How has an F1 team not signed Felipe Drugovich yet!?

by Alex Johnston

Felipe Drugovich leads the FIA Formula 2 standings heading into this weekend’s Monaco Grand Prix event with the Brazilian MP Motorsport driver 26 points ahead of ART Grand Prix’s Alfa Romeo driver-elect Theo Pourchaire. 3 wins in the opening 4 rounds, including winning both races in Barcelona, despite starting 10th on the reverse grid has everyone associated with F2 talking, but despite this; Drugovich is not attached to any Formula 1 team.

Drugovich first appeared in F2 in 2020 after a single year in Formula 3, in which he never really caught the eye, racing for the Carlin Buzz Racing team. ‘Drugo’, as he’s often referred to, scored just 8 points in the 16 races that took place in 2019 and the prospect of him racing in F2 didn’t really set the paddock alight or get very many excited.

Perhaps the lack of weight of expectation on Drugovic’s shoulders was a help to him. The Brazilian won the opening sprint race of the year in Austria, before taking a further 2 wins, and he managed 4 podiums as he ran his way to 9th overall at the end of the season.

📸 Drugovich won in F2 on his debut weekend in 2020.

Maybe we shouldn’t have been so surprised though; in 2018 the Brazilian dominated the Euroformula Open Championship, by taking 14 wins and 2 second places from 16 races, so the ability was definitely there. It wasn’t an easy grid either, some of the featured names he fought with include current and former F2 drivers Calan Williams and Bent Viscaal as well as current and former F3 drivers Kaylen Frederick, David Schumacher and Cameron Das, who actually won last year’s edition of the Euroformula series. The same year, Drugovich won the Spanish F3 championship.

In 2021, Drugovich joined the then ‘UNI-Virtuosi Racing’ team to partner Zhou Guanyu, who as it turned out, was F1 bound to join Alfa Romeo. Drugovich, by his standards, underperformed with the British team. He managed 4 podiums and still managed to improve up to 8th in the championship standings, but failed to win any races, and failed to score points in 9 out of 24 races across the season.

📸 ‘Drugo’ spent 2021 driving for Virtusoi Racing, alongside Zhou Guanyu.

For 2022, ‘Drugo’ has switched back to MP Motorsport and that move back to the Dutch team seems to have boosted the confidence of Brazilian.

In what seems the be the form of his life, Drugovich will have one eye on a graduation to F1, but with no link to any team as yet, the Brazilian has a task on his hands or a decision to make about what to do post-F2.

Ordinarily, a driver in this form has been with a F1 academy for year, but in the case of ‘Drugo’, getting into already stocked academy is a tough ask. Haas and Aston Martin are currently the only two teams with no development driver system or academy set up? Felipe Drugovich would

be a very good first driver to sign to an academy!

📸 In the form of his life, it seems the only way is up for Felipe Drugovich.

Will Felipe be ‘F1 ready’ by the end of the year? Will he even get an F1 chance? Let me know what you think!

📸 Image credit(s): Formula Motorsport Limited