In 2015 the FIA announced plans to revive the Formula Two name, building on GP2's continued success. On 8 March 2017, following an agreement with Liberty Media, which had acquired both GP2 and the Formula One Group earlier that year, the FIA formally confirmed that GP2 would be rebranded as the FIA Formula 2 Championship. FIA President Jean Todt stated at the time that rationalising the pathway to Formula One had been a principal goal of his tenure.
The inaugural 2017 season ran across eleven rounds, ten of them supporting Formula One grands prix and one standalone event at the Circuito de Jerez. The series retained the existing Dallara GP2/11 chassis and the Mecachrome V8 engine first introduced in 2005. Charles Leclerc, then reigning GP3 Series champion competing as a rookie, won the Drivers' Championship, while Russian Time secured the Teams' title.
Formula 2 is run as a spec series: all teams use the same chassis, engine, and tyre supplier. A typical race weekend spans three days. Friday features a 45-minute practice session followed by a 30-minute qualifying session. Saturday's sprint race reverses the top ten from qualifying to set the grid and runs over approximately 120 km or 45 minutes. Sunday's feature race, the headline event, precedes the Formula One grand prix and covers around 170 km or up to one hour.
Points are awarded to the top ten finishers in the feature race and top eight in the sprint, with additional points for pole position and fastest lap when the driver finishes inside the top ten. The maximum a single driver can score at one round is 39 points. Car numbers are allocated based on the previous season's team standings. Number 13 has been unused since the GP2 era. Following the death of Anthoine Hubert at Spa-Francorchamps in 2019, numbers 19 and 18 were permanently retired in his memory.
The 2018 season introduced the Dallara F2 2018 chassis, featuring the Mecachrome V634 engine and the halo cockpit protection device. In 2019, French driver Anthoine Hubert was killed during the feature race at Spa-Francorchamps, the first fatality in the second tier of FIA formula racing in ten years. The series subsequently introduced the Anthoine Hubert Award, presented annually to the highest-placed rookie; Zhou Guanyu was the inaugural recipient.
The 2020 season was heavily disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic and began in July, including a one-off appearance at the Mugello Circuit. The 2021 season brought significant restructuring: rounds were reduced from twelve to eight, each featuring three races rather than two, and the calendar was separated from that of the FIA Formula 3 Championship. The 2022 season reverted to two races per round and expanded to fourteen rounds. A new Dallara F2 2024 chassis, designed to more closely resemble current-generation Formula One machinery and better accommodate female drivers, was introduced for 2024.
As of 2025, the championship uses a carbon-fibre Dallara chassis powered by a single-turbocharged Mecachrome V634 engine. Minimum weight with driver is 755 kg. The gearbox is a Hewland eight-position unit with electro-hydraulic paddle shift; clutches are supplied by ZF Sachs. Pirelli supplies tyres exclusively and offers four dry slick compounds alongside a dedicated wet tyre. The series has used DRS, which tilts the rear wing upper element by more than 40 degrees to aid overtaking, since 2015. Running a Formula 2 season costs a team approximately US$3 million, with drivers typically funding the majority themselves. Cars are capable of top speeds of around 335 km/h and generate up to 3.9 g of lateral acceleration.
Formula 2 has established itself as the dominant feeder series to Formula One. Since 2017, a continuous stream of champions and frontrunners have graduated directly to the top tier: George Russell, Lando Norris, Mick Schumacher, Oscar Piastri, and Gabriel Bortoleto all moved from the F2 title to a Formula One seat. In 2025, Lando Norris became the first Formula 2 graduate to win the Formula One World Drivers' Championship.
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