Formula Scout Top 50 Drivers of 2024: 10-1

Here is the final part of our annual countdown of the top 50 junior single-seater drivers through 2024

10. Andrea Kimi Antonelli

Down 9 • Prema’s reliability issues restricted the ability to show his brilliance

Prema underperformed in Formula 2 this year, although engine issues was a big contributor towards that mid-season, and the team relied on its highly feted rookie to be a threat in feature races.

Antonelli did not let the fact that he was a rookie, and that for a portion of the year he had to keep his 2025 promotion to Formula 1 with Mercedes-AMG secret, distract him and seems far wiser than the 18 years old he actually is. In fact, he was more mature this year than his F1 team boss.

In terms of pace, Antonelli was one of the best in the field and the most consistent too. His average race pace across the season was the fourth best in the field, and that was key on weekends when Prema totally lacked pace. At Bahrain and Barcelona the team could only score one point, and Antonelli was the one who delivered both times.

Antonelli won the qualifying fight against his team-mate nine to five, and he was the sixth fastest driver in the field on single-lap pace. He also led the fourth most laps of anyone, and had the sixth-highest tally for feature races. At Silverstone he claimed his first podium, a sprint race win with fastest lap, and in the next round at the Hungaroring won the feature race from seventh on the grid. At that point he was still 17 years old.

The withdrawal from the final round after practice under doctor’s orders cost Antonelli a shot at improving those averages and his championship position.

In contrast, earlier in the season at Monza – when the FIA was yet to introduce a doctor-led concussion procedure in its sporting code – Antonelli was cleared to compete following Mercedes-organised medical examinations following a 52G shunt in F1 practice. After a turn one crash in F2’s sprint race, he put in a great drive to finish the feature race in fourth. A weekend like that, which exposed Prema’s ongoing issues with the new F2 car, could’ve left Antonelli’s head shaken up mentally as well as literally but he stayed as calm as ever.

9. Gabriele Mini

Up 6 • A few missed opportunities prevented F3 title success

Mini just beat his compatriot and FIA Formula 3 title rival Leonardo Fornaroli in the win stakes – unbeatable in the Monaco qualifying and feature race for the second year in succession in another demonstration of his innate talent – but could not match his consistency and fell one corner short of winning the championship.

The Sicilian did all that he really could in that final race, finishing second ahead of his rival before he was disqualified post-race, but there had been too many missed opportunities during the year. Although Mini was the third-quickest driver on one-lap pace there were some disappointing qualifying results, notably 15th at Barcelona and 13th at the Hungaroring – which both triggered points-free weekends – and 11th at Spa-Francorchamps.

The fact he qualified next to Prema team-mate Dino Beganovic on all three occasions suggests a more fundamental Prema issue at those circuits – although Arvid Lindblad did make the front row and go on to win in Spain.

Soon after the disappointment of Monza, Mini would go on to shine on a street circuit once more when he was called up by Prema for his F2 debut in Baku in place of Ollie Bearman, qualifying eighth and holding third place throughout the sprint race. The team is placing its trust in him to lead it back to top form in the series next year.

8. Rafael Camara

Up 31 • Consummately claimed FREC crown in second season

Camara finally had the opportunity to step out of the shadow of former team-mate Antonelli, and grasped it with both hands. The Ferrari junior exuded confidence in his sophomore Formula Regional Europe season, and the convincing way he marched to the title added consistency to his undoubted speed.

His category experience paid off as he romped away from the pack with four wins and two seconds in the opening six races. In truth, the title was in his pocket from early June, and so it proved. Prema again provided the right tools, and Camara was close to flawless in his execution.

He won again at Paul Ricard and Imola to maintain his points advantage before a rare off-weekend at the Red Bull Ring where he had his only two non-scores of the year.

Fittingly, he rounded off the year by taking win number seven in the season finale and beating Antonelli’s 2023 points tally.

Camara’s ability to judge traffic and conditions to pull out a fast qualifying lap – he was the only driver never to qualify outside of the first four rows – will serve him well in the time-pressured sessions of FIA F3, as he leaves Prema after three years with them for Italian rivals Trident.

7. Luke Browning

Up 13 • Statistical quirks made for odd F3 title attack before F2 outings

Browning was out of the points in only two out of 10 FIA F3 feature races, and his points tally in those was only eight short of the champion’s. But he only scored 11 points in sprint races (a conversion rate of 10% of the points available) and that’s what truly let him down in the title fight.

On single-lap pace he was the second best, again only being bettered by the champion and leading to having the second highest average starting position. But his average finishing position was outside of the top 10, where points are issued, and only the seventh best in the field. Yet he remained a title contender to the very end.

Swinging it back the other way, Browning was consistent like few others as one of the five series regulars to be classified finishers in every race they contested, and led 58 laps. That was all in the higher-scoring feature races, and while it only translated into two wins (a tally nobody else bettered) it was more than twice as many laps as the next best, 3.6 times as many as the champion and equated to 27% of all green-flag laps in those races across the season.

Browning’s race pace may have only been the fastest in the field in one race, but taking all races into account then he was on average the driver who was closest to extracting the maximum over a prolonged run of laps.

The statistical quirks that made Browning’s F3 season with Hitech GP tricky to assess were not present when he then stepped up to F2 with ART Grand Prix, where on new circuits he took two top-seven finishes from his six races. He returns to Hitech for a full F2 campaign in 2025.

6. Leonardo Fornaroli

Re-entry • Paradoxical route to becoming F3 champion deserves praise

In the history of junior single-seaters, there are only six notable examples of drivers in series for contemporary machinery (and are not just two rounds long) becoming champion without winning a race. Fornaroli’s 2024 FIA F3 title is the sixth in that list, and means he is now on a 91-race win-free streak and has made it to F2 with only one win in his car racing career.

All sounds rather damning, particularly since 12 drivers spent more laps in the lead and seven spent more laps in podium positions than him this year, but what matters is where you are at the chequered flag. Fornaroli took home seven trophies for making the podium, two more than anyone else, and the average position he ended races in was two places higher than the next-best driver. Not only that, he also had the highest average starting position.

There were two pole positions, although he was only the fastest driver at one circuit, contributing to Fornaroli being the best driver on single-lap pace across the season, and at half of the rounds he was the quickest of the title contenders.

His 24th place starting spot at the Red Bull Ring made the standard deviation in his qualifying averages 6.75 positions. Omit that result, in which he was still within a second of the pace, and it would have been an incredibly consistent 1.94 places – the kind of figure that’s so difficult for a driver at the front of the field to achieve.

Fornaroli had the third-best rolling race pace average across the season, but should’ve been second due to an anomalous standard set by a driver in clean air at the back of the pack, and had a comfortable title-winning margin of 23 points even though the battle for the crown went down to the final race.

Trident has now run the F3 champion two years in a row, and both had unconventional routes to the crown with little time actually spent leading the pack. Fornaroli emulates 2023 champion Gabriel Bortoleto by joining Invicta Racing in F2 for 2025.

5. Freddie Slater

New entry • F4’s benchmark driver was close to being a triple champion

Slater was the best driver in Formula 4 worldwide in 2024. His performances in Europe and Macau at the end of 2023 had marked him out as the title favourite this year in Italian F4, which remains the category’s blue-riband championship, but he was up against a strong field of sophomores and an exciting intake of top karting graduates.

He started his year in Formula 4 United Arab Emirates, and won the title, to get fully “prepped” (to use his favourite term) for his primary campaign in Italy. From the off there he was close to unstoppable: a hat-trick at Misano, the first of three such weekends, laid down a marker.

Slater was usually out front but showed his racecraft when required to fight his way through to the lead. He exudes confidence, without overstepping the fine line to arrogance, and is not short of determination or ambition. He is not afraid to have a go, something he showed when he stepped up to FRegional for the Macau Grand Prix and made a brave but failed late-braking dive for third in the main race. His second attempt at making a move put him in the barriers.

Once the Italian F4 title was in the bag, Slater still had Antonelli’s record for 13 wins in a season to target and he surpassed it with two victories in the Monza finale. Slater had to settle for second-best in the sister E4 (nee Euro 4) series, but he had done enough to justify his reputation.

Further experience at a higher level came in GB3, where he had three top-seven finishes from three outings. It showed his ability to adapt quickly to the fourth tier of single-seaters. While GB3, and making a bigger step to FIA F3, were options for 2025 he will instead remain with Prema and head to FREC where he should start as one of the favourites.

4. Louis Foster

Up 18 • Caught IndyCar’s attention with Indy Nxt dominance

Although winning the Indy Nxt title still provides a scholarship to spend on stepping up to IndyCar, it only covers two events. You have to be super rich or super impressive to land a full-season ride, and Foster firmly ticked the latter box to earn himself a multi-year deal with Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing.

What was key to Foster’s crushing of the opposition in Indy Nxt during his sophomore season, and why he looked ready for IndyCar, was his mastering of the oval races.

He won all four, started three from pole and he usually had an insurmountable avantage on single-lap pace. This made all the difference on circuits where usually a slower driver can live with a small pace deficit by sitting in the tow of the leader and save fuel before going for a move.

But Foster was also the driver to beat at many road and street courses, opening up his victory account on Indianapolis Motor Speeddway’s road course, navigating the tight Detroit street circuit for second successive win, then taking pole, victory and leading every lap of both races in the Laguna Seca double-header.

He finished second at Road America, Mid-Ohio and Portland, where he also claimed one of his seven poles and seven fastest laps. Away from the ovals, he led more laps than anyone else.

3. Paul Aron

Up 10 • Was very close to being F2’s fastest driver but buckled in battles

Aron matched what he did in F4, FRegional and F3 by coming third in the F2 standings this year, and his failure to finally break his title-winning duck reflected that he still has room to improve.

The main issue that cost Aron points in his rookie F2 campaign was buckling under pressure during battles for big positions, when he was the driver in front and when behind. He claimed an unmatched four poles, and an unbeaten eight podiums, but it took until the 26th race of the season for him to win and he didn’t even lead that one as a penalty gifted him the victory.

A millimetre error with his DRS in the race that followed led to a disqualification from another podium finish, putting him out of title contention and severely damaging his shot at the championship runner-up spot as he had to start the season finale from the pitlane.

On race pace (measured as a rolling average, then represented as a percentage against the fastest average) there was a tiny gap of 0.012% between Aron and champion Bortoleto over the season, with the latter the faster thanks to Aron’s disqualification. For single-lap pace in qualifying it was even closer, as Bortoleto bettered Aron by 0.011%. One of Aron’s poles, at Spa, notably came despite having a straightline speed disadvantage.

Aron spent more time leading than Bortoleto, only scored half a point less than him in sprint races due to his disqualification, but trailed by 51 in the more important feature races. Aron has a lot to prove in F2 still, but he is yet to announce his 2025 racing plans.

2. Isack Hadjar

Re-entry • First driver in 20 years to win four F2 feature races but not title

Hadjar became only the 18th driver in the last 40 years of F1’s primary feeder series to win four feature/main races in a single season, but his remarkable achievement was minimised by being only the third in that time to do so without becoming champion. Particularly as only one other driver this year managed to win more than one feature race.

The maiden win for Hadjar in Australia owed much to the fortunate timing of the safety car, but he wasn’t the only title contender to be dealt a lucky win. Were it not for Zak O’Sullivan’s outrageous good fortune at Monaco, an incredulous Hadjar would’ve been victorious in the feature race there, and at Spa he was magnificent as he passed title rivals Bortoleto and Aron en route to win four of the year.

It was therefore rather a lack of consistency which ultimately cost him the title – no amount of speed can make up for failing to score in almost half of the 28 races. He was second-top scorer in feature races, but 10th in sprint races.

Stalling on the grid at Yas Marina, then charging after the field in vain, unlapping himself while repeatedly asking for the gap to Bortoleto somehow encapsulated the emotions of his year. Hadjar made a huge step up from his rookie season, working successfully with Campos Racing on improving his single-lap pace, as well as rebuilding his battered confidence.

Hadjar has never been short of passion – his radio messages are from the heart, and his exasperation when things went wrong, as they did too often, not always for reasons within his control, was palpable. His next destination is F1 with Racing Bulls, having impressed Red Bull’s management with his free practice and rookie test performances this year.

1. Gabriel Bortoleto

Up 1 • F1 teams fought for signature of F2 rookie who became champion

Bortoleto repeated his F3 trick of becoming champion as a rookie and while spending far fewer laps at the front than his rivals. He won two feature races, and claimed an unmatched six podiums in those higher-scoring races to take the title by 22.5 points and earn himself an F1 seat with Sauber.

In the first four rounds he was twice on pole, including in his debut qualifying session but only converted one of those into a podium and was down in 12th in the standings following four non-scores (including three retirements) before he hit form.

He was up to third in the standings but 32 points off the lead at the season’s halfway point, as he took his first win in the Red Bull Ring feature race, then in the season’s second half he only finished one race outside of the top 10.

In each of the last seven races he finished in the top five, coming home in first (at Monza), second, third and fourth in the feature races, and his two fastest laps in 2024 came in the Hungaroring sprint race and Baku feature race. It showed he had strong pace at the fast and flowing tracks as well as the tight and twisty venues on the calendar.

His F1 future was secured a month before the F2 title was, with McLaren having to release their junior driver so Sauber could sign him, and Bortoleto ended the season as the benchmark driver over a single lap and on race pace, and as the top scorer in both feature and sprint races.