The official start date of the Formula 2 championship is 2017, but the principal training category of future F1 drivers can be considered a continuation of the GP2 Series that ran between 2005 and 2016. After all, F2’s first modern champion Charles Leclerc was crowned after a season in the Dallara GP2/11 that had been used in the previous six seasons of GP2.
Of GP2’s 12 champions, Lewis Hamilton, Nico Hulkenberg and Pierre Gasly remain on the F1 grid, while inaugural title winner Nico Rosberg joined Hamilton in becoming a world champion before retiring from racing at the end of 2016. But beyond its most famous alumni, GP2 helped develop numerous drivers who came close but did not quite manage to clinch the title.
As we’ve already done with GP2’s predecessor, Formula 3000, in this article we attempt to rank the best drivers who didn’t quite manage to claim the GP2 crown. Their relative experience, deficit to the eventual champion, errors versus misfortune, and standout moments will all be considered as qualifying criteria. Their performances outside of GP2 are not considered.
Stoffel Vandoorne is exempt from the list for finishing runner-up in 2014, as he went on to become champion the following year in utterly dominant fashion.
Not every non-champion in this list finished runner-up, meaning we have omitted the drivers who finished second in 2009, 2011 and 2012. Vitaly Petrov comes closest to inclusion of those who missed out. He won multiple feature races – at Valencia Ricardo Tormo (2007) via successfully gambling on slicks on the damp track and at Valencia’s short-lived street track (2008) when Giorgio Pantano ran out of fuel – before adding two more in 2009 at Istanbul and Valencia (again).
But counting against Petrov is the fact he was outclassed by his team-mates Pantano (2007) and Lucas di Grassi (2008), then languished 25 points behind ART’s rookie champion Hulkenberg in 2009 when victories were only worth 10 points. His average finishing position across three years, 7.33, is also usurped by the drivers in the lower reaches of the list.
10. Jules Bianchi
Years: 2010-11
Best result: 3rd (2010-11)
Teams: ART Grand Prix
Wins: 1 in 2011
Poles: 4 (1 in 2011)
Points deficit: 35 (in 2010), 36 (in 2011)
Autosport labelled the late Ferrari protégé an “enigma” after his two-year GP2 spell concluded with back-to-back third places. And it’s not hard to see why. The 2009 Euro F3 champion only won once and, following an encouraging 2010 rookie season, failed to kick on as expected during a torrid start to 2011 that meant he’d ruled out his title hopes just four rounds in.
But his record of finishing near the summit in both seasons he contested shouldn’t be sniffed at either. Despite being pipped to a distant second in 2011 by Luca Filippi, the Frenchman was invariably in the mix against vastly more experienced drivers. Filippi’s first stint with Coloni under the FMS banner in 2006 predated Bianchi’s single-seater debut…
Bianchi was best of the newcomers in 2010 and took three pole positions, including on debut in Barcelona. With three runner-up finishes in feature races, all that was missing was a victory, which could have arrived in the Valencia feature without a small error that allowed champion Pastor Maldonado through.
Hopes of running Romain Grosjean close in 2011 were short-lived. After placing third in the Istanbul opener, he scored just two points from the next seven races as his car proved a magnet for trouble, twice tangling with Giedo van der Garde.
But following his latest start crash in Valencia, this time with Marcus Ericsson, victory in the Silverstone feature was one of 2011’s true highlights. Bianchi defeated Christian Vietoris after the duo changed places four times in one lap, Bianchi twice making on-the-edge moves to immediately retaliate after the German moved ahead.
It sparked a revival as Bianchi scored points in every race thereafter – although another win slipped away in the Nurburgring sprint with a small mistake that allowed Grosjean to pounce. A superb double pass on Grosjean and Dani Clos into Eau Rouge during the sprint race at Spa, where he charged from seventh to second, put Bianchi into the mix for best-of-the-rest honours but he narrowly missed out at Monza after Vietoris beat him off the line in the sprint.
Bianchi was again a bridesmaid in Formula Renault 3.5, losing out to Robin Frijns during that classic 2012 season, but F1 did get to see glimpses of what he might have achieved – most notably wrestling his Marussia to the points in Monaco – before he was taken too soon.
9. Felipe Nasr
Years: 2012-14
Best result: 3rd (2014)
Teams: DAMS, Carlin
Wins: 4
Poles: 1
Points deficit: 52
Although only one of Nasr’s victories came in a feature race and he was twice beaten to finishing runner-up, he makes the list by virtue of twice finishing in the top four. It took the Brazilian 50 races to break his duck in GP2, yet he was firmly in the mix for the title in 2013 and 2014 before being shuffled down to slightly unrepresentative finishing positions.
Joining DAMS alongside 2012 title winner Davide Valsecchi, the British F3 champion cracked the top 10 in points and was second of the rookies behind James Calado.
That increased expectations for his switch to Carlin in 2013, when he was a model of consistency at the start of the season. As early leader Stefano Coletti’s form nosedived, Nasr appeared best-placed to profit – running ahead of eventual champion Fabio Leimer and runner-up Sam Bird with three rounds to go – after finishing no lower than fourth across the opening eight races. But his form dipped to leave him fourth in the standings, also losing out to Calado.
Having trailed winner Bird by just 0.080 seconds in the 2013 Bahrain sprint, Nasr finally broke his duck at Barcelona in 2014 with a decisive pass on Tom Dillmann helping him to beat Jolyon Palmer in the sprint. The two would contest the title between them, Nasr always lurking in Palmer’s shadow, and matched him for wins – including a controlled feature display at the Red Bull Ring – but the DAMS racer always had the edge.
Vandoorne’s stronger end to the season ultimately shuffled Nasr back to third, but he proved his class by graduating to F1 and scoring points on debut for Sauber and has since won two IMSA titles with different manufacturers.
8. Alexander Rossi
Years: 2013-15
Best Result: 2nd (2015)
Teams: Caterham Racing, Campos, Racing Engineering
Wins: 4 (3 in 2015)
Poles: 2 (1 in 2015)
Points deficit: 160
Rossi’s position in this list is dented by his huge deficit to 2015 champion Vandoorne. “The championship runner-up was, in reality, never a title contender,” wrote Autosport. But in the most one-sided GP2 season ever, the American was the only other driver to win more than one feature race and, despite a somewhat disappointing qualifying record, was the nearest thing to a consistent challenger ART ace Vandoorne had.
Having already spent two years in FR 3.5 before joining the GP2 grid in 2013, Rossi had the experience if perhaps not the right team underneath him in his first two seasons – which goes some way to explaining form that could be described as patchy. The Air Asia/Caterham Racing squad that shared the same ownership structure as the F1 team had been sporadic contenders with Valsecchi (2011) and van der Garde (2012), which didn’t change with Rossi’s arrival.
After missing the first round while Ma Qing Hua toiled at Sepang, third on debut in the Bahrain feature hinted at an encouraging year but Rossi only mustered one strategic win in the Abu Dhabi feature en route to ninth in the standings. He was the 11th best qualifier too, a stat repeated during a difficult part-season in 2014, where he was outscored by team-mate Rio Haryanto before parting company with the squad and only making one more appearance at Campos.
But on his return in 2015 at a team with title-winning pedigree, Racing Engineering, Rossi put his experience to good use with six feature race podiums, including two wins. That tally could easily have been higher too: an early-stopping strategy came close to yielding victory in Bahrain until he was overhauled late on by Vandoorne and Haryanto, and he was only denied victory in the Monaco feature after impressively nabbing pole by a tardy stop.
The first win, a reverse grid affair at Spa, opened the floodgates with back-to-back feature successes at Monza and Sochi – the first featuring a pass on Vandoorne, while the latter resulted from pressuring Alex Lynn into an error. Five F1 starts with Marussia towards the end of the season predated an ongoing IndyCar career that netted Indianapolis 500 victory at the first attempt.
7. Bruno Senna
Years: 2007-08
Best result: 2nd (2008)
Teams: Arden, iSport
Wins: 3 (2 in 2008)
Poles: 3
Points deficit: 12
The nephew of the great three-time world champion Ayrton started his car racing career relatively late but progressed rapidly to arrive in GP2 less than three years after his single-seater debut. Given those factors, Bruno Senna’s run to finish second in 2008 was creditable – even if expectations were raised by joining the iSport squad that had run Timo Glock to the crown in 2007.
An impressive win in the Barcelona feature on just his second weekend, nursing his tyres after an early stop behind the safety car to beat Glock’s more conservative strategy, was the high point of Senna’s rookie year with Arden which tailed off after finishing third at Magny-Cours.
But with iSport the Brazilian showed he would be a factor for the crown by pushing rookie Alvaro Parente all the way in Barcelona. After hitting a stray dog on the track in Istanbul, which thwarted what was set to be a points-scoring recovery to the points in the sprint after a first-lap clip broke his front wing in the feature, Senna nailed the start in Monaco to beat Maldonado and draw level with early pacesetter Pantano.
Spurned pole positions at Magny-Cours, Silverstone and Spa (this inherited from team-mate Karun Chandhok due to a grid penalty) were a large part of why Senna ultimately lost out to Racing Engineering veteran Pantano, although not all were his fault.
Clutch failure caused his retirement in France, where Pantano went on to win, and he at least made up for an error-strewn display at Silverstone by comfortably winning the following day’s wet sprint. He led at Spa too, until being released into the path of Alberto Valerio and incurring a drive-through penalty that left him 11th.
Yet Senna was certainly worthy of the F1 chance that belatedly came for 2010 – unfortunately it was with the tail-ender HRT team, which gave him little chance to shine. Ditto a mid-season move to Lotus in 2011, although he later showed his enduring class in sportscars.
6. Sergio Perez
Years: 2009-10
Best result: 2nd (2010)
Teams: Arden, Barwa Addax
Wins: 5
Poles: 1
Points deficit: 16
No driver in 2010 won a feature race by a bigger margin than Sergio Perez in Abu Dhabi (21.1s). None dominated a sprint race more completely than Perez at Silverstone (15.4s), and nobody recovered from further back to win a sprint race than the Mexican in his charge from seventh at Hockenheim. But the recently dropped Red Bull F1 driver simply couldn’t produce the goods often enough to deny Rapax driver Maldonado, whose streak of six consecutive feature race wins belied his tempestuousness.
Following a patchy rookie year with Arden in 2009, largely forgettable aside from a double podium on Valencia’s streets, for 2010 Perez reunited with the Barwa Addax squad with which he’d been a winner in GP2 Asia driving the older-generation 2005-spec cars.
Perez should have won the first two feature races of the year but was denied in Barcelona by a sticking wheel in the pits that dumped him to fourth. He put it to rights by soaking up pressure from Maldonado in Monaco to take an early lead in the title race. But he was excluded from finishing fourth for running underweight in Turkey and got no points for charging from 24th to seventh in the sprint. That gave Maldonado a decisive edge he kept to the end of the season.
There was more duff luck for Perez in Valencia, although there was plenty of speed that underlined why Sauber signed him for 2011. He’d taken pole, his only one in GP2, but was turned around in the feature race by Valsecchi and recorded a blank thanks to contact from Valerio at the start of race two.
Perez wasn’t totally blameless in his defeat. A pitlane speeding penalty that cost a shot at victory in the Spa feature contest was at least redeemed by winning the sprint, but getting embroiled in contact at Monza after Maldonado had dropped the ball was needless – as too was crashing with Bird in Abu Dhabi, souring a weekend he’d began so strongly. “Yas Marina was Perez in microcosm,” wrote Autosport.
5. Sam Bird
Years: 2010-11, 2013
Best result: 2nd (2013)
Teams: ART Grand Prix, iSport, Russian Time
Wins: 6 (5 in 2013)
Poles: 4 (2 in 2013)
Points deficit: 20
Nobody could match Bird’s tally of five wins in 2013, which included three feature victories. But the Briton rated by Autosport as the year’s best driver, running with new Russian Time squad run by Motopark, crucially couldn’t match the consistency of Leimer – another member of the class of 2010 intake.
Bird was also rated by our correspondent as that season’s standout, as regular swashbuckling performances with ART yielded fifth in the standings (just four points behind Bianchi). Not all got the reward they deserved though.
After losing his front wing in the Barcelona feature’s opening lap skirmish, he set fastest lap and ambushed multiple drivers into Turn 5 (coined “Sam Bird corner” by commentator Will Buxton) but only finished ninth. Recovering fifth after starting 14th in the Hockenheim sprint further evidenced his overtaking prowess but salvaging third from 18th at Yas Marina, in a pre-DRS age, was the pick of the lot. Victory in the Monza feature showed he could control races too.
In that context, Bird’s 2011 season at iSport was arguably a disappointment. After falling 0.332s shy in the Istanbul feature to eventual champion Grosjean, there were no wins and he slipped to sixth. Monaco arguably epitomised his year, pole squandered with a stall. He departed the principality level atop the standings with Grosjean, but never troubled the podium again.
After a year in FR3.5, placing third, Bird’s 2013 campaign was unsurprisingly a slow-burner given his team’s circumstances. But after taking sprint victory in Bahrain, 2011 Monaco disappointment was avenged and there were further feature successes at Silverstone and Spa that helped Russian Time to win the teams’ crown.
Seven points split Bird and Leimer heading to Abu Dhabi, where the now Formula E stalwart qualified on the front row and had a prime opportunity to trim the gap – until a stalling that effectively handed the crown to his Swiss rival. But other results that went begging weren’t his fault – chiefly being helped into the gravel by Palmer while disputing third in the Barcelona feature race, resulting in a costly non-score.
4. Lucas di Grassi
Years: 2006-09
Best result: 2nd (2007)
Teams: Durango, ART Grand Prix, Barwa Campos, Racing Engineering
Wins: 5 (1 in 2007)
Poles: 1 (in 2009)
Points deficit: 11
The 2007 runner-up to Glock with ART was arguably more impressive when he belatedly returned for 2008 with Barwa Campos after three rounds of the season had already been completed. If the scores were reset for Magny-Cours, when di Grassi joined the fray, the Renault junior would have won the title by 11 points.
The 2005 Macau Grand Prix winner had a quiet rookie year with Durango, but it was a different story upon joining the ART squad that had won the first two GP2 titles with Rosberg and Hamilton. With greater expectations, di Grassi stood up for the count and, although there was only one win – a typically cool-headed display in the Istanbul feature – he kept Glock honest until the final round.
It didn’t help that team boss Fred Vasseur was absent from the opening races as he recovered from pre-season back surgery, nor that di Grassi had three different rookie team-mates. “The dominators of the previous seasons were on the back foot from the off,” noted Autosport.
But he accumulated points metronomically and never finished lower than fifth in a feature race until Monza, where gearbox gremlins cost him a likely second place when set to overhaul Glock. He entered the Valencia finale just two points adrift following Glock’s nightmare weekend at Spa, but lost any chance of usurping his rival by spinning off in the wet opener.
With little to prove in 2008 but no F1 seat to show for his efforts, he returned at Renault’s behest when Barwa Campos dropped Ben Hanley and ended up just one point shy of runner-up Senna. Two wins in feature races, a straightforward cruise at the Hungaroring and at Monza when Pantano’s pit exit white line faux pas resulted in a penalty – added to an untroubled Valencia sprint triumph – underlined his credentials as a title-calibre driver ready for F1.
But overlooked once again for 2009, he returned once more with Pantano’s Racing Engineering squad in what proved a disappointing sign-off. He again finished third but only won once, in the Istanbul sprint, before getting a long-awaited F1 chance alongside Glock for 2010 with a Virgin that had a too small fuel tank… Now Formula E’s most experienced driver, enjoying numerous duels with Bird, he won the all-electric championship in 2016-17.
3. Nelson Piquet
Years: 2005-06
Best result: 2nd (2006)
Team: Piquet Sports
Wins: 5 (4 in 2006)
Poles: 6
Points deficit: 12
The first driver to take a weekend clean sweep of pole, both wins and fastest laps at the Hungaroring in 2006, Nelson Piquet Jr gave Hamilton a real run for his money in a two-horse race for GP2’s second crown. That he doesn’t rise higher in the list owes much to Piquet being in his second year against a rookie and the slightly smaller margins of defeat for the two drivers ranked above him here.
The 2004 British F3 champion finished eighth in a mixed first season, peaking with a feature win at Spa in a race of mixed conditions. True to form, it wasn’t without drama, having clattered into Alex Premat (ART) to incur a 10-place grid penalty for race two. The pressure was on for 2006 to show he could deliver more consistently – and Piquet did.
Victory in the Valencia opener, beating Hamilton, set the template for a year in which the duo was usually the class of the field (although Pantano won both races at Monza after replacing Filippi at FMS/Coloni). There were six poles from 11 rounds – Hamilton managed the feat once – which showed the value of his Piquet Sports team conducting a private test programme with a modified World Series Dallara. “But a persistent habit of locking the brakes in the races was his downfall,” remarked Autosport.
That was evidenced most clearly at the Nurburgring, where after a stuttering start from pole he lost a likely podium when his tyre blew – the result of a flat-spot incurred diving past Nicolas Lapierre. At Monza too, Piquet flat-spotted his tyres so couldn’t challenge Pantano late on.
There were other sloppy moments that meant, Hungary aside, his only other win came in the Istanbul feature best remembered for that famous recovery from Hamilton to second after an early spin. Another likely win went begging in the Barcelona feature thanks to a pitlane speeding penalty, and he incurred the same sanction at Hockenheim while running second. A loose fuel line on the final lap ultimately robbed him of fourth.
Perhaps his year is best remembered for being on the wrong end of a piece of Hamilton brilliance during the Silverstone sprint; as the Brit escaped his three-wide move on Clivio Piccione and Piquet to win, the latter lost all momentum skittering across the grass and smashing into an advertising hoarding.
2. Heikki Kovalainen
Year: 2005
Best result: 2nd
Team: Arden
Wins: 5
Poles: 2
Points deficit: 5
As the reigning Dallara Nissan champion teaming up with the dominant force of GP2’s forerunner, F3000, much was expected of the Kovalainen-Arden combination in 2005. And they didn’t disappoint. Kovalainen led virtually all the way until a blank at Spa handed Nico Rosberg and ART the initiative.
Rosberg’s double win in the standalone Bahrain finale ensured there was no way back, but Kovalainen’s year was one to be proud of. “Given the car advantage his rival had, it was a triumph for the Finn to hold on for so long,” Autosport noted.
He nursed his car to victory in the first race of the new era at Imola, a farce that prompted the organisers into a mid-weekend change of brake supplier, and collected three more feature victories at Magny-Cours, the Nurburgring and Monza. The latter was arguably the pick of the bunch; after taking pole with a lap 1.126s faster than anybody not called Rosberg, he held back the future world champion despite taking fewer fresh tyres in a tense conclusion.
Kovalainen should have won at Monaco too, where he took pole and led until being denied by a sticking wheelnut that limited him to fifth. All of that meant there were just four points between the pair heading to Spa, where Kovalainen’s bid to snatch eighth and reversed grid pole from Mathias Lauda ended in contact and a final lap spin.
Another race-ending rotation in the Bahrain sprint ended Kovalainen’s year on a low note. But the title had already been decided in the feature, when the world championship’s 100th race winner at the 2008 Hungarian GP was limited to third behind a dominant ART 1-2.
1. Antonio Giovinazzi
Year: 2016
Best result: 2nd
Team: Prema
Wins: 5
Poles: 2
Points deficit: 8
Giovinazzi got closer than many expected to becoming GP2’s first rookie champion since Hulkenberg after his graduation as European F3 runner-up. In his Prema squad’s first year, he lost out to team-mate Pierre Gasly by just eight points – despite the Frenchman having a season each in FR3.5 and GP2 already under his belt. The gulf in experience between the Italian and his main title rival, where Kovalainen had the upper hand in that respect, ultimately secures him top spot here.
“Sure, Gasly’s experience helped Giovinazzi, but the rookie’s speed also pushed Gasly on,” noted Autosport. “He was the most exciting driver out there.”
After a sluggish start, scoring no points across the first two rounds mostly remembered for crashing dramatically with Sean Gelael in Barcelona, Giovinazzi won both races at Baku – becoming the first driver to achieve the feat since Valsecchi in 2012. Although Gasly was eliminated in a first corner tangle in the feature, he led into the final lap of an eventful sprint, only for Giovinazzi (sans DRS) to sucker him into running deep at Turn 1.
When Giovinazzi wasn’t winning, he usually finished strongly. Alternator failure denied him a likely podium in Austria, where Gasly went off in the wet, but Giovinazzi recovered from 17th to fifth in the sprint despite an early visit to the gravel. He passed Oliver Rowland around the outside of Luffield on the final lap to claim second at Silverstone and tracked Gasly all the way in Hungary.
He wasn’t without rough edges as a scruffy race at Hockenheim after fluffing reversed grid pole showed. Yet he demonstrated maturity too – after spurning pole at Spa with another wheel-spinning getaway, he won the sprint and took a third feature victory at Sepang by outfoxing first Raffaele Marciello then Sergey Sirotkin in on-track duels.
It can be argued that misfortune for Gasly explains why Giovinazzi went into the Yas Marina finale seven points ahead. Monza glory, from 21st on the grid after being penalised for illegal tyre pressures, came at Gasly’s expense after what Autosport termed the “biggest organisational blunder” of the year.
He still had to perform a last-gasp pass on Marciello but “as brilliant as his drive was, it wouldn’t have been a victory without a very dubious safety car intervention,” our correspondent wrote, as it “unfathomably positioned itself in front of erstwhile leader Gasly rather than the cars yet to pit and therefore actually leading”.
Gasly had also been hindered by engine glitches at Monza and Sepang, where anti-stall kicked in at the start to convert first into 11th. But with a new unit Gasly won the Abu Dhabi feature from pole to effectively put the crown beyond Giovinazzi, who was left to lament being baulked in qualifying and then having to run a time-sapping extra lap on supersoft tyres to avoid double-stacking in the pits.
