John Bennett: ‘More prepared than ever before’ ahead of 2026 season

New TRIDENT recruit John Bennett has been preparing for another season of FIA Formula 2 as he returns for his second year in the Championship.

The Briton enjoyed a positive pre-season test in Barcelona, but just before that, he sat down to talk all about his preparations for the upcoming campaign and why he feels more prepared than ever before.

“Super excited. It's a massive privilege and honour to be able to race in Formula 2 at this level. I just can't wait to get started again. I'm really looking forward to working with a new team and looking forward to getting good results.

“My new engineer is actually one that I’ve worked with before, which is cool. He was my VAR F3 engineer during the test I did, and then he joined Trident F2. Now I've joined Trident F2, it’s all come around full circle.

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“We've worked together in the past. New team, but same engineer, so it's really good to continue building on that relationship that was successful back then.”

2026 will be Bennett’s second full-time season in the F2 Championship and he feels the experience he built up last year will be pivotal this time around.

Across the pre-season test, he says he and TRIDENT were trying to put into practice learnings from 2025, and that his confidence is therefore higher entering the new campaign.

“There's a lot of things we're trying as a team to help progress the car going into this year. So, there's a big focus on that and then more on the personal side, we're working on race pace and tyre management.

“Barcelona is quite a good track for that, it's quite high deg, and then you’re working on adapting between the Hard and the Soft compounds.

“Last year I was really thrown in at the deep end, didn't really know any of the tracks. And there's a lot of changes coming into Formula 2. Whereas now with that year of experience under my belt, I feel a lot more confident going into the season.”

Something new for 2026 has been the Briton’s preparation for the season. He explained that one new element has been added to his usual process, evidence of the impact his move to TRIDENT is already having.

“In terms of preparations, the main thing is a lot of simulator work, a lot of fitness, running, gym, and then a new one for me actually is go-karting.

“I didn’t really go-kart growing up. I kind of just started in motorsport super late when I was like 16, 17, and never competed in Britain or internationally in karting, but TRIDENT are actually very big into preparing with go-karts and shifter karts, which are super-fast.

“So I've actually been getting into that, it's very physical as well. So that's been a lot of fun and a fun way to have some sort of new training over the winter.”

He added that looking ahead to the early rounds, he’s targeting consistency, with stronger qualifying results a primary focus in order to maximise each race weekend.

“I’m just building on what I've learned. Making clear progression with every round I think is the main goal. The main goal really is just to be consistently in the top 10 now.

“I qualified in the top 10 at Red Bull Ring, it just makes such a difference what you can fight for across the weekend, be it in the Sprint Race or Feature. It just gives you such a good chance of points in both races. So that's the main goal really.”