British
The climb
John Andrew Bennett (born 15 September 2003 in Salisbury, Wiltshire) holds British and Irish nationality and reached Formula 2 by one of the most unusual routes on the grid. He did not come up the conventional F4-to-F3 ladder at all: his racing debut was in sportscars, the Ginetta GT5 Challenge with Elite Motorsport, where he was seventh with three podiums in 2020 and a five-win, ten-podium runner-up in 2021 before finally switching to single-seaters.
His entire junior single-seater career was spent in Britain's GB3 Championship. Eighth in 2022 with Elite Motorsport and tenth in 2023 with Rodin Carlin, he saved his best for 2024, finishing runner-up with JHR Developments - three wins at Oulton Park, Zandvoort and Silverstone, eleven podiums, and a title fight that went to the final weekend before he lost out to Louis Sharp by 22 points.
Formula 2
That campaign earned a remarkable promotion. Bennett became the first driver to step up directly from GB3 into Formula 2, called up by Van Amersfoort Racing for the final two rounds of 2024 to replace Enzo Fittipaldi - a last-minute call he took while coaching at Spa, prepping with relentless simulator work. He scored four points on debut at Lusail, recovering through the field in the sprint, and earned a full 2025 seat with VAR. The rookie season was a hard slog in tough machinery: a single point in the Monza feature race and 22nd in the standings, a humbling step up after the front-running pace he had shown in GB3.
2026 / current season
For 2026 Bennett switched to Trident to keep his place on the F2 grid, partnering Laurens van Hoepen, with team manager Giacomo Ricci citing his solid development as the reason for the move. The early rounds of the season have again been a grind for points, but the bigger story remains the path itself: a bold, direct leap from a national junior series straight into the FIA's premier feeder championship, made without an academy or manufacturer behind him, and the task of converting that rare opportunity into results.