Formula Two had been only second to Formula One in the FIA's formula car hierarchy in the past. The original F2's long history began in the 1950s together with F1 and had the established position as a steppingstone in the driver's career path from Formula Three to F1. But, as the situation around this hierarchy changed in 1980s for many reasons, the F2 championship in Europe was replaced by the International F3000 Championship in 1984.

Then, in June, 2008, FIA decided to revive the name of Formula Two as one of its cradle categories for young drivers and the FIA Formula Two Championship was inaugurated in 2009. One of its main aims was encouraging more potential participants by setting out cost reduction measures.

The competitors use identical cars. The chassis was designed by Williams, one of the most successful Formula One teams in history, and it was powered by 1800cc turbo charged engine based on Audi's four cylinder unit. The original chassis, JPH01, which has been used since 2009, was upgraded for the 2012 season and it is now called as JPH1B. The new version features the carbon brakes and is more than two seconds a lap faster than its predecessor.

Since the category's purpose is feeding talented drivers to F1, the top three finishers on the championship are eligible for the FIA Super License which is required for driving a Formula One car. In addition, the championship winner will have an opportunity to test a Williams Formula One car and the drivers who finished the championship in second and third will be given a test drive with a GP2 car.

In the driver training aspect, the organizers tried to find out the best compromise between cost reduction and learning opportunities for drivers. For example, all drivers have to use identical gear ratio set specified for each race track and aren't allowed to choose any other ratio by their preference. But they still have limited options of car set up with regard to suspension or aerodynamic balance.

Race engineers are provided by the organizers and each engineer looks after three drivers throughout a race weekend in an equitable manner, helping them set up their cars and learn how to communicate with engineers. The engineer assignment is reshuffled after each event to guarantee fairness for all participating drivers.

The 2012 championship series has eight rounds in Europe, plus five official testing days during the season. Each round consists of two 45 minute free practice sessions, two 30 minutes qualifying sessions and two 40 minute final races. This significant amount of track time will certainly appeal to the developing drivers.

As mentioned above, the upgraded 2012 chassis brought certain improvement in performance. One of the contributing factors for that was the new gearbox casing made of magnesium, instead of aluminum for the earlier one, which made the car lighter and gave better weight distribution. But it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that the single largest factor for the performance improvement was the introduction of brand new control tires.

For the 2012 season, the ADVAN racing tire produced by Yokohama Rubber has been designated as the control tire for this championship. For the F2 control tire, superb grip and controllability are required but excellent durability is also important because the cost must be held as low as possible in this category. And Yokohama has successfully developed the purpose-built tires which proved to be exceeding expectations from the organizers and participants in all those aspects.

The improvement was clearly shown in lap times. In the testing session at Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona, the fastest time clocked by the upgraded car equipped with the ADVAN tires was 1'34"712 which was 2.363 seconds faster than the previous record. The F2 car had never got into the 1'34" bracket before at the Catalan race track.

Yokohama supplies two types of tires: ADVAN A005 for dry surfaces and ADVAN A006 for wet. Aiming for better environmental performance, the orange oil blended compound is used for these F2 tires, as is the case for the control tires for the FIA World Touring Car Championship. Tire sizes are 240/600R13 for front and 300/600R13 for rear.