There’s no denying on-track results define a successful racing team, but you need more than just a fast car to be truly great; you need passionate and dedicated individuals, a strong sense of camaraderie between them and the motivation to drive things forward, even when the going gets tough. Newly appointed Team Principal James Robinson sees all this and more in Invicta Racing, so we sat down with him to find out about Invicta’s journey in motorsport, what sets them apart in the paddock and what the future holds for the team.
What’s the culture like in a team that won both championships last season? Are there any rituals or cultural changes you want to bring in?
I think one of the great things about this team is the brilliant culture it already has and the methods it employs to go racing. It's hard to pick too many holes in a team that’s just won the Drivers’ and Teams’ Championships. It's been right at the front of the Formula 2 grid throughout its entire history, finishing in the top five of the championship almost every single year of its existence.
I've been lucky that I've had the last two years – since Invicta became involved with the team in 2023 – to observe from within. I've seen a team that's got a fantastic culture and a brilliant way of doing things. They have a great focus on racing and a brilliant mindset for efficiency and how to get the best results on track. We’ve got fantastic engineers and mechanics, and a great philosophy going right the way through the organization.
In terms of how we’re perceived as a team, Invicta’s main focus is to take advantage of Formula 2’s growing popularity on the coattails of Formula 1’s explosion of fandom over the last five years. Other than Formula 1, Formula 2 is the most-followed single seater championship in the world – more than Formula E, IndyCar, and other non-single seater championships like WEC and TCR – so we really want to bring the off-track communication and marketing to a level that is befitting of that.
What makes Invicta Racing stand out against other teams in the F2 paddock?
It’s a racing team in its absolute truest sense. The individuals in this team care only to do well on track. That’s really the culture that sets this team apart, certainly in the last 12 months, but also throughout its entire history.
A lot of people claim to be true racers, but the level of professionalism, attention to detail and dedication that everyone brings to this team – from the engineers to the mechanics to the truck drivers – is by far the best I've ever seen.
2025 marks the fourth season of Invicta’s motorsport involvement in some capacity. Obviously, last year was a very good season, but how do you think things have gone at each stage of this journey?
It’s been a great journey we've been on. I've known Invicta for a number of years. They first started talking to me about doing something in motorsport seven years ago, and it wasn't until 2022 when there was an opportunity with Juan Manuel Correa – who I was working with at the time – to become a supporter of him. A great amount of credit has to go to JM for his dedication and incredible comeback story and Invicta really bought into that. JM is still very much a part of the Invicta family and always will be.
Then we looked for a way to go deeper into the sport and the opportunity arose to get involved with what was Virtuosi Racing at the time. To my point earlier, we were really impressed with the people in the organization; we felt there was a really good fit there. And what initially started as a partnership more around the marketing and communication side of the business, then evolved to where we are now which is Invicta taking full ownership to further strengthen the team.
We had high hopes for last year, but even we were surprised by how well things turned out. We all hope and expect for great things at the start of every season, but we couldn’t have hoped for better in our first full year.
As one of the only team principals in Formula 2 with a marketing and commercial background, do you think that will allow you to look at things from a different perspective and maybe even give you an advantage?
My role within the team is to look after the wider business and to ensure that the team remains competitive, both on and off track. My background obviously brings benefits away from the circuit with regards to the external image of the team, but there are of course elements that can influence our performance at an event as well as how we all work together behind the scenes.
My experience across the whole world of motorsport is quite broad; three years at Formula 1 and 12 years before that at Lotus, Renault (now Alpine). Then there’s Pace Six Four, the largest dedicated motorsport agency in the world, sitting across Formula 1, Formula 2, Formula 3, IndyCar, MotoGP, NASCAR and WEC, so I have a very broad spectrum of experience. At the very start of my career, I was at Prodrive and worked in the first-ever season of WEC and at the Mini World Rally Team in WRC.
Where I hope to bring value is more around the business and commercial side of the team, and also drawing on my experience from the best championships in the world.
Could you give us a word on your 2025 drivers? They’ve obviously got a good relationship, but do you think that's going to work well and drive things forward, both for them as individuals and within the team?
We've got a nice balance of personalities between Roman [Staněk] and Leo [Fornaroli]. They live either side of Milan, both speak Italian and raced in the same teams together in the past. But ultimately, they are different personalities, and I think they complement each other well. They have a great natural chemistry between them.
With Roman, we've got someone who's confident and brings a lot of experience to the team from Formula 2 and Formula 3. He probably hasn't yet had quite the right circumstances around him in F2 to make the most of his talent, so I think he'll surprise a few people this season.
READ MORE: Getting to know Roman Stanek
Leo’s results speak for themselves. The way in which he won the Formula 3 title is a testament to his incredible, steely resolve and how much pressure he can take. We see a lot of what we saw in Gabriel [Bortoleto] last year in Leo; he can clearly hack it when the pressure is on, maximise any situation on track and deliver results consistently which will serve him well this season.
READ MORE: Getting to know Leonardo Fornaroli
Wins and championships are important, but what does success look like more broadly for Invicta Racing?
It’s a tough question to answer because as a racing team, we are ultimately defined by what we do on track. But we do want to maintain the message we've started over the past two years; we're in this sport to bring something extra, in not too dissimilar a way to what we've seen with other consumer brands coming into motorsport. We want to lean on Invicta’s fantastic marketing machine to really give fans and followers of the team greater insights and experiences than they would otherwise get with more traditional racing teams. So, we've got a number of initiatives to try and do that this year, which I think will be really fun, and I think the fans will really enjoy.
Obviously, our key function is as a racing team, and we want to try and repeat what we did last season in 2025. Our drivers have slightly different objectives. Roman is obviously much more experienced in Formula 2 so we expect him to hit the ground running. As Formula 3 Champion, there's great expectation on Leo too, but we need to ensure we give him enough time to find his feet.
It's never going to be easy, especially in a spec championship. Luck can play a big role. We saw in 2023, Jack [Doohan] had bad luck in a few qualifying sessions and that cost him a lot of points. Look at Monza for Gabriel last year where he had the extremes of bad luck and good luck in the same weekend. Kush had some similar instances of bad fortune, and in a championship like F2 they can really cost you. There’s not a lot we can do about that. We can only do our job the best we can, but I'm confident that we'll be in the mix again.
Is there a legacy Invicta Racing would like to leave behind in Formula 2?
We really want to revolutionize the way in which fans communicate and engage with the sport. Allow Formula 2 to flex its muscles and have a louder voice, not just in the motorsport world, but the sporting world more widely.
As a team, we really want to be remembered as one of the best, if not the best on track. I think we're already there with that, but also in terms of our off-track presence as well. As I said, we've planned several things this year for the fans which I think they will enjoy. That's very much part of the legacy we want to try and create, but hopefully we'll be here for a long time to come.
