Rafael Villagómez’s first Formula 2 season would not have gone according to plan. The Mexican driver stepped up to F2 with Van Amersfoort Racing after three mostly unsuccessful seasons of Formula 3. There are few highlights from Villagómez’s time in F3. However, his final F3 round at Monza stands out. He scored two P10 finishes that weekend, showing his potential behind the wheel.
Long distance pace among the positives
Monza again smiled upon Villagómez and the Dutch racing team. In 2024, the Italian track was home to the team’s only double-points finish. Villagómez was one of these points scorers. By taking advantage of a well-timed safety car and employing a smart tyre-saving strategy, he achieved P8 ahead of his more experienced teammate Enzo Fittipaldi (P10) during the feature race.
Throughout the season Villagómez’s best performance came during the full-length feature races. In fact, his best drive in F2 came in Melbourne when he finished the feature race P7.
However, he struggled to extract speed from his car during the qualifying sessions. Setting a fast lap time proved difficult for the Mexican driver, whose best Friday performance was a P14.
Despite his challenges, he did show promising pace and tyre management abilities. This was most evident during longer races. However, Villagómez will need to work on setting fast lap times as failure to do do risks his positive Sunday performances going unnoticed and under-rewarded.
Friday troubles
When asked about his difficulties in qualifying, he mentioned his problems with adapting quickly to the ever-changing track conditions:
“You go from Free Practice where the track is pretty dirty, and you’re on a different compound and then you jump in Qualifying after F1 has driven and F3 Qualifying, then it’s a much better track.”
“Then you put a softer compound on. We always seem to struggle with the balance a little bit there. We don’t seem to have the same amount of grip as other teams.”
Despite his less-than-ideal qualifying form, however, the VAR driver was able to score points at four different feature races, including at vastly different race tracks such as Jeddah and Monza. That may be a great starting point to build on during the upcoming season if the Mexican driver gets reconfirmed for a sophomore season.
