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Formula 2 2024 season: How Gabriel Bortoleto won the F2 title in Abu Dhabi
by Samarth Kanal
9min read
The 2024 Formula 2 season concluded with a dramatic title decider in Abu Dhabi, where Invicta Racing’s Gabriel Bortoleto emerged champion and Campos Racing’s Isack Hadjar left disappointed.
Event, Car
Formula 2 2024 season: Title battle goes down to the wire after Qatar F2 races
Hadjar’s title fight ended on a dispiriting note when he stalled his car off the line in the feature race.
He was, however, runner-up to Bortoleto in a F2 season that included a record 18 different race winners and 21 different podium finishers.
Bortoleto’s Invicta Racing team also clinched the teams’ championship for the first time.
Here’s how the 2024 F2 title was settled, the potential reasons for Hadjar’s title-deciding stall - and the secret to unlocking pace in F2.
Invicta Racing’s Gabriel Bortoleto on his way to clinching the 2024 Formula 2 Championship
How the 2024 F2 title was won in Abu Dhabi
Bortoleto entered Abu Dhabi with a 0.5-point lead over his title rival Hadjar while Hitech’s Paul Aron was a distant 25.5 points away from the top.
The Brazilian driver - bound for Sauber in F1 next year - finished second in the sprint race after making up places at the start. Meanwhile, Hadjar found himself squeezed between Rodin’s Ritomo Miyata and Invicta Racing’s Kush Maini into Turn 1, where his front wing was damaged - costing him downforce and grip.
Hadjar did manage to finish sixth in the sprint race, which became fifth when Aron was disqualified from the classification as his Drag Reduction System (DRS) was one millimetre too big when deployed. But Aron was already out of contention by then.
On Sunday, Bortoleto made it up to second place at the start of the race - but the threat from Hadjar vaporised almost instantly. The Campos Racing driver had stalled at the start, and he would finish 19th to Bortoleto’s second.
Bortoleto left Abu Dhabi with a 22.5-point lead and the F2 title on his first attempt. He joined Oscar Piastri, George Russell, and Charles Leclerc as drivers who managed to win the F3 and F2 titles on debut.
The 2024 F2 champion will graduate to F1 next season as he races for Sauber F1 Team alongside Nico Hulkenberg.
Campos Racing driver Isack Hadjar’s car stalled on the grid in the season finale, costing him a chance at the title
Getting off the grid - the moment that cost Hadjar
“The worst moment of my life right now,” said Hadjar over the radio as he stalled.
The F2 clutch is a tricky mechanism. It operates like a foot-operated clutch pedal, but this one is a hand-operated paddle on the back of the steering wheel. Drivers need to find the ‘bite’ point of the clutch to engage it and transmit consistent torque (rotational force) from the engine’s crankshaft to the driveshaft, which turns the wheels.
This is a quick process in F2; with 570 Newton-metres of torque, F2 drivers have to find a precise point to engage the clutch and then disengage it, putting the engine into gear and turning the driveshaft, without loading excessive or insufficient torque into the transmission.
If that happens, the Engine Control Unit (ECU) cuts the engine out - the engine stalls.
The F2 car clutch and engine needs mapping - essentially, instructions in the form of software that dictate how much torque and power is transmitted to the driveshaft to avoid wheelspin and ensure consistent starts.
These maps are prescribed by the FIA, but teams can choose a more ‘aggressive’ mapping that allows for a faster start and more torque. Sometimes this can lead to a higher risk of stalling, depending on the amount of grip available and the driver’s technique.
Campos Racing’s Isack Hadjar in the pitlane at Yas Marina Circuit, with the gearshift paddles and clutch paddle on the back of his steering wheel visible
Neither Campos Racing nor the FIA commented on the reason for the stall when approached by Raceteq, although investigations seemed to point at user error as the issue. Title winner Bortoleto shed some light on how difficult it is to pull off the line in an F2 car.
“I don't know exactly why he stalled; normally you stall when you don't have the start mode on. I don't know if that's the reason or not. Maybe he had a clutch map that was very aggressive, so when he dropped the first clutch, the RPMs [engine revolutions] dropped too much and his engine switched off. But honestly, I don't know. I would like to know [later].”
Bortoleto said he “struggled” with race starts at the beginning of the season but Invicta Racing found a solution to ensure a more consistent delivery of torque. He reiterated that stalls can sometimes happen because ‘start mode’ - a mode that prepares the cars’ engines for a race start - is not engaged, although the FIA has made steps to ensure that does not happen.
“I don't think it's the start mode because FIA has implemented a system now that they don't do the start in case they don't see that everyone has the start mode on, but maybe he tried to be very aggressive to gain some positions at the start because he knew that one of the only chances of him winning the championship was finishing ahead of me, so maybe it was his plan to have a mega, mega start and maybe it didn't work.”
The FIA has attempted to implement a stronger anti-stall feature in its F2 and F3 cars - something that apparently might not have worked when Maini stalled in Azerbaijan - but it’s not clear whether this system failed in Abu Dhabi.
Isack Hadjar missed out on the 2024 F2 title but he took the most wins (4) of the season
Why tyres are still the key to mastering Formula 2
The latest 2024 F2 cars are different from their predecessors in that they implement Venturi tunnels - with the floors providing a greater proportion of downforce - plus safety features and new ergonomics to help a greater range of drivers compete.
The new F2 cars are therefore characterised by having more frequent switches from understeer to oversteer - not as severe as F1’s current cars, but still enough to warrant a different approach to driving these cars given they require a gentler approach to corner entry and exit, which is particularly pronounced in slower corners.
These F2 cars retain a trait from the previous era in that the 18-inch wheel rims and larger tyres have been carried over. Larger tyres and stiffer sidewalls mean there’s more grip available, compared to smaller tyres with bigger sidewalls, because the contact patch between the tyre and the track surface is more consistent.
18-inch rims have narrower tyre sidewalls (L) while 13-inch rims have larger sidewalls (R)
However, through longer radius corners, cornering force stretches tyres laterally in the other direction. When that happens, the contact patch is affected. Tyres with a bigger sidewall stretch more laterally; tyres with a smaller sidewall stretch less. This means there’s a sharper dropoff between peak grip and the loss of grip when on low-profile tyres.
“If you have a 13-inch tyre, there’s a lot more rubber and less rim,” explains Hitech’s Aron, who entered Abu Dhabi as a distant title contender but was disqualified for having a DRS opening one millimetre too large. “So, the rubber we have is quite little and that makes the limit of grip very peaky.
Tyres with smaller sidewalls like those on the 18-inch rims (L) bend less under cornering forces - and offer greater peaks of grip thanks to having larger contact patches - than tyres with bigger sidewalls such as those on the 13-inch rims (R)
“So, either the car grips or if you slide [through a corner] you lose massively because the car doesn't have any [give] - it doesn't bend, you know, it doesn't give up. For example, in Formula 3 with a 13-inch tyre, the sidewall is softer and there's more tyre which means that it bends more which gives you more kind of combined grip. And then when you have a small slide, the tyre is much more compliant.
“We don't have that. So, in Formula 2, that's why when you see the onboards, they are normally quite clean. Because once the car slides, it goes and you lose laptime massively.
“So that's the hard part of Formula 2. You cannot feel the limit to understand where it is because once you go to that limit, you lose the lap already fully. And if it's a street circuit, you're in the wall.”