It’s the first race week of 2025 and the Formula 1 season begins in Melbourne. There’s plenty to look forward to – Lewis Hamilton’s first season in Scuderia red, Max Verstappen’s attempt for a fifth consecutive world title and, of course, six newcomers on the grid.
Kimi Antonelli at Mercedes, Ollie Bearman at Haas, Jack Doohan at Alpine, Isack Hadjar at Racing Bulls, Liam Lawson at Red Bull and Gabriel Bortoleto at Sauber make up the rookie class of 2025 – the largest since 2001, when there were four rookies in the field.
The transition to Formula 1 is a difficult task, even if you have been successful in the lower racing classes. Drivers like Logan Sargeant and Nyck de Vries can confirm this. We at Betting Buddies analyze for you how the Formula 2 champions fared in the premier class of motorsport.
Formula 2 Winners in Formula 1: The World Champions
Although F2/GP2 champions became F1 greats and fan favorites, an interesting statistic is that only three F2/GP2 champions went on to win the world title.
Jack Brabham won the first F2 championship and the world championship three times in 1959, 1960 and 1966.
Nico Rosberg is also one of the flagship athletes of Formula 2 and GP2, having been crowned world champion in Formula 1 in 2016. An elite circle to which he can count himself.
However, the most successful of these three is clearly Lewis Hamilton, who holds seven world championship titles. This is not only a record for former F2 drivers, but in Formula 1 in general.
In terms of numbers, however, that is still only three world champions out of 43 drivers. But that does not mean that others have not come close. Jacky Ickx, who won the Formula 2 championship in 1967, finished second in the world championship three times. The late Ronnie Peterson finished second in the World Championship twice – in 1971 and 1978.
Charles Leclerc, who won the F2 Championship in 2017, finished second in the World Championship in 2022. However, he is still active and could therefore become the fourth world champion.
F2 champions who have won F1 Grand Prix
The numbers read better if we look at F2/GP2 champions who have won at least one Grand Prix.
16 out of 43 F2/GP2 winners have won a Grand Prix in F1. However, only four of them won 10 or more Grands Prix – Hamilton, Rosberg, Brabham and Peterson.
Jacky Ickx and Rene Arnoux came close to that number, with eight and seven Grand Prix wins respectively. Charles Leclerc can definitely break the 10-win barrier, as he has eight career Grand Prix victories before the 2025 season.
In terms of total number of wins, no one comes close to Hamilton’s F1 record of 105 victories, with Rosberg second with 23 grand prix wins, followed by Brabham (14) and Peterson (10).
F2/GP2 winners with a Formula 1 podium
22 F2/GP2 world champions have stood on an F1 grand prix podium at least once in their career, with the youngest being Oscar Piastri, who has already stood on 10 podiums.
As expected, Hamilton leads this statistic with 202 podium finishes (another F1 record), followed by his (former) teammate Rosberg (57), Leclerc (43), Jacques Laffite (32) and Brabham (31).
Timo Glock is another German who has finished on the podium three times. Nico Hülkenberg and Mick Schumacher, the other two German F2 drivers, never made it that far – Schumacher still has a career ahead of him.
It should also be noted that Hamilton, Rosberg and Leclerc are competing in an era where there are more than 20 Grands Prix per season, compared to a time when the number was less than 10.
Out of 43 F2 champions, 16 got at least one pole position in their F1 career.
Formula 2 champions who never made it to F1
While most F2 champions had reasonably successful careers in F1, there are some who never made the leap.
For example, the F2 champions from 2009 to 2012 – not a single one of them had an F1 stint due to the superior talent that emerged from the GP2 series at the time – Nico Hülkenberg, Pastor Maldonado and Romain Grosjean – among others.
Not all GP2 winners had an easy journey either, with Davide Valsecchi and Fabio Leimer never gaining a Formula 1 entry. Leimer took part in a single FP session in his career. Valsecchi was heavily linked with a seat at Lotus, but it never materialized as the team ultimately opted for Heikki Kovalainen.
Another recent example is Felipe Drugovich, who is currently a reserve driver for Aston Martin and was in the reserve driver pools for McLaren. His compatriot Bortoleto, on the other hand, will line up as a full-time driver for Sauber this season.
Note on Formula 2 classification
We have looked at 31 different seasons of the racing series now known as the FIA Formula 2 Championship. The series, unlike Formula 11, was not continuous and was dropped from the classification several times for a variety of reasons.
The seasons we have included are 1960, 1967-1984, 2009-2012 and 2017-2024, with the European Formula 2 Championship series introduced by the FIA included from 1967-1984.
We have also included GP2 results from 2005 to 2016, before it was renamed to what is now known as the FIA Formula 2 Championship.
methodology
We have extracted the list of F2 champions from this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formula_TwoChampions
We then reviewed their Formula 1 records and created a table to show their career achievements, taking into account the following data points:
- F1 appearances
- Pole positions
- Podium finishes
- Grand Prix wins
- World Championships
