Argentine
Nicolás Martín "Nico" Varrone (born 6 December 2000) is an Argentine racing driver from Ingeniero Maschwitz, Buenos Aires, whose career has zig-zagged from junior single-seaters to the top of endurance racing and back again. After winning his class at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, he made one of the most unusual moves on the 2026 grid: a step back down the ladder into the FIA Formula 2 Championship with Van Amersfoort Racing — his first single-seater campaign in roughly seven years.
The climb
Varrone graduated from karting into junior formulae in 2016, racing Formula Renault 2.0 in Argentina and Europe and winning the 2018 V de V Challenge Monoplace as a rookie. In 2019–20 he stepped up to the BRDC British Formula 3 Championship — a national series distinct from FIA F3 — with Hillspeed, which proved to be his last single-seater outing for years when a lack of funding pushed him off the formula ladder.
Switch to sports cars
Unable to continue in single-seaters, Varrone reinvented himself as a sports car driver, racing prototypes from 2021 with support from Rinaldi Racing and taking third in the LMP3 class of the Le Mans Cup. His big break came in 2023, when he signed with Corvette Racing for the LMGTE Am class of the FIA World Endurance Championship in a Chevrolet Corvette C8.R alongside Nicky Catsburg and Ben Keating. It was a career-defining year: Varrone and his crew won the LMGTE Am class at the 24 Hours of Le Mans and went on to take the WEC class world title. He added an LMP2 Pro-Am class win at Le Mans in 2024 with AF Corse, earned an FIA Gold rating, and raced in the Hypercar/GTP ranks with Proton in 2025.
2026 / current season
For 2026 Varrone made his bold return to single-seaters with Van Amersfoort Racing in FIA Formula 2, carrying car #22 and describing the switch as a "massive step." A rare Argentine at this tier and a Le Mans class winner choosing to relearn the open-wheel craft, he has settled into the midfield: after the Barcelona round (Round 5) he sits 14th with 14 points, his best results a fourth in the Miami Sprint and a sixth in the Barcelona Sprint. It is an unconventional road — most drivers reach F2 climbing toward Le Mans, not arriving as a champion already crowned there.