Will Formula 2 have a rookie champion this year?

Hitech Pulse-Eight’s rookie driver Paul Aron is currently leading the Formula 2 championship.

Five rounds into the season, Aron is one of five rookies in the top ten. Not only that, but four of those five rookies are currently out-scoring their more experienced teammates.

Coming into the most recent race weekend in Monaco, Aron qualified fourth fastest on Friday. He finished Saturday’s Sprint Race in seventh place, earning him two points, before taking third place in the Feature Race the following morning.

This result marked the 20 year-old Estonian’s fifth podium in as many rounds and put him two points ahead of Isack Hadjar in the championship.

Speaking to FormulaNerds and selected media after the race, Aron hesitated to make any claims about his title chances.

“I think it is still really early,” he commented. “One win can give you a big gap compared to P2 to P3. It is just about making steps forward with the team. It is still a new car for everyone, and we are going to different tracks.

“For me as a rookie I am still getting more comfortable with the car every round. Here in Monaco, we had the best Qualifying of the year with P4. We were in the fight for the Pole Position. That will be the goal going forward. Improving in Qualifying because I think we have been on top of race pace. I am happy to take the Championship lead but there is still work to do.”

Performance vs. experience

It shouldn’t be surprising to see Aron performing well if you’ve heard of him before. The former Mercedes junior driver finished third overall in his first year of Formula Regional, and in his first year of Formula 3. Still, often in Formula 2, experience wins out over rookies.

Aron’s teammate, Amaury Cordeel, is in his third season of Formula 2. While Aron leads the championship, Cordeel is down in 17th in the standings, which equals his best finishing position in the championship to date.

When asked by FormulaNerds about the factors behind out-performing his much more experienced teammate, Aron said: “To be honest it’s hard to say, all I’ve done is worked on myself.

“I think Amaury has done a good job on his side. He’s made big steps forward throughout the year, and in Imola he had really good pace already.

“But from side, I just have to thank the team for giving me the environment and obviously the information and the car to perform. To be honest I think that’s the goal, and the road to success is even if you have an experienced teammate, you focus on yourself, and that’s what I’ve done this year.

“My relationship with the team has been really good, I’ve felt really happy, and I’m just focused on my driving.

“Similar to last year in Formula 3 where I was a rookie and Zak [O’Sullivan] was actually a second-year driver, we were competing the whole year. In the end he beat me, so well done Zak. But even that year, it’s great to have some reference, but I was just working on myself.

“It’s so easy to get caught up in other people’s work, in the same way it’s easy to get caught up in the Formula 1 world. As long as you work on yourself and with the team, that’s all you need to do.”

As Aron is only two points ahead of Hadjar in the standings with just over a third of the season complete, he’s right to be hesitant about his title chances. But the consistency he’s achieved so far, especially as a first-year Formula 2 driver, bodes well for the rest of his season.

Other rookies in contention

The second-highest rookie in the standings is Invicta Racing’s Gabriel Bortoleto, another first-year Formula 2 driver currently outscoring his teammate (in his case, Kush Maini). He sits fifth in the standings, followed closely by three more rookies: Kimi Antonelli, Zak O’Sullivan, and Franco Colapinto.

Colapinto is running 18 points behind his third-year teammate Dennis Hauger, but both Antonelli and O’Sullivan are currently ahead of their more experienced teammates (Oliver Bearman and Victor Martins respectively).

Bearman and Martins, both touted as championship contenders ahead of the 2024 season, sit 13th and 20th in the standings respectively. It’s been a tough start to the season for both PREMA Racing and ART Grand Prix, but seeing these two drivers getting beaten by their less-experienced teammates is a surprise.

O’Sullivan, whose strategy on Sunday in Monaco gave him a shocking Feature Race win, also spoke to FormulaNerds after the race about being ahead of his teammate in the championship.

“We haven’t had the easiest start to the season,” the British driver said about ART Grand Prix. “So we haven’t always been fighting for points that regularly, so the picture’s a bit skewed. But I think between Victor and myself we’ve been both working well together to improve everything. And some days it goes his way, some days it goes my way.

“But I expect it to be quite close through the year. It’s great to have a teammate with experience and knowledge to lean on, of course, he was so fast last year. But we’ll keep working and trying to improve everything around us.”

Could Aron win the title?

What the more experienced drivers have learned, and what often gets them titles over rookies, is consistency. So far, Aron has checked that box quite nicely. In fact, he’s the only Formula 2 driver so far with only one non-points finish. He’s leading the championship without a race win, which, even though that sounds like it’s not a point in his favour, proves how consistently on the pace he’s been.

Sure, they’re only five rounds into a 14-round championship, but Aron has already shown that his performance isn’t a fluke. He hasn’t won a single-seater championship yet, but 2024 could be his year if he keeps doing what he’s been doing. He’ll face constant challenges, from experienced drivers like Hadjar and Zane Maloney and his fellow rookies like O’Sullivan and Colapinto.

But in Formula 2, as we’ve seen just as recently as this past weekend, anything is possible.

Feature Image Credit: @Formula2 on X