Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd
Reigning Formula 2 champion Leonardo Fornaroli has earned a reserve driver role at the McLaren Formula 1 team for the year ahead.
The 21-year-old Italian was signed to the McLaren Driver Development Programme two months ago, shortly after clinching the F2 title with a round to spare as a rookie. It marked the first time he had been affiliated to an F1 team.
Fornaroli won the FIA Formula 3 Championship in 2024, but the first four years of his single-seater career featured only one win and three poles from 96 races across ADAC and Italian Formula 4, Formula Regional Asia and Europe, and then FIA F3.
He said he was “thrilled to be stepping into an extended role” with McLaren, calling it “an exciting next step in my journey, and I’m looking forward to contributing to such a successful, championship-winning team this season.”
Winning the F2 title automatically earns a driver the FIA superlicence required to race in F1, and despite a total lack of test mileage in F1 machinery it will be Fornaroli who will be on call-up for McLaren since he is without a race programme while fellow reserve driver Pato O’Ward will be aiming for the 2026 IndyCar title as one of McLaren’s drivers in that championship.
Another F2 champion waiting for his chance to race in F1 is Felipe Drugovich, although for 2026 he has taken up a seat in Formula E with Andretti Global after serving as one of the Aston Martin F1 team’s reserve drivers since September 2022.
It was reported last year that several of his free practice outings with the team did not actually count as having a rookie driver in the car, since they were not registered as such in advance of them taking place. Each team is obliged to run drivers with no more than two F1 starts to their name in practice four times each season. Not all teams met this rule in 2025.
Drugovich has driven in seven F1 practice sessions to date, has now left Aston Martin and is five races into his FE career.
His personal information that was held by the FIA was at risk of being accessed publicly last year due to a breach in the website that stored driver biographies. Once the security issue was reported on, the FIA fixed it and contacted the drivers whose data had been accessed.
Meanwhile Kush Maini will remain on the reserve driver roster of Alpine’s F1 team for 2026. His failure to secure a superlicence in his third F2 season last year, during which time he was actually one of Alpine’s reserve drivers, led to him deciding last October to return to the Mahindra FE team to fulfil the reserve role for them instead through 2026.
He had previously held the position in 2024, but left it to take on the same position at Alpine. He will now juggle both, but his primary focus is F2 as he joins ART Grand Prix‘s line-up.