Not every year in junior series is a stand out. The natural cycles of talent can leave some Formula 2 years short.
The 2022 season, however, had a strong crop of rookies running at the front of the points and enough experienced drivers for that to be proven on merit.
Felipe Drugovich and Théo Pourchaire’s title fight was done with by Monza, but the five-way battle for third place to the last round in Abu Dhabi showed how competitive the field was. In total, 12 different drivers claimed race wins across the season and six succeeded in claiming a pole position. Here’s the ten that stood out, to RaceFans.
10 – Richard Verschoor – Trident
Having secured enough Web3 funding to run a whole season, Richard Verschoor finds himself lower down this list than last year. Which might be unfair, to weigh his performances in a race-by-race seat higher than those in a relatively secure position, but he also did not quite pull out the same stand-out performances as he put together at times during his disrupted 2021 campaign.
Despite starting the year strong with a win in the Bahrain sprint race, Verschoor wasn’t able to carry on the promising form. Scoring 96% of Trident’s points and bringing home four podiums was muted by a long, mid-season failure to score points.
9 – Frederik Vesti – ART
Having one of the title contenders as your team mate in a rookie year is a tough prospect for any driver stepping up into Formula 2. Mercedes junior Vesti started off the F2 season quietly, while team mate Pourchaire was staking an early claim to the top end of the standings.
However, despite not scoring in the first two rounds, Vesti had a breakthrough podium in the Barcelona feature race, before going on to win the sprint in Baku. Pole in Spielberg didn’t quite translate into victory but Vesti’s performance in Monza saw him secure second in both races – an extremely tricky accomplishment with F2’s partially reversed grid.
8 – Enzo Fittipaldi – Charouz
The start of Enzo Fittipaldi’s F2 season would not have suggested he was going to make this list, with the first two rounds free of points and the next one largely unexceptional. However, Fittipaldi’s star rose mid-season, at a stage when a lot of drivers found themselves in point-less no-man’s-land, during the rapid-fire European rounds.
Consistently scoring kept Fittipaldi high up in the…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at RaceFans…