A sense of perpetual progress emanates from the Prema Racing factory in Grisignano di Zocco. With a new building housing its endurance racing collaboration with Iron Lynx and Lamborghini nearing completion, a simulator being installed, and freshly delivered parts of the new-for-2024 Formula 2 car waiting for assembly, it’s clear that this is a team constantly searching for success.
But the occasion for this visit is a poignant look back to the past, celebrating the team’s 40th anniversary. With 39 drivers’ titles and 25 teams’ championships under its belt, Prema is undeniably one of the junior series’ most successful operations, and a byword for prestige in the paddock among drivers and teams alike. Founded by Angelo Rosin in 1983, it initially opted for a foray into prototype racing, before quickly moving into Formula 3. It was in 1990 when it first tasted title success, with Roberto Colciago’s Italian F3 crown the first of many championships to come.
Rosin’s son Rene is now team principal. Naturally, he’s been around Prema since he was a child, and officially joined in 2005 to run its World Series by Renault programme before taking over its F3 operations in 2010.
The family atmosphere, he says, is “one of the points that we need to continue pushing. Even if we are now growing up, we've reached more than 150 people working within the group. We have different entities, different teams inside ourselves. But still we want to consider ourselves like a big family. I know it’s difficult, I know it’s more challenging especially with bigger programmes, especially with these 150 people working altogether. That’s one of the keys for us, it’s fundamental.”
Rosin says continuing to set targets to improve is crucial to the team’s success, and adds: “You never rely on previous years’ results, you need always to look forward. If you don’t look forward and you don’t continue to improve, of course the success will not arrive. Then there is a big combination about drivers, teams, mechanics, engineers, everybody working really for the best goal as possible.
“You can have the best drivers, you can have the best engineers, you can have the best mechanics, but if none of those three parties are working together in the best way possible, you will never achieve anything, so this is fundamental. Make sure that everybody is bonded together, trying to achieve the best results as possible.”
At a star-studded gala in Venice the following evening, attended by prominent names including 1997 Formula 1 world champion Jacques Villeneuve, Alpine F1 driver Esteban Ocon, World Endurance Championship star Kamui Kobayashi and former Ferrari sporting director Massimo Rivola, it’s evident what a huge impact this team has had on motorsport.
An extensive exhibition in the cavernous Terminal 103 showcases the team’s achievements, with Oscar Piastri’s and Charles Leclerc’s F2 title-winning cars among helmets and race suits spanning four decades. Eight current F1 drivers competed with Prema at some point in their careers, many going on to win titles, and all point to its close-knit feel as a reason for its success, including Ferrari star Leclerc, who sent a video message to mark the occasion. Rosin Sr gives a speech at dinner, and receives a standing ovation.
It is a moving tribute to a team which has done so much since its inception. Colciago’s 1990 title was the first of so many, but a real breakthrough came in 2011, with Roberto Merhi’s Formula 3 Euro Series championship victory. Since Ryan Briscoe’s 2003 title, the team had come close several more times, but had struggled to capture its true potential. With Merhi’s success, the floodgates opened.
"You can have the best drivers, you can have the best engineers, you can have the best mechanics, but if none of those three parties are working together in the best way possible, you will never achieve anything" Rene Rosin
“Up to that time, that year we had done as a company quite a big investment,” Rosin says. “We said we needed to turn around the wheel, we need to make sure we are back in the positions we know we are capable of. In 2010, we showed great performance, but at the end Daniel Juncadella did some rookie mistakes in the first year which is quite normal. 2011 was fundamental in our big step, and from there we continued improving year by year.”
And continue improving it did. From the subsequent 2012 season, the team won every European F3 teams’ title, and all but one drivers’ championship – which went to Carlin driver Lando Norris in 2017. When the championship merged with GP3 to create the current iteration of F3 in 2019, Prema’s success continued. It won both the teams' and drivers' titles in 2019 and 2020, and scooped the drivers’ title in 2021, with more teams' championships coming in 2022 and 2023.
Further success came in GP2, and at the first attempt for good measure. It finished first and second in the 2016 drivers' standings with Pierre Gasly and Antonio Giovinazzi, and secured the teams' title with almost double the points tally of its nearest challenger, before GP2 morphed into F2 for 2017. Charles Leclerc took the drivers’ title that year, and Prema went on to do the double twice more in 2020 and 2021 with Mick Schumacher and Oscar Piastri leading it to glory.
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With all that success behind the team, is Rosin disappointed about the few the team failed to win?
“The competition has been incredibly high so when you are competing against the best drivers, the best teams all the time, you cannot think to continue to win everything,” he says.
“But if we are there fighting, and giving our best, this is what for me is important. Of course, I want to win, I am competitive, I don’t like to arrive P2 or P3. If I arrive P2 or P3, it means somebody has done a better job than us, and we need to sit down with the engineers and the drivers to regroup, to understand where we went wrong, and from there make a new challenge for the year after.
“The fact for this year, for example, we didn’t win the drivers’ championship in F3 is something that is quite hard to accept. Gabriel [Bortoleto] did a great season, very regular, maybe not the fastest driver overall. They were telling during the prize giving that his average qualifying performance was P5, P6, but still, he’s always been there, he's always got points.
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“In a championship like F3 or F2, you need always to score points. If you are capable of winning, you need to win. If you are capable to arrive P5 maximum, you cannot score zero, you need to score P5 which is 10 points. Only like that, at the end of the championship, you are sure you do a good job.”
Highlights for Rosin are plentiful across the years, from the team’s first Macau win with Juncadella in 2011 to its immediate GP2 success in 2016 and replicating that in F3 three years later – all moments which make the Italian “really proud”. It hasn’t all been plain sailing though, and Rosin admits that “all the years there are up and down moments”.
“All the years there are moments where I say ‘what the fuck?’,” he continues. “But if there is a difficulty, there is always a way to improve. If there is an obstacle, we need to work together between all of us to make sure we jump it and look forward. So, we need to learn from the mistakes.
“Last year [2022] for me it was ok, but even if the results were not great it was important to bounce back this year and we bounced back. So, the capabilities of reaction, the capabilities of being able to turn things around is something fundamental.”
Looking ahead, Rosin has arguably two of F1’s most promising prospects among his team’s ranks. In F2, it will run second-year driver and sure-fire title challenger Oliver Bearman, a member of Ferrari’s Driver Academy, and Mercedes’ future superstar Andrea Kimi Antonelli.
The squad's F3 line-up is strong too. Its 2022 Formula Regional champion Dino Beganovic is retained for his second season in the series alongside Alpine Academy member Gabriele Mini, who joins from Hitech, and Formula 4 graduate Arvid Lindblad, a Red Bull junior. Surely it is a testament to Rosin’s hard work that almost every F1 team has entrusted him with one of their future stars?
“It’s not me who should judge the work of my team,” he says. “It’s the others who should judge the work of my team. But for sure, it’s a reason to be proud, having all of the Formula 1 teams who are able to give us all their young kids and trust in us to make them grow up and be ready for all the categories is a big challenge. We need to be able to give everybody the same treatment to give all our expertise and this is something that is very important for us.”
That expertise is extensive, and its track record of producing champions is unmatched. Looking back over those 40 years, Prema has done a huge amount of winning. But perhaps one of its biggest victories is how it’s cherished by so many.
