The first race of the season was the BRDC International Trophy at Silverstone, where Bellof qualified ninth on the grid. Sticking to his promise that he made at the 1981 Formula Ford Festival, Bellof drove through the field in showery conditions to win by 21 seconds ahead of Satoru Nakajima and became the first driver to win outright, and second driver to win a race on his European Formula Two début after Dave Morgan won on aggregate at Silverstone in . He followed this win up with a second successive triumph at the Jim Clark Gedächtnisrennen at Hockenheim, having started from pole position and achieved the fastest lap during the race. Two points from the next six races ruled him out of the championship hunt, as he fell to an eventual fourth place classification, scoring 33 points.