2024 FIA Formula 3 World Champion Leonardo Fornaroli has secured his step up to the Formula 2 series for 2025 with Invicta Racing.

A last-lap, last-corner overtake at Monza last Sunday during the F3 feature race secured Fornaroli one of the most dramatic single-seater titles in recent memory.

The Italian’s title success was made all the more remarkable by the fact he won without taking a single race victory.

Instead, a campaign based on consistency, with seven podiums and 18 points-finishes across 20 races ensuring he not only clinched the F3 title but impressed Invicta enough to earn a call up to F2.

“I’m so happy to be able to celebrate winning the F3 championship with this news and I cannot wait to step up to F2 next season,” the outgoing Trident driver said.

“Invicta Racing has proven itself over many years to be one of the best teams in F2, including this season. I’m really excited to work with the team for the 2025 season.

“I want to take this opportunity to thank Trident for the past three years, they really are the best team in F3. To go from the best team in F3 to the best in F2 is a truly a dream come true.”

Fornaroli will get behind the wheel of Invicta’s F2 machine at the post-season test in Abu Dhabi, affording him to get acquainted with the squad currently leading the Teams’ Championship standings.

It marks the second year in succession that Invicta has snapped up the reigning F3 Champion to its squad, with 2023 title-winner Gabriel Bortoleto currently chasing the F2 Drivers’ Championship for the team.

“We’re absolutely delighted to welcome Leonardo to the team for 2025,” said Invicta Racing Team Principal, Andy Roche.

“Winning the F3 Championship is an incredible achievement for him, and I have no doubt that he’ll do a brilliant job in 2025.

“We’ve followed Leonardo’s single-seater career for a few years now and it’s clear that he’s an outstanding talent.

“Following in the footsteps of Gabriel this year, we’re thrilled to have the reigning F3 Champion join our team for the second year in succession.”

READ MORE: Leonardo Fornaroli snatches F3 title at final corner as Meguetounif takes Monza Feature win

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Invicta Racing’s Gabriel Bortoleto has been stripped of his FIA Formula 2 podium in Saturday’s Sprint after incurring a five-second time penalty.

Bortoleto, a member of McLaren’s Driver Development Programme, was engaged in a race-long fight with Invicta team-mate Kush Maini.

The duo’s wheel-to-wheel exchanges were not befitting of two team-mates and the battle came to a head on the final lap and the race stewards deemed Bortoleto left the track and gained an advantage at Turn 16.

The resulting five-second penalty dropped the Brazillian from third to fourth with Maini inheriting the final podium spot.

Speaking during Saturday’s Formula 2 Sprint press conference, Bortoleto didn’t take kindly to Maini’s driving tactics throughout the 21-lap race, including their final contest on the start/finish straight.

“During this entire season I have been much more fair with him than he was with me actually,” Bortoleto said.

“I have always been avoiding crashes, even if it was my fault in Barcelona, immediately I apologised to him.

“I had some issues with my brakes and both my mirrors weren’t intact. At least when I did a mistake, I went to him and said sorry.

“In this situation, we thought we had agreed in everything between the team and between us.

“Obviously we are going to have a discussion now. I haven’t gone back to the team yet but hopefully we can understand everything and put things into place so we can flight cleanly like I do with all the other drivers and they do with me as well.

“I don’t know why teammates need to be dirty to each other.”

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McLaren Academy Driver Gabriel Bortoleto took an impressive maiden FIA Formula 2 race victory in the Austria Feature for Invicta Racing.

Bortoleto emerged in a net second after switching from super soft to soft tyres, but was able to dispatch Campos’ Pepe Marti en route to a maiden win in F2.

The reigning Formula 3 champion was followed by MP Motorsport’s Franco Colapinto, four seconds back but clinching the fastest lap after a late charge through the pack on the alternate strategy.

In the lead-up to the race, Hitech’s Paul Aron extended his championship lead over Isack Hadjar in Saturday’s Sprint, stretching the gap at the top of the standings to 16 points as Prema’s Oliver Bearman got his long-awaited first win of the season.

Aron and Hadjar lined up fifth and seventh respectively for Sunday’s feature, setting up an intriguing contest regarding the title picture.

Lining up from pole was Dennis Hauger, alongside Joshua Durksen and after both drivers finished in the points during the reverse grid Sprint they were hoping to fare well in Sunday’s 40-lap race.

But straight away Hauger’s race descended into chaos as the MP Motorsport driver stalled at the line on the formation lap, forcing him to start from pit lane along with Invicta’s Kush Maini and DAMS’ Jak Crawford.

That gave Durksen the task of leading the field from lights out and the AIX driver did a fine job of leading into Turn 1 with Gabriel Bortoleto, Colapinto and Aron in pursuit.

Not wanting to be left behind, Hadjar made a move on fellow Red Bull Junior Marti at Turn 6 to take fifth place.

Colapinto was the odd one out in the front pack on the soft compound tyre, trying to hold station in third with his surrounding competition running won super soft for their opening stints.

Lap 3 saw Bortoleto challenge Durksen for the lead with an ambitious look around the outside of Turn 6 but the AIX competitor held on, but only until Turn 4 on Lap 4 as the lead changed hands.

As the field came around to start Lap 5, the helicam showed the top five group of Bortoleto, Durksen, Colapinto, Aron and Hadjar looked set to stretch ahead of the rest of the pack.

A 1.6s gap had grown to sixth-placed Marti, who had Bearman for close company, leading a train of cars in the midfield.

Hadjar was growing frustrated with his title rival Aron, but there was no such frustration for Colapinto on Lap 6 as he cooly took second off of Durksen at the Turn 3 hairpin.

A Virtual Safety Car was shortly deployed as Zane Maloney came to a halt at Turn 4, but it was a brief deployment, allowing Durksen to pit on Lap 8, releasing Aron into third place.

Bortoleto pit a lap later from the lead a lap later along with Hadjar.

Andrea Kimi Antonelli also pitted on Lap 9 from the midfield, but stalled when trying to exit his pit box, showing his inexperience in the process.

Aron pitted on Lap 10, emerging behind Marti – sitting in the net lead of the drivers who stopped thanks to his convenient VSC stop – Bortoleto, Hadjar and Durksen.

Marti’s advantage over the drivers on his strategy was a significant four and a half seconds on Lap 11 as Colapinto led the race proper, as well as the alternative strategy runners, by five seconds over Bearman.

But the gap between Colapinto and Marti was the key one in terms of the battle for victory and on Lap 13 it wasn’t big enough to favour the former with a 22-second margin not large enough to pit and retain the lead.

The Williams Academy Driver would need to stretch that advantage by several seconds or rely on a Safety Car if he wanted to stay in the fight.

Marti too had a challenge on his hands, having pitted earlier than planned under the VSC, his soft tyre stint would be longer than the drivers behind him and he’d need to conserve his Pirelli rubber if he wanted to stay ahead of the pack.

By half race distance, Marti’s challenge was potentially dashed as Bortoleto had chased him down and passed him for sixth on the road at Turn 3 for the virtual lead.

Meanwhile, Bearman, who had been running second on the road, buoyed by his Sprint race victory, saw his race come to an end as he returned slowly to the pits with an apparent technical issue.

By Lap 23 it was abundantly clear that without a Safety Car intervention, Colapinto and the fellow drivers on the alternate strategy wouldn’t end in a favourable position with fifth-placed Bortoleto just over 20s off of the overall race lead.

Despite his earlier stop giving him track position, Marti was struggling by Lap 24, falling under pressure from fellow Red Bull Junior and Campos team-mate Hadjar.

But Marti was defending his position, triggering repeated complaints from Hadjar over the team radio.

The move finally came on Lap 27 with Marti likely following team instructions to let Hadjar into sixth at Turn 3.

On Lap 30, Bortoleto started moving through traffic, passing Zak O’Sullivan for fourth and looking at Crawford’s gearbox as further down the road, net second Hadjar was complaining his time stuck behind Marti hurt his tyres.

Colapinto’s long-awaited mandatory stop from soft to super soft from the lead came on Lap 33 and the Williams Academy Driver came out in eighth place with a fraction of laps to push on with the faster rubber.

When Crawford pitted a lap later it freed up the fight for overall victory between Bortoleto, who was two seconds ahead of Hadjar, who in turn was less than a second ahead of team-mate Martin.

Campos were urging Hadjar to push or give back position to Marti and the Frenchman bargained for a few more laps to attack the race leader.

Colapinto’s charge was gathering momentum on Lap 35 as he passed Durksen and Enzo Fittipaldi for sixth and fifth in the space of two corners.

As the Campos drivers squabbled with their engineers, Aron in fourth was drawing in along with the hard-charging Colapinto.

Colapinto took fourth from Aron and then third from Marti on consecutive laps at Turn 4, giving him a chance to attack Hadjar for second on the final lap.

The Argentine successfully took second place at Turn 3 but was too far behind to catch Bortoleto who took his maiden win by a margin of four seconds.

Colapinto’s valiant drive on the alternate strategy granted him the runner-up spot with Hadjar completing the podium.

A disgruntled Marti finished fourth with Fittipaldi completing the top five.

A penalty for Aron landed him in sixth place ahead of Durksen, Amaury Cordeel, Taylor Barnard and O’Sullivan, who completed the top-10.

After the race, the FIA handed a 10-second Stop & Go penalty, which effectively translates into a 30-second time penalty applied to the final classification to Marti since the Campos driver is unable to serve it mid-race.

The Stewards considered that, even if Martí was already on his way to the pitlane for his mandatory stop, the VSC was summoned before he crossed the safety car line 1 and therefore doesn’t count as a proper pitstop.

This leaves the Spaniard out of the point-scoring positions, dropping him to 16th and promoting Crawford to 10th.

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Pole-sitter Kush Maini has been disqualified from Thursday’s FIA Formula 2 World Championship qualifying in Bahrain.

The Invicta Racing driver claimed his maiden pole position on Thursday afternoon at the Sakhir-based circuit, but following inspections by the Stewards post-qualifying an irregularity was found with the floor of his machine.

The height of the left undertray front external strake on Maini’s car was found to be below the required minimum height in contradiction with the Technical regulations.

All of Maini’s times set in qualifying have now been removed and the driver of the #9 car will be resigned to the back of the grid for both the Sprint and Feature races this weekend.

Maini’s Invicta Racing team-mate Gabriel Bortoleto inherits pole position, with Campos Racing’s Isack Hadjar promoted to the front row in second.

The ruling also means a change for the reverse Sprint pole as DAMS’ Jak Crawford moved up to 10th in the qualifying classification.

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