F2 Champion Fornaroli Joins McLaren’s Junior Programme: the future gets a contract before it gets a seat
Formula 1 careers don’t begin with a race start.
They begin earlier — in the gap between potential and proof. Between a junior series result and an F1 lap-time trace. Between a trophy and the next available seat.
McLaren understand that gap better than most right now, because 2025 was decided on the thinnest margins.
- Drivers’ Championship (2025): Lando Norris 423, Max Verstappen 421, Oscar Piastri 410
- Constructors’ Championship (2025): McLaren 833, Mercedes 469, Red Bull 451, Ferrari 398
And with no fastest lap bonus from 2025 onwards, the sport has become slightly less “opportunistic” and slightly more “pure accumulation”: you can’t steal a point late — you have to build them across a season.
That’s the context for McLaren’s latest pipeline move: three new additions to the McLaren Driver Development Programme.
The announcement: three additions, three timelines
McLaren have confirmed that:
- Leonardo Fornaroli (2025 FIA Formula 2 Champion) joins the programme
- Richard Verschoor (experienced F2 front-runner; also a Macau Grand Prix / FIA F3 World Cup winner) joins
- Christian Costoya (2025 FIA Karting European Champion) joins
On paper, it’s a neat list.
In strategy terms, it’s something more specific: one driver close to F1 readiness, one driver who can deliver immediate evaluation value, and one driver at the very start of the curve.
Why McLaren’s timing matters in 2025–2026
McLaren aren’t recruiting “because it looks nice on a press release”. They’re recruiting because the next two seasons have structural pressure:
- The grid is tightening. When championships are decided by 2 points, the difference between “good” and “great” is often operational and developmental.
- The sport is resetting again in 2026. New regulations don’t just change cars — they change decision timelines. (If you missed it, our breakdown is here: 2026 Regulations Explained: Lighter Cars & Active Aero.)
- Seat planning gets earlier. Teams don’t wait for talent to become obvious; they lock it in while it’s still compounding.
Leonardo Fornaroli: the compounding champion
If you’re building an F1-ready prospect list, Fornaroli’s profile reads like a model output you’d normally sanity-check.
The headline: F2 champion, and not by accident
Fornaroli arrives at McLaren as the 2025 FIA Formula 2 Champion, with a season defined by repeatable scoring rather than one-off spikes:
- 4 wins
- 5 podiums
That matters because F2 doesn’t reward “one-lap brilliance” alone. It punishes tyre misuse, messy traffic management, and weak recovery drives. A champion in F2 usually has at least one of the following:
- strong tyre life literacy
- calm under Safety Car / restart chaos
- high conversion rate when starting in the top 5
- low error frequency in high-variance races
In other words: the things that don’t trend on social media — but keep you alive in an F1 points season.
The deeper signal: back-to-back titles aren’t a coincidence
McLaren’s own framing is the key tell: Fornaroli is now one of the rare drivers to win FIA Formula 3 and FIA Formula 2 in consecutive seasons, a pathway previously matched by names like Oscar Piastri and Gabriel Bortoleto.
This is why teams care about sequence, not just a single peak.
Back-to-back titles imply:
- fast adaptation to new tyres and new cars
- a steep learning curve under pressure
- the ability to rebuild performance quickly after “reset weekends”
In a sport heading into a major 2026 regulation shift, adaptation speed becomes its own performance metric.
What McLaren likely want to measure next
McLaren can already see his junior-series results. The next layer is translation:
- Simulator correlation: can his inputs produce stable, repeatable tyre behaviour in the sim?
- Technical communication: can he describe entry instability vs mid-corner under-rotation in actionable terms?
- Peak vs repeatable pace: is his best lap the story, or is his lap 18 on a degrading stint the story?
Fornaroli’s F2 title suggests the second category — and that’s why he’s here.
Richard Verschoor: experience as an instrument
Development programmes aren’t only about “the next superstar”. Sometimes they’re about building a reference point.
Verschoor is that kind of signing.
Why a seasoned F2 driver is valuable to an F1 programme
If you’re McLaren, you already have a championship-winning F1 driver pairing. You don’t need a junior to be rushed.
What you do need is:
- a driver who can deliver consistent feedback in testing
- a driver with enough experience to spot what’s “car” and what’s “driver”
- someone who can be deployed across different programmes, quickly
Verschoor’s profile (including major junior accolades and extensive single-seater mileage) makes him useful in the exact areas that decide whether a prospect is ready:
- baseline setting
- development direction sanity-checking
- tyre understanding under different track evolutions
In data terms: he raises the signal-to-noise ratio.
Christian Costoya: karting champions are the earliest leverage
Costoya arrives as 2025 FIA Karting European Champion — and karting titles matter because they’re “pre-aero”.
Karting rewards:
- pure racecraft density
- instinctive spatial judgement
- adaptation without setup crutches
- aggression control (the fine line between decisive and destructive)
Signing karting talent early is a long play, but it’s also a cheaper one: you buy the upside before the market price inflates.
For McLaren, Costoya is a bet on the shape of a curve — not the current y-value.
McLaren’s pipeline logic: why 2025’s points maths makes juniors more valuable
The 2025 season didn’t just crown a new champion — it changed the emotional economy of points.
With no fastest lap bonus point, there’s one less “free” variable in the system. You can’t manufacture an extra point with a late stop if you’re comfortably inside the top 10.
That pushes teams toward:
- clean Sundays (no penalties, no avoidable contact)
- strong strategy execution (fewer unforced errors)
- drivers who can manage tyres and pace to the plan
If you want to understand how tiny differences swing outcomes, run your own scenarios in the RaceMate championship calculator:
(And if you’re building 2026 forecasts already, you’re not alone. Pre-season data will matter fast: Pre‑Season Testing 2026: Dates & What to Watch.)
The quiet enabler: F1’s expanded rookie running
There’s another reason development programmes are becoming more than branding:
Teams have increased obligations to run young drivers in practice sessions. That changes the economics of junior signings, because opportunities to put a prospect in an F1 car are less rare than they used to be.
For McLaren, this is leverage:
- you can integrate prospects into real sessions sooner
- you can evaluate under genuine weekend constraints
- you can compare sim predictions vs live telemetry
And crucially: you can do it without “burning” your race driver prep.
What this means for McLaren (and for the 2026 horizon)
McLaren’s 2025 story has already been written in trophies — but 2026 is still blank paper.
A regulation reset is brutal because it amplifies organisational strengths and weaknesses:
- correlation quality
- engineering decision speed
- driver adaptability
- development rate under cost constraints
A strong junior programme doesn’t guarantee future seats. But it does guarantee something almost as important:
options.
And in F1, options are how you avoid being forced into the wrong decision at the wrong time.
If you want the “season-ending” snapshot of how quickly narratives can lock in, revisit FIA Prize Giving 2025: Champions Celebrate in Tashkent — then imagine how fast that certainty disappears the moment 2026 testing starts.
Key takeaways
- Fornaroli is a high-signal signing: an F2 champion with repeatable results (4 wins, 5 podiums) and the rare momentum of back-to-back titles.
- Verschoor adds evaluation value: mileage, reference-quality feedback, and immediate usefulness across testing and development.
- Costoya is the long-term bet: karting champions are often the earliest indicator of elite racecraft density.
- In a points world without fastest lap bonuses, championships tilt even further toward consistency — exactly what development programmes try to identify early.
Conclusion: McLaren are recruiting the next gap
There’s a version of this story that’s just “three names added to a junior programme”.
But the 2025 data makes it sharper.
When a Drivers’ Championship is decided by two points, you stop treating talent development as a side project. You treat it like a performance department — because it is one.
Fornaroli, Verschoor, and Costoya aren’t guarantees of anything.
They’re inputs.
And McLaren, fresh off a championship double, are doing what title-winning teams do best: investing early in the gaps that will decide the next era.