Photos: Formula Motorsport Ltd
Last weekend, Leonardo Fornaroli became only the fifth driver in GP2/F2 history to go nine races into a season without a non-score. Here’s the drivers he joined, and what he made of missing out on victory again
“Consistency” is the buzzword of the FIA Formula 2 and Formula 3 paddocks in 2025, and it was particularly the case in the latter last year when Trident’s Leonardo Fornaroli became champion without a race win.
This year Fornaroli is driving for Invicta Racing in F2, and after nine races sits third in the standings. He is six points off top spot, and has three podiums to his name. But he is now 127 races into his single-seater career and his sole victory came in Italian Formula 4 four years ago.
However he is also now only the fifth driver since the modern F2 championship’s creation as GP2 in 2005 to score in the first nine races of a season.
Jolyon Palmer achieved it first, using his immense championship experience to take the 2014 GP2 title by scoring in every contest until the penultimate round when his run was ended after 19 races. His closest rival that year was rookie Stoffel Vandoorne, who then romped to the 2015 title with a single non-score that came 10 races into the campaign.
A very distant championship runner-up was Alexander Rossi, whose scoring run lasted one race longer than Vandoorne’s.
Next to start a season with supreme consistency was Nyck de Vries, who claimed three wins and six other points finishes from the first nine races en route to the 2019 F2 title. He only had one non-score prior to the season finale, by which point the third-year driver was aleady champion and his focus had switched to racing for Mercedes-EQ in Formula E.
Felipe Drugovich, another experienced driver, won four of the first 10 races in 2022 but that year’s champion had his initial scoring run ended after eight races due to “a real mess” of a Monaco sprint race in which he ended up on the wrong tyres twice, got a pitlane speeding penalty and then retired.
Fornaroli meanwhile has an average finishing position of fifth so far in 2025, only slightly lower than the 4.7 of Hitech GP’s championship leader Luke Browning. In Monaco last weekend, Fornaroli qualified third for and then finished second in the feature race. His ability to quickly avoid a multi-car crash at the opening corner not only saved his scoring run but put him in the lead, and he only lost that on what would count as the final lap due to missing the opportunity to pit a lap earlier.
First of all, Fornaroli was not impressed with his qualifying. He was second fastest in his group, but 0.546 seconds off pole.
“Of course it’s nice to end in a good spot, but not very happy about the end of my session, not very happy with my driving,” he told media including Formula Scout.
“We were in a good spot until the flat spot I got in my third lap. And then you only have another lap to try to put yourself in a good position. Everything was vibrating, so it’s not how you want to start your final lap. I didn’t want to do other mistakes, so probably left some time in the big braking zones.
“It was looking like a decent lap until the last sector and then, nah, I just did some mistakes. I’m not very happy with myself. With the car, we did a good step compared to [practice] and we’re looking strong. But still we were able to finish in a good result, so we take that.”
After the race, which was an even better result, there was even more frustration as the safety car cost him victory.
“It’s very, very disappointing to miss the win today. I got lucky in turn one that Alex [Dunne] and Victor [Martins] crashed and I didn’t get any damage and took the lead of the race. Then when the race restarted, everything was going well.
“I was feeling very good with the car, I was just trying to manage everything, don’t do any mistakes and arrive at the pit window with good tyres. So I could have pushed properly. Then we just got very unlucky with the safety car. It took a whole lap to put [out] the safety car. I tried to slow down also before the pit entry, but I can’t go 1kph and also I didn’t want to get any penalties. I got the safety car in T1, or approaching T1, so nothing we can do about it. It’s very disappointing.”
Fornaroli pitted on lap 15, and rejoined in second. He was unable to use his fresher tyres to his advantage, as the safety car period caused by Hitech’s Dino Beganovic causing barrier damage with a crash only ended when red flags waved on lap 18. The results were taken from the end of lap 18, and reduced points were given due to the race’s shortened distance.
After he “got stuck in traffic and lost three positions” when he pitted in the previous feature race at Imola, Fornaroli knew it would be “a super important pitstop” in Monaco. He felt “everything was amazing” with the stop Invicta did, but he had already been denied victory as he waited to see if the virtual safety car period – in which his gap at front was maintained – would be turned into a full one after Beganovic’s crash.
When asked if he thought the safety car could have been called out earlier, he was in two minds:
“Well, maybe yes because it was quite clear there was a crash, barriers were damaged. So maybe they could have put safety car earlier, but I’m not the race director, I’m not taking this decision. Probably they did the best for the situation. I don’t know. I’m not in the race director room, so I can’t know these kind of things.”
But had the start of Fornaroli’s race gone slightly different, he would not have been ruing the safety car timing and certainly would not have been headed to Barcelona this weekend with nine points-scoring races in a row to his name.
“I was just at the right place at the right time. I knew that both of them are very aggressive drivers. Victor had a very good start, went on the outside of Alex. And I knew Alex was not going to give up.
“So I said ‘okay, chill, maybe they can crash and go in the wall’. As soon as they touch, I didn’t know what to do because I was thinking ‘are they going to come back on track or go straight into the wall?’. And then as I saw they were going straight, I prepared the mega exit and I luckily escaped the crash.”
Drivers who have started GP2/F2 seasons with a scoring runs of 8+ races
19 Jolyon Palmer (2014)
10 Alexander Rossi (2015)
9 Stoffel Vandoorne (2015), Nyck de Vries (2019), Leonardo Fornaroli (2025)
8 Pastor Maldonado (2009), Luiz Razia (2012), Esteban Gutierrez (2012), Felipe Nasr (2013), Stefano Coletti (2013), Alex Albon* (2017), Lando Norris (2018), Felipe Drugovich (2022)
*Albon missed a round during his scoring run
Drivers who won the title that year are in italics