Marvin Kirchhofer has secured a graduation to GP2 for 2016, joining the Carlin team.
The German driver steps up after two seasons in GP3 with ART Grand Prix in 2014-15, finishing third in the standings on both occasions and winning five races.
Prior to that, he won the ADAC Formel Masters and German Formula 3 titles in his homeland.
He will join up with the team for this week’s first pre-season test at Barcelona, having previously spent one day in a GP2 car with Hilmer Motorsport at the end of 2014.
“We had some offers available, but in the end, the offer of Carlin promised us the most,” said the 21-year-old.
“The team has been very successful in recent years in GP2 and makes a very professional impression.”
Kirchhofer is the first of Carlin’s GP2 drivers for this season to be revealed.
GP2 2016 line-up so far
| Team | Drivers | |||
| ART Grand Prix | 1 | Nobuharu Matsushita | 2 | Sergey Sirotkin |
| Racing Engineering | 3 | Norman Nato | 4 | Jordan King |
| DAMS | 5 | Alex Lynn | 6 | Nicholas Latifi |
| Campos Racing | 7 | Mitch Evans | 8 | Sean Gelael |
| Russian Time | 9 | Raffaele Marciello | 10 | Artem Markelov |
| Rapax | 11 | Gustav Malja | 12 | Arthur Pic |
| Trident | 14 | Philo Paz Armand | 15 | Luca Ghiotto |
| Status Grand Prix | 16 | 17 | ||
| Carlin | 18 | Marvin Kirchhofer | 19 | |
| Prema Racing | 20 | Antonio Giovinazzi | 21 | Pierre Gasly |
| MP Motorsport | 22 | Oliver Rowland | 23 | Daniel de Jong |
| Arden International | 24 | 25 | ||