Rapax was an Italian junior single-seater team whose name — Latin for "predator," borrowed from the Roman Legio XXI Rapax — fit a squad that announced itself by winning everything in sight. Founded in 2010 by Gianfranco and Valter Sovernigo and based in Veggiano, near Padua, Rapax inherited a long GP2 lineage, peaked almost immediately, and quietly closed the book after a single season under the rebranded FIA Formula 2 banner in 2017. In F1pedia's FIA-F2-era data, Rapax appears only in 2017, with no teams' championships and roughly five drivers — a brief epilogue to a much louder GP2 story.
Origins — GP2
The outfit that became Rapax did not start from scratch. Its lineage runs back to GP Racing (founded 1997) and Piquet Sports (founded 2000 by Nelson Piquet), which merged in 2007 and passed through several identities — Minardi Piquet Sports, Piquet Sports, then Piquet GP — before being rebranded as Rapax at the start of 2010. By then the team had been a fixture of GP2, the direct feeder series to Formula 1, for years. That GP2 heritage is the heart of Rapax's story; the FIA Formula 2 name only arrived in 2017, when the series itself was rebranded.
The 2010 high point
Rapax's debut season under the new name was its masterpiece. Pastor Maldonado, paired with Luiz Razia, dominated the 2010 GP2 Series, taking six wins on his way to the GP2 Drivers' Championship — and Rapax claimed the GP2 Teams' Championship in the same year. It was a rare first-season clean sweep. Importantly, this was a GP2 triumph, not an FIA Formula 2 one: the F2 name did not exist in that form until 2017, so within F1pedia's FIA-F2 data Rapax holds no titles. The 2010 double is heritage, the high-water mark a later F2 campaign never approached.
Final F2 season
When GP2 was rebranded as the FIA Formula 2 Championship in 2017, Rapax made its only appearance in the modern F2 record. Nyck de Vries delivered the team's standout moment, winning the Monaco sprint race — Rapax's first race victory since Sergey Sirotkin in 2015. The team finished fifth in the 2017 teams' standings, its best result since the 2010 title. At the end of that season Rapax decided to stop racing and leave the championship.
Identity
Rapax was a compact, family-run Italian operation that punched far above its size early, then bowed out without fanfare. Its emblem remains the 2010 GP2 double — a reminder that in junior formulae, a single perfect season can outshine everything that follows.