Formula Scout Top 50 Drivers of 2025: 10-1

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Each year, the Formula Scout team forms its own ranking of the best performing junior single-seater drivers of the past 12 months. Here is part one of the countdown with the drivers we placed from 10th to 1st
10. Kean Nakamura-Berta

New entry • Prema’s Italian F4 and E4 champion

Photo: ACI Sport

Photo: ACI Sport

Nakamura-Berta came into 2025 having been dropped by the Alpine Academy after a first full Formula 4 season that didn’t live up to the early promise he’d shown in the Middle East, where he’d run Freddie Slater close for the title.

Prema kept its faith in the London-born Japanese-Slovakian to spearhead its all-conquering F4 squad this year and he became the first driver to win both the Italian and E4 titles in the same season, proving he is the Formula 1 team’s loss.

This year he could only finish third in the Middle East series as R-ace GP locked out the top two, but he started his Italian campaign with a run of five straight victories and never looked back.

He was challenged for pace at times by team-mate Sebastian Wheldon – new to European racing but with a good amount of car experience under his belt – and by former international karting rival Gabriel Gomez of the always competitive US Racing team, but Nakamura-Berta’s consistency was unrivalled.

From his 20 starts in the Italian championship, he won nine times and was on the podium in all but three of his other 11 races – a new record. It was a similar story in the three-round E4 series, where he took four wins and four other podiums.

9. Richard Verschoor

Up 15 • F2 veteran was title contender in best season yet

Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd

Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd

Verschoor reunited with MP Motorsport for a fifth and final season in Formula 2 in 2025, self-orchestrating a deal to put himself in a truly frontrunning car for the first time.

During the first half of the season he was making the most of the opportunity. A victory in the Jeddah feature race made him the championship leader, and another in the main race at the Red Bull Ring put him back on top by 24 points at the halfway point of the season.

In the second half of the campaign he was on the podium just once, when he won the Qatar sprint race, as a drop-off in qualifying form – 10th in Lusail was his best starting place in the last six feature races – left him otherwise fighting for the lower points positions.

Stripping the paint from his car from Monza to get down to the minimum weight limit didn’t improve his performances, but did put the tall Dutchman’s stronger earlier season form in context.

It wasn’t a season that was ever likely to earn the former Red Bull junior a shot at F1, but it did land him a contract with McLaren and a step towards a fully deserved future as a professional.

8. Nikola Tsolov

Re-entry • Reinvigorated career with F3 challenge

Photo: Red Bull / Dutch Photo Agency

Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd

This was a year in which Tsolov returned to the sort of form that allowed him to take Spanish F4 by storm as a single-seater rookie in 2022 and place 17th in this list.

After Tsolov’s two years of toiling in FIA Formula 3 with ART Grand Prix and his split from the Alpine Academy, Campos Racing convinced Red Bull to support him for his third year at this level and he didn’t let either party down.

As for similarly experienced team-mate Mari Boya, there were some struggles in qualifying early on that left him playing catch-up in the championship, even though he won the Bahrain sprint race and came third at Imola. At Monaco came a pole position and feature race victory, and a procedural breakthrough helped him improve in qualifying at more conventional circuits.

He took another pole position and feature race win at the Red Bull Ring, closing him to just one point behind eventual champion Rafael Camara, only to be disqualified for excessive plank wear.

His title chances never recovered, but Tsolov did secure second in the standings and went on to impress in two early F2 appearances with Campos ahead of 2026.

7. Alex Dunne

Re-entry • F2 rookie thrilled with early wins

Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd

Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd

Dunne was arguably the standout talent of 2025. In its context, a single performance or sequence of results from a young driver can excite more than a whole championship-winning campaign, and not much bettered Dunne’s early-season F2 form in terms of impression this year.

The Irishman’s potential was well known (he last featured in this list in 27th in 2023) but his step up to F2 came off the back of a pretty low-key single year in FIA F3 and few could have expected him to be a title contender.

Clearly his Rodin Motorsport-run car was fast but Dunne’s dominant win in his first ever feature race in Bahrain was remarkable, and was followed up just two rounds later by a charging drive at Imola that made him the championship leader.

He took pole next time out in Monaco, but things began to unravel when he tried to turn in on Victor Martins at Sainte Devote. The ensuing social media backlash was wholly unjustified, but there would be a few more scrappy moments alongside the sublime over the rest of the year, which cost some points. That’s completely understandable though for a driver who had no prior experience of fighting at the front at anything like this level.

Some outright pace also seemed to be lost across the year, but Dunne was having to single-handedly lead his team without a capable team-mate for most of the year.

6. Jak Crawford

Up 22 • Individual excellence combined with team anonymity

Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd

Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd

Inconsistency plagued an F2 season in which Crawford’s individual brilliance not only earned him victories and poles but also lower positions in the top 10 at times when other drivers would likely have not been a points contender at all.

The highs included victories at Imola, Monaco, Silverstone and Baku, but the lows were points-free weekends where DAMS didn’t choose the right direction to go in with his car and there were even deeper rooted problems like engine issues.

This contributed to Crawford only having the 11th best race pace in the field, yet he led more green flag action than anybody else, and the only driver to beat his podium tally and feature race points haul was the champion.

While there wasn’t much more Crawford could do to maximise his car’s potential at times, the third-year F2 driver was not able to take the title fight to a rookie all the way to the finale.

5. Luke Browning

Up 2 • Was a title challenger in first and only F2 season

Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd

Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd

Browning finished on the podium in five of the opening eight races in his first full season of F2, and by the ninth race – a fourth-place finish in the Monaco feature race – he had taken the championship lead.

Consistent feature race results were the foundation of Browning’s title bid: he finished inside the top six in nine of the first 10, culminating in his one and only victory from pole position at Monza. Even a drop-off in Friday form in the middle of the year couldn’t stop him on Sundays, and his charging wet-weather drive from 12th to third at home at Silverstone was his personal highlight.

He was the closest challenger to eventual champion Leonardo Fornaroli – 17 points adrift – at the point when his season tailed off, with just one point from the final five races. This certainly wasn’t all in his control: a brake issue plagued him in Abu Dhabi qualifying, by which point the title was already lost and he was already looking towards Super Formula for 2026.

Browning finished fourth in the championship but would have been worthy of more. His feature race points tally was the third highest, with just two points fewer than Jak Crawford and 13 fewer than Fornaroli.

4. Freddie Slater

Up 1 • Showed winning ability in F3, FRegional and GB3

Photo: ACI Sport

Photo: ACI Sport

Slater won a third of the races he contested in a part-time GB3 campaign this year, and 40% of his races in the Formula Regional European Championship. In total, his 2025 featured 16 victories, eight other podiums and 12 poles.

The Middle East was where Slater began life as a FRegional and FIA F3 rookie. In the former, he started the region’s championship with two poles that were converted into wins, and while he repeated that winning feat at a later event he missed out on the title. In the latter, Slater qualifed in the top 10, then finished second with fastest lap on debut.

FREC was his primary focus, and he won at six of the 10 circuits on the calendar. Two early retirements and a mid-season disqualification meant he did not clinch the title until the penultimate race, but he still ended the season 36 points clear.

The GB3 outings occurred on non-clashing weekends, and Slater led that championship too as he won the season’s first two races from pole. He won again when he returned to the grid at Spa-Francorchamps, then got two second places in his third and final appearance at Brands Hatch to come 12th in the standings.

Spa was also where Slater’s second weekend in F3 was, and in November he raced in the FIA FRegional World Cup-awarding Macau Grand Prix. On the trickiest of street circuits he topped the first qualifying session, was just pipped in the second, won the qualification race then one small error ended his victory chances and his day in the main race.

3. Rafael Camara

Up 5 • Perfect preparations meant F3 title was earned early

Photo: Pauline Ballet

Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd

After three excellent years with Prema, Camara made the step up to FIA F3 this year with Trident and it led to him comfortably claiming the title as a rookie.

The championship’s new car proved to be of great benefit rather than a new challenge in an inexperienced line-up at Trident, since the team found out the intricacies needed to nail qualifying during the pre-season.

Of course Camara still needed to deliver with the strongest car on the grid, and he did just that by taking pole, victory and fastest lap in the feature race in three of the first five rounds. His team’s advantage waned after that, but Camara still won from pole at the Hungaroring and that crowned him champion with a round to spare.

Even with the rest of the paddock having caught up to Trident, come season-end the benchmark driver on single-lap and race pace continued to be Camara and in such a competitive championship he had a ridiculously high median starting position on Sundays of 1.5.

2. Dennis Hauger

Re-entry • Utilised F2 experience to dominate Indy Nxt

Photo: James Black

Photo: Joe Skibinski

Three seasons in F2 proved unrewarding for Hauger, as his points tally decreased with each campaign and he never came higher than eighth in the standings despite being one of the top talents on the grid. But without those years of disappointment in junior single-seaters’ most competitive championship he wouldn’t have been able to dominate Indy Nxt with ease in 2025.

Hauger’s knowledge of tyre management meant the pitstop-free yet lengthy races in IndyCar’s primary feeder series suited his skillset, and qualifying also proved far easier to get right than in F2. In fact, he was on pole at seven of the first eight circuits on the calendar and often said “it feels natural” to drive Ind Nxt’s car.

His seamless transition into the championship was shown by taking victory, pole and fastest lap in each of the first two rounds, and if there were any questions about whether such dominance would continue into the oval leg of the season he showed he could adapt to the new challenge of those circuits too. He claimed pole for his first oval race, which was the only one one of the four he didn’t finish on the podium of.

Hauger last made this list in 2023, coming in at 31st place, and his high placing this year is in spite of an Indy Nxt grid lacking strength in depth due to such an impressive level of domination.

1. Leonardo Fornaroli

Up 5 • Mr consistency nails F2 title in his rookie season

Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd

Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd

That Fornaroli won last year’s FIA F3 title with consistency and without winning a race was understandably used against him. That he continued with a similar approach in F2 and won the title at the first attempt has to be applauded for what it is.

It certainly cannot be said that Fornaroli wasn’t fast. He had the best qualifying results on average, was second-fastest on ultimate one-lap pace to Victor Martins (who could rarely use that pace in the races) and started from pole in three feature races and from second place in two others.

Critically and most impressively, he qualified inside the top 10 at all 14 attempts. Courtesy of the reversed grid, that helped him to win three sprint races alongside his solitary feature race victory across four consecutive weekends as the season entered its second half. That sequence took him from fourth in the championship and 28 points off the lead to having a lead of 28 points with three rounds left to play.

He was consistent in his race results as well as his qualifying performances, only failing to score points in two of the 25 races that it took him to clinch the title.

Right now, F2 rewards drivers who can score consistently with a fast car underneath them, and nobody could stop the combination of Fornaroli and Invicta Racing.