2021 Formula 2 Championship

 The 2021 FIA Formula 2 Championship is a motor racing championship for Formula 2 cars that is sanctioned by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). The championship is the fifty-fifth season of Formula 2 racing and the fifth season run under the FIA Formula 2 Championship moniker. It is an open-wheel racing category that serves as the second tier of formula racing in the FIA Global Pathway. The category is scheduled to be run in support of selected rounds of the 2021 FIA Formula One World Championship. As the championship is a spec series, all teams and drivers competing in the championship will run the same car, the Dallara F2 2018. The championship is due to be contested over twenty-four races at eight circuits. It will start in March 2021 with a round in support of the Bahrain Grand Prix, and end in December where it will support the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

A new chassis package was due to be introduced for the 2021 season, but in a bid to cut costs in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, the lifespan of the Dallara F2 2018 chassis package was extended until 2023.

Prema Racing are the reigning teams' champions, having secured their second Formula 2 title at the final round of the 2020 season.

Entries

The following teams and drivers are under contract to compete in the 2021 championship. As the championship is a spec series, all competitors race with an identical Dallara F2 2018 chassis with a V6 turbo engine developed by Mecachrome. Teams compete with tyres supplied by Pirelli. The same eleven teams who competed during the 2020 season were retained for the next three-year cycle.

Entrant	No.	Driver name
Prema Racing	01	Robert Shwartzman
	02	Oscar Piastri
UNI-Virtuosi Racing	03	Guanyu Zhou
	04	Felipe Drugovich
Carlin	05	Dan Ticktum
	06	Jehan Daruvala
Hitech Grand Prix	07	Liam Lawson
	08	Jüri Vips
ART Grand Prix	09	Christian Lundgaard
	10	Théo Pourchaire
MP Motorsport	11	TBA
	12	Lirim Zendeli
Charouz Racing System	14	David Beckmann
	15	Guilherme Samaia
DAMS	16	Roy Nissany
	17	Marcus Armstrong
Campos Racing	20	Gianluca Petecof
	21	Ralph Boschung
HWA Racelab	22	Matteo Nannini
	23	Alessio Deledda
Trident	24	TBA
	25	TBA
Source:

Driver changes

Oscar Piastri, the winner of the 2020 FIA Formula 3 Championship, will join the Formula 2 Championship with Prema Racing. Piastri had won the Formula 3 title with the team. He will fill the seat vacated by Mick Schumacher, who graduated to Formula 1 with Haas.

Formula 3 regular Lirim Zendeli will join the championship with MP Motorsport. Zendeli will replace Felipe Drugovich, who left the team to join UNI-Virtuosi. Drugovich will in turn replace 2020 runner-up Callum Ilott, who left the championship to become a test-driver for Scuderia Ferrari.

Yuki Tsunoda graduated to Formula One with AlphaTauri. He will be replaced at Carlin by Dan Ticktum moving from DAMS.

Nikita Mazepin and Luca Ghiotto will leave Hitech Grand Prix. The former graduated to Formula One with Haas. The team promoted Liam Lawson from FIA Formula 3 outfit and hired Jüri Vips, who substituted for injured Gelael in 2020 at DAMS.

Théo Pourchaire will join the championship on a full-time basis with ART Grand Prix, replacing Marcus Armstrong, who will switch to DAMS. Sean Gelael will leave DAMS and Formula 2 after five consecutive years in the championship and its predecessor GP2 Series to join sports car racing team Jota Sport. He will be replaced by Roy Nissany who vacated a seat at Trident.

Ralph Boschung will return for a full-time drive with Campos Racing, the team he raced with in his first Formula 2 season in 2017. Boschung made one guest appearance with the team in 2020 at the season finale. Completing the Campos lineup is the 2020 Formula Regional European Championship winner Gianluca Petecof.

HWA Racelab will enter a new driver line-up in Alessio Deledda and Matteo Nannini. Nannini will combine his Formula 2 campaign with an entry in the Formula 3 championship. Artem Markelov, who drove for HWA Racelab in 2020, left the team and the championship.

Pedro Piquet vacated his seat at Charouz Racing System and left Formula 2 after one year in the series, citing financial reasons. Giuliano Alesi will also leave Formula 2 in order to compete in Super Formula Lights series.

Calendar

A provisional calendar was published in November 2020. An updated version due to the postponement of 2021 Australian Grand Prix, which required several Grands Prix to change dates, was revealed in January 2021.

Round	Circuit	Sprint races	Feature race
1	Bahrain International Circuit, Sakhir	27 March	28 March
2	Circuit de Monaco, Monte Carlo	22 May	23 May
3	Baku City Circuit, Baku	05 June	06 June
4	Silverstone Circuit, Silverstone	17 July	18 July
5	Autodromo Nazionale di Monza, Monza	11 September	12 September
6	Sochi Autodrom, Sochi	25 September	26 September
7	Jeddah Street Circuit, Jeddah	04 December	05 December
8	Yas Marina Circuit, Abu Dhabi	11 December	12 December
Source:

Calendar changes

As a consequence of cost-cutting measures, the Formula 2 and Formula 3 championships will adopt a new format. The two championships will alternate between Grands Prix meetings and will no longer appear together on the support race bill. Although this will reduce the number of rounds, both championships will run three races at a Grand Prix instead of two, keeping the overall number of races the same as in previous years. The format change was designed to cut costs for teams competing in both championships by allowing them to rotate staff between each championship.

As the 2020 championship was disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2021 calendar will feature substantial revisions:

• The Mugello round and one of the rounds at the Red Bull Ring, the Silverstone Circuit and the Bahrain International Circuit were removed from the schedule as these rounds were run in support of one-off Grands Prix.
• The Monaco, Baku and Yas Marina rounds will return after having been cancelled in 2020.
• The Barcelona, Spa-Francorchamps and Hungaroring rounds were removed from the schedule to make way for the new weekend format.
• The championship will make its début at the Jeddah Street Circuit and running in support of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, a brand-new event on the Formula 1 calendar.

The Circuit Zandvoort had been included on the 2020 calendar, but was removed from the schedule in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was initially expected that the round would feature on the 2021 calendar, but it was not included on the provisional calendar. The circuit was included on the Formula 3 calendar instead.

Regulation changes

Sporting changes

The weekend format is scheduled to be changed with two sprint races held on Saturday and the feature race with mandatory pit stop on Sunday. Qualifying will determine grid of the feature race and the first sprint race; the grid for the first sprint race will be set by reversing the top ten qualifying positions. The grid of the second race will be formed by results of the first sprint race, with top ten finishers reversed. The addition of a third race to the weekend schedule will see teams provided with an extra set of tyres.