What are they all doing in 2021?

The start of the new F2 season is just around the corner, with more than half of last year’s field returning to fight for their F1 dreams, but what about the rest?

Those who are most obviously not returning to F2 this year are Schumacher, Mazepin and Tsunoda, who have actually achieved the dream of making it to F1, leaving the question of, with all these rookies this year, will there actually be any space in F1 next year for whoever wins the 2021 championship (2018-19 anyone?). 

The elephant in the room is Callum Ilott, who despite spending the whole of the 2020 season at the top end of the championship standings, has neither an F1 nor F2 drive this year. Positively, Ilott has been announced as the Ferrari reserve driver, but less positively he perhaps risks doing an Ocon, or worse. He will at least be able to keep his racing skills finely tuned by competing in the GT World Challenge Europe, although it feels like that’s probably sightly different from driving Formula One cars. He probably wouldn’t be too sad if one of the Ferrari drivers got COVID this year…

Another driver who has retained his F1 links, despite not having announced his 2021 racing plans, is Jack Aitken. His switch the year before from Renault to Williams might have seemed a bit questionable at the time, but after he got to take part in his first F1 race last year it’s clear why he’s carrying on his reserve role for the team. 

Someone who has understandably ditched their F1 links is Louis Delétraz. After watching Haas let everyone drive their car last year apart from him, their reserve driver, Delétraz was somewhat vocal on his views about that and has turned his focus to endurance racing. He will be competing in the European Le Mans Series this year, which could potentially mean another trip to the Le Mans 24 hours for Louis. Massive excitement for me as it brings together my inexplicable over-enthusiasm for Swiss drivers and endurance racing.  

While we’re on the topic of children of F1 drivers (we all remember Jean-Denis Delétraz right?), Giuliano Alesi and Pedro Piquet both made it clear at the end of last year that funding was a problem. Alesi styled it out of the Ferrari Driver Academy by getting to drive an F1 car on his last day, before heading off to race in Asia, while Piquet said what we were all thinking and had a bitch about how money has become more important than talent. I don’t feel too sorry for him though because I’ve seen his Instagram. 

Luca Ghiotto, on the other hand, has been putting across a completely different message on his Instagram. He is yet to announce any racing news for 2021, but he’s keen to let us know that he’s busy training. No motivational hashtags yet though, so he probably does have some actual plans. 

Our other F2 veteran Artem Markelov doesn’t seem to have any plans for 2021 and he’s not bothering to post photos of him neck training on social media either. Maybe he’ll take up a career as a rockstar instead.

2020 was apparently Sean Gelael’s final year in F2, as he has announced that he’s also making the switch to endurance racing, joining teammates Stoffel Vandoorne and Tom Blomqvist with team Jota in the World Endurance Championship. More excitement for me, although mostly because Stoff + WEC = the best thing ever.  

Let’s not forget Nobuharu Matsushita who quit F2 half way through last season and went to do some racing in Japan, and last but not least (or maybe a little bit least), is Jake Hughes, who took part in a couple of races in 2020. I have no idea what he’s doing in 2021, but I’m guessing it will include watching and tweeting about football.