Red Bull Junior Team and Honda’s Yuki Tsunoda has secured a FIA Formula 2 (F2) Championship seat with Carlin for the 2020 season.
Tsunoda has been named as the first Carlin driver of the 2020 F2 season as the Japanese graduates to the championship, after having competed in Euroformula Open and FIA F3 in 2019 with Team Motopark and Jenzer Motorsport, respectively.
Having won the Japanese F4 championship in 2018, Tsunoda made the jump to F3 in Europe in 2019, where he finished fourth in EF Open while he was ninth in FIA F3 – a respectable position in both the championships, being a rookie.
With good credentials on his CV, Honda decided to push him through to F2 already in 2020 with Carlin, who ran another of its junior Nobuharu Matsushita in 2019. It is unclear if the senior pro will continue in the championship or not this year.
His name was linked to Super Formula but Honda did not name him in their announcement on Friday – although one seat with Real Racing still remains. There were also stories about him competing in Super GT as well but it is confirmed that he won’t take part in it.
It will now be to see if Matsushita will make it an all-Japanese line-up for Carlin in F2 or he switches teams or moves out totally. There are still eight seats left but speculations are on about an 11th team joining – which also remains to be seen if it happens or not.
2020 F2 line-up so far:
Prema: Mick Schumacher & Robert Shwartzman
HWA Racelab: Artem Markelov & Giuliano Alesi
ART Grand Prix: Marcus Armstrong
UNI-Virtuosi Racing: Callum Ilott
DAMS: Daniel Ticktum & Sean Gelael
MP Motorsport: Felipe Drugovich
Carlin: Yuki Tsunoda
Here’s the test dates for F2 in 2020
Here’s details on the race numbers to used in F2 with no #19
Here’s what Mick Schumacher said regarding lack of testing for rookies in F2
Here’s the links to the five episodes of F2: Chasing The Dream docu
Here’s details on the changed F2 and F3 regulation for 2020
Calderon, Vips join Super Formula as Honda reveals 2020 line-up