed-grid race and second (after starting on pole again) in race three at Nogaro.

He was the driver to beat in qualifying again at Magny-Cours, and converted both poles into victories although lost the second of those to a 30-second penalty for spinning around title rival Enzo Peugeot, who took the points lead in the next round in Pau. Giltaire responded to the challenging wet-and-dry Pau weekend, where he still took two second places, by winning from pole twice at Spa-Francorchamps.

The routine of two podiums from each round was continued at Misano and Ledenon, which is impressive consistency for a rookie, but it was Peugeot who led the points before the Paul Ricard finale. Giltaire did the maximum he could there, taking another two lights-to-flag win and fourth in the reversed-grid race to become champion by four points.

He then stepped up to the Formula Regional European Championship for two weekends, coming close to a top-10 finish, and will race there next year.

25. Dino Beganovic

Down 13 • Adapted well to F3, though victory eluded him

Beganovic kicked off his 2023 with a partial Formula Regional Middle East campaign with the Prema-run Mumbai Falcons team. He competed in the first two rounds of the championship, winning two of the six races he started.

In FIA F3, he opened as the best Prema driver and closed as the worst. Despite being fast from the off, that speed never materialised into pole positions and race victories.

He started strong at Bahrain, with fourth in the sprint then third from eighth on the grid in the feature race. At Melbourne he could only salvage fifth in the sprint race but bounced back the next round at Monaco making it his best performance of the year.

The Ferrari junior topped his qualifying group at the principality only to be beaten to pole by Hitech Gabriele Mini’s blistering lap in group B. In the feature race, he managed his pace first then tried to force a mistake from Mini and took the chequered flag 0.452 seconds behind him, almost seven seconds ahead of his teammate Paul Aron.

Solid weekends at Barcelona and Spielberg upped him to third in the standings, 36 points off Gabriel Bortoleto. After that, only second place at the Hungaroring behind Zak O’Sullivan stands out, and he ended up sixth in the points – the only driver in the top 10 without a win.

He also competed in Macau, which perfectly summed up his season. He went from third in qualifying, less than 0.1s off pole, to fourth in the qualifying race, to then crash out from the main race.

Beganovic will return to FIA F3 with Prema in 2024 with the aim of becoming champion and repeating his second-year success from FRegional.

24. Hunter McElrea

Up 4 • Second in points in his second Indy Nxt season

McElrea only scored 14 more points this year than in his rookie Indy Nxt campaign, but slashed his gap to the champion from 115 to 65 points and rose from fourth to second in the standings.

Two wins matched what he achieved in 2022, but two poles and six podiums were one less than his tallies from last year. So how much did the Andretti Global driver show he had improved?

The first element is consistency, as McElrea only finished in the top 10 twice in his first five races as a rookie. This time he made it four out of five, scoring 15 more points and sitting second rather than seventh in the standings. Over the entire campaign, his average finishing position improved from 5.5 in 2022 to 4.9 in ‘23. That may not sound great, but the champion’s average finishing position was 4.3 and McElrea had seven successive top-five finishes while nobody else managed more than four in a row.

It’s unclear if McElrea’s performances will earn him a future in IndyCar, but he comfortably secured the championship runner-up spot in Indy Nxt and that should not be sniffed at even if he didn’t make the biggest gains on his impressive rookie campaign.

23. Arvid Lindblad

New entry • Looked imperious in Italian F4 before form collapsed

Lindblad was closely watched in karting, becoming a Red Bull Junior Team-supported driver in 2021 and a full Red Bull junior in ‘22. After turning 15 he moved into single-seaters, contesting three Italian F4 rounds and taking a best finish of seventh.

The lack of an immediate impact did not lower expectations for 2023, particularly as Lindblad joined top team Prema. His first programme was F4 United Arab Emirates, and he made the podium on his second start then took pole and victory the next race. There was only one more podium after that, and he came fifth in the standings.

Next was Italian F4 and Lindblad made the podium in the first six races, winning three and starting two from pole. That was followed by a podium at Spa and a triple win with another two poles at Monza. But then there were no podiums in the last three rounds, and lost the championship lead ahead of the final round where he then slipped to third in the points.

Euro 4 went a similar way. Lindblad was never lower than fifth in the first seven races, winning one and coming second in three others, but finishing 10th and 11th in the last two races (awarding double points) dropped him from first to fourth in the standings.

So much potential and not a title to show for it. However, he still ended the year on a high when he contested the non-championship F4 South East Asia round in Macau where he took pole and won both races.

22. Louis Foster

Down 4 • Quickly on pace on his next step towards IndyCar goal

This year may have been the first since 2017 that Foster has not been in the top three of a championship, but his first season in Indy Nxt has made him one of the 2024 title favourites.

Last year was his first in America, and he comfortably won the USF Pro 2000 title. That meant there was less circuit learning to do as he stepped up to the next level, and he clearly learned Indy Nxt’s car quickly as he took pole for his debut. He held his lead at first, then ran in second, before two mistakes dropped him to fourth and then to a lapped 14th with a damaged car.

He was 0.19s off pole in round two, but made another mistake that meant he was classified 14th but did not complete the race. The pace was clearly there, however, improvement was also sorely needed to avoid throwing away points.

Foster finished second at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, took both poles in Detroit, finally took his first win at Mid-Ohio, then had three more lacklustre race results before getting his first oval podium at Gateway in a night race and a lights-to-flag win at Portland to remain in title contention until the season’s penultimate race.

21. Zak O’Sullivan

No change • Prema F3 move brought four wins and distant second in points

It is often said that consistency is key to succeed in FIA F3, yet O’Sullivan became series runner-up despite scoring points in just nine of the 18 races in 2023.

The Prema driver never dominated his rookie teammates and was often too far back, but also had moments of brilliance.

He kicked off the season with a points-free weekend at Bahrain then inherited sprint race victory at Melbourne as Franco Colapinto was disqualified and finished fifth in the feature race. He missed the crucial top 12 positions in qualifying at Monaco, which put him on the back foot, but kept his nose clean come home in seventh place in Sunday’s race.

After that, he took another sprint race victory at Barcelona before winning the feature race at the Red Bull Ring, where up to seven drivers fought for the win. That was his most successful weekend, as he had also been fourth in the sprint.

At the Hungaroring, O’Sullivan edged teammate Beganovic to pole by 0.403 seconds then controlled the race on Sunday from lights to flag, also setting the fastest lap. He stepped on to the podium in second in the final race of the season at Monza, but those two results were the only occasions he scored points in the last four rounds.

Nevertheless, being the best Williams junior earned him a F1 free practice appearance at Yas Marina, and in 2024 he will step up to Formula 2 with ART GP.