Photo: Getty Images

Freddie Slater led a Trident one-two on the second morning of FIA Formula 3 pre-season testing at Barcelona.

He went 1.391 seconds quicker than the laptime that put him on top of day one’s timesheet, and had a 0.331s gap to second place at the conclusion of the three-hour session.

Prema’s trio were the first on track, and all drivers were keen to set down representative laptimes early on after damp conditions the previous morning.

Theophile Nael (Campos Racing) set the early pace with a 1m46.217s, over a second clear of Enzo Deligny (Van Amersfoort Racing).

The time to beat got lower and lower, and after the first 10 minutes a 1m30.084s was enough to put Louis Sharp (Prema) on top. He led Taito Kato (ART Grand Prix) by 0.184s.

As drivers completed their third set of push laps early on, Sharp was relegated to fourth. Noah Stromsted had posted a 1m28.447s to lead Trident team-mate Matteo De Palo by 1.094s, and Slater was up to third.

Improvements were made by drivers again later into hour one, which Gerrard Xie (DAMS) ended on top with a 1m27.792s. He was soon in third though as Tuukka Taponen (MP Motorsport) lowered the pace to 1m27.402, pipping Stromsted by 0.014s.

Approaching the session’s halfway point, Slater knocked Kato off top spot with a 1m27.020s lap that would go unbeaten. Kato’s previous benchmark was beaten by 0.297s, and he failed to improve thereon. With 81 minutes to go, Stromsted edged ahead of him by 0.009s.

Teams opted to focus on long runs for the second half of the session, and there was little change to the order. Behind the top three, Maciej Gladysz (ART GP) trailed Slater by 0.3s in fourth, and Taponen was fifth with the laptime that had put him in first place for a period of running.

Morning session results

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Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd

Trident’s Freddie Slater set the fastest lap on the first day of FIA Formula 3 pre-season testing at Barcelona.

There were two three-hour sessions, and in the morning there was little track activity in the first 90 minutes. Theophile Nael (Campos Racing) led Kanato Le (ART Grand Prix) by 0.355 seconds with a 1m43.188s lap at that point, and only 14 drivers had recorded laptimes. Fernando Barrichello (AIX Racing) had just triggered the first red flag period on the wet track.

Ten minutes later, Hiyu Yamakoshi (Van Amersfoort Racing) lowered the pace by 1.252s. His team-mate Bruno del Pino then got within 0.061s of the new benchmark, but Yamakoshi improved to 1m41.9s on his next lap. Pedro Clerot (Rodin Motorsport) soon made it a top three covered by 0.098s as most drivers remained in the pits.

Taito Kato (ART GP) was next to lead the way, by 0.951s, and Christian Ho (Rodin) moved up to second but was 2.653s off the pace once Kato improved to 1m39.058s.

When Le lapped 0.831s shy of Kato with 67 minutes to go, only those two were active. Enzo Deligny (VAR) cut Kato’s advantage to 0.215s in the final hour, and the circuit remained quiet. Brando Badoer (Rodin) broke the 1m39s barrier, and had a big gap until Hitech GP’s stand-in driver Tim Tramnitz set a 1m37.188s with 43 minutes remaining.

His team-mate Jin Nakamura lowered the pace to 1m36.795s four minutes later while out alone, and there was so little track action thereon that 11 drivers ended session one sans laptimes. Barrichello meanwhile had several of his deleted due to being underfuelled.

In contrast, half of the field headed straight out in the afternoon session. Gerrard Xie (DAMS) was first to the top, then Louis Sharp (Prema), Tuukka Taponen (MP Motorsport) and Kato before the first runs ended. A 1m29.118s was the time to beat, with 0.071s splitting a top three completed by Le.

A second covered the top 17 half an hour in, with the track never overly busy. There was change at the end of hour one as Le lowered the pace to 1m28.742s, leading team-mates Kato and Gladysz by 0.232s and 0.327s respectively.

Tramnitz rose to fifth with a laptime 0.477s off Le’s best 79 minutes in, and a few minutes later Taponen got within 0.129s of Le.

Niko Lacorte (DAMS) snuck into fourth before the next runs ended approaching the session’s halfway mark, and there was drama when drivers headed back out. Deligny triggered red flags with 80 minutes to go, and before anyone could improve following the restart there was another stoppage caused by Mattia Colnaghi (MP) who was in seventh place at the time.

He was demoted a spot 53 minutes from the end as Brad Benavides (AIX) went 0.033s faster than him and 0.46s slower than Le to rise to sixth.

Kato caused the next red flag interruption, and the next improvements came in the final half-hour. Badoer went seventh quickest, and nobody above him posted personal bests for ending their runs.

There was more change with 10 minutes to go, as Ugo Ugochukwu (Campos) lapped 0.116s off Le’s long-standing benchmark and Noah Stromsted (Trident) was a further 0.066s off in fourth.

James Wharton (Prema) bettered Stromsted by 0.043s with eight minutes left of the day, and a minute later Slater posted a 1m28.411s that put him on top by 0.331s and would not be beaten.

At the same time, Sharp pipped Taponen by 0.003s for fourth before the track began to empty. A second covered the top 21.

Day one results

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Photo: FRME

ART Grand Prix’s Taito Kato topped Formula Regional Middle East pre-season testing at Yas Marina Circuit this week as the grid grew ahead of this weekend’s opening round.

Kean Nakamura-Berta led Mumbai Falcons team-mate Sebastian Wheldon in session one on Tuesday, with Pinnacle Motorsport’s Alex Powell beating Wheldon by 0.053 seconds to top the slower session two.

Wheldon pipped Van Amersfoort Racing’s Dion Gowda by 0.016s in session three, but did not improve on his previous best laptime.

Kato concluded Tuesday by lowering the pace to 1m48.053s in session four, leading MP Motorsport’s Christian Ho by 0.11s and Powell by 0.137s.

Powell set a 1m48.519s to top session five by 0.105s over Trident’s Maximilian Popov, with a 0.285s gap to MP’s third-placed Alexander Abkhazava.

ART GP’s Kabir Anurag was 22nd, but jumped to first in session six with a 1m48.857s, topping the timesheet by 0.184s over Kato while Race Performance Motorsport’s Jan Przyrowski trailed by 0.485s in third.

Anurag improved to 1m48.829s in session seven, denying Wheldon top spot by 0.01s and Ho by 0.027s. Kato was fourth, 0.137s behind.

VAR’s Francisco Macedo set a 1m48.358s to top session eight by 0.212s over Powell and 0.229s to Ho, with a second splitting the top 22.

During testing, nine drivers were announced as joining FRME’s grid. R-ace GP’s line-up now exceeds its car count, as Gerrard Xie will race in rounds one and two then Emanuele Olivieri will contest rounds three and four.

Euroformula and GB3 race-winner Xie spent 2025 in the FIA Formula 3 Championship, and last year R-ace ran Olivieri to the Formula 4 Middle East title and second in the FIA F4 World Cup.

The Prema-run Mumbai Falcons team has promoted Salim Hanna, new Williams Formula 1 junior Nakamura-Berta and Wheldon from its F4 squad. Wheldon came third in Italian F4 and fourth in E4 last year, while Hanna was fourth and seventh.

Macedo, who was 14th in Eurocup-3 last year, has joined VAR for FRME and the FRegional European Championship while Trident has told Formula Scout that Luka Sammalisto has left its 2026 FREC line-up but not shared why.

CL Motorsport will run Michael Belov, Newman Chi and Enea Frey in FRME after fielding them part-time in FREC last year.

The ultra-experienced Belov came seventh in FREC’s 2022 season, 11th in FRME predecessor the FRegional Asian Championship and 13th in the FRegional-spec Formula Renault Eurocup back in 2020, and last year was 15th in both FREC and the FRegional-based Eurocup-3.

His 2026 team-mates primarily spent 2025 in F4. Chi came fifth in Italian F4 and ninth in F4 Middle East, while Frey was ninth in Formula Winter Series and 14th in E4.

Test results

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Photo: Dutch Photo Agency

Trident has announced that Kai Daryanani has joined the team to race in the Formula Regional European Championship and FRegional Middle East this year.

The 20-year-old Indian arrives at the Italian outfit after a busy 2025 in which he raced for three different teams.

He started off in FRME with Evans GP, and came a lowly 22nd in the standings. Next up was GB3 with JHR Developments, and Daryanani took two podiums en route to 11th in the points table.

Alongside that he raced for MP Motorsport in Eurocup-3, making a winter series cameo and coming 17th in the main championship as a part-timer. In 2024, Daryanani won the Formula Trophy title and was eighth in AU4.

“I’m extremely proud to be joining Trident for the upcoming FRegional season,” said Daryanani.

“I’m excited to work closely with the team to push myself and fight for strong results. I’m grateful for the trust they’ve placed in me and can’t wait to get started.”

The FRME season begins next weekend, and Trident’s three-car line-up will be completed by Andrija Kostic and Maksimilian Popov. Both had already been confirmed as racing for the team in FREC this year.

When Popov was announced last October, Trident’s FREC line-up was completed since it had already signed Kostic and Luka Sammalisto. The team has not stated whether its contractual situation with any of those drivers have changed.

Kostic came 10th in E4, 11th in Formula Winter Series and 17th in Italian Formula 4 last year. Popov was sixth in the FWinter Series and Italian F4 standings, and eighth in E4.

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Photos: Formula Motorsport Ltd

Drivers in F3 often rue weekends not coming together, but this year the results very much reflected the pace

There were no doubts that Trident’s Rafael Camara was the driver to beat in the 2025 FIA Formula 3 Championship, and he claimed five poles out of 10. But he was also one of the eight drivers to line up in 30th and last place for a feature race.

Only two drivers scored half as many points as Camara racked up in feature races, but in sprint races he was outscored by 14 of his rivals. He had a 26-point lead after four races, but only nine races later did he grow that advantage to 27 points. His lead grew by another point in the following round, then he added 20 to it at the Hungaroring and wrapped up the title a round early.

So was it a dominant year? Or did the first two rounds outside of Europe make the difference before the more familiar tracks for the field made it a more competitive contest?

Let’s start with the detail with the biggest impact on drivers and teams’ competitivity this year: the new Dallara F3 2025 car.

Pre-season testing took place at Barcelona, and in winter coats. The consensus was the cool conditions made the test useful for teams but no so much for drivers, particularly with wet weather during some running, and there was huge variance in paddock responses regarding how similar or different the car was to its lighter predecessor.

Some drivers stepped up from series with tyres with very different characteristics to the Pirellis used in F3, so managing degradation was a crucial new skill they needed to learn that Barcelona in February didn’t offer.

The track time was still incredibly useful for teams, who now had data to correlate their simulator models to the real car. Trident’s Noah Stromsted said after two rounds his team’s model was “very accurate” and why “we always start in quite a high level” on race weekends. Camara topped practice and qualifying at each of the first three rounds.

Single-lap pace

Pos	Driver	Team	Pace	Pos	Driver	Team	Pace
1	Rafael Camara	Trident	100.214%	20	Santiago Ramos	VAR	100.846%
2	Nikola Tsolov	Campos	100.286%	21	Brando Badoer	Prema	100.874%
3	Mari Boya	Campos	100.475%	22	Louis Sharp	Rodin	100.932%
4	Brad Benavides	AIX	100.509%	23	Joshua Dufek	Hitech	100.965%
5	Noah Stromsted	Trident	100.537%	24	James Wharton	ART GP	101.038%
6	Martinius Stenshorne	Hitech	100.564%	25	Christian Ho	DAMS	101.044%
7	Tim Tramnitz	MP	100.569%	26	Ivan Domingues	VAR	101.047%
8	Freddie Slater	AIX/Hitech	100.591%	27	Jose Garfias	AIX	101.076%
9	Alessandro Giusti	MP	100.610%	28	Matias Zagazeta	DAMS	101.141%
10	Ugo Ugochukwu	Prema	100.624%	29	Nikita Bedrin	AIX	101.181%
11	Roman Bilinski	Rodin	100.638%	30	Jesse Carrasquedo Jr	Hitech	101.189%
12	Callum Voisin	Rodin	100.648%	31	Fernando Barrichello	AIX	101.222%
13	Noel Leon	Prema	100.649%	32	Gerrard Xie	Hitech	101.291%
14	Charlie Wurz	Trident	100.674%	33	Niko Lacorte	DAMS	101.348%
15	Theophile Nael	VAR	100.679%	34	James Hedley	AIX/VAR	101.385%
16	Tuukka Taponen	ART GP	100.737%	35	Nikita Johnson	DAMS/Hitech	101.437%
17	Bruno del Pino	MP	100.737%	36	Javier Sagrera	AIX	101.575%
18	Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak	Campos	100.778%	37	Nicola Marinangeli	AIX	102.141%
19	Laurens van Hoepen	ART GP	100.818%	38

Driver did less than three rounds. No average when only one event attended

Super simulator usage enabling Trident’s drivers to start 2025 with more confidence and pace was grounded further when Van Amersfoort Racing’s Santiago Ramos said his pre-season preparations had been tougher than expected as he had been used to Trident’s simulator from racing for them in 2024.

“With the new car, where there was a big question mark for everyone on where are you going to start,” reflected Camara, one of the field’s rookies. “Let’s say that we got the right information [from testing] then we knew already the direction to go.”

During the season opener in Melbourne, a very different track to Barcelona, Ramos told Formula Scout that the difference in approach and feeling to the Dallara F3 2019 wasn’t when driving at pace — or managing it — but rather with “warm-up procedures”. Given how much track temperature influences that, it meant lots of learning waited for the first two rounds.

Drivers without the understanding of where those procedures had to be approached differently started the season with big question marks as to why qualifying push laps they felt happy with in the moment put them down the order, and they all made the breakthrough at different points.

Trident had it nailed from the off, while Ramos went from lining up last in round two to qualifying second in round three.

Camara’s pace advantage in Melbourne was calculated from practice, where laptimes were faster than in qualifying. He told Formula Scout next time out at Bahrain that “qualifying is the most important” session to maximise, and after taking the title spoke about one of FIA F3’s sporting regulations increasing the significance of the skills and understanding he started with.

“Some races we had a different [tyre] compound from free practice to quali. That you don’t even know what is the grip [for qualifying]. And in understanding where is the limits and be fast straight away, I think this was a strong point on my side because every time on the first runs, we were already with a good pace.”

Rafael Camara

His team-mate Charlie Wurz qualified third at Bahrain, and he deemed pre-season simulator work “the most important part” of 2025 as he pointed out Trident’s drivers had already been learning from each other when in it. Formula Regional graduate Camara echoed that, and comments on feeling the collective value of having strong team-mates.

Bahrain’s track surface was “super dirty, super hot” according to AIX Racing’s Freddie Slater, and the safest approach every team could take was to use the lowest tyre pressures possible to delay the onset of degradation and overheating.

But Campos Racing, which was yet to find the warm-up breakthrough and been far from contending for pole, found those issues occurred rapidly anyway despite an in-season test at the track providing further learning time.

“From lap two, I was already struggling with the rears, so that I knew that it was going to be a long race,” said its sprint race winner Nikola Tsolov, who had qualified eighth and benefited from a reversed grid for that race result.

“I tried to save them as much as possible. Then the degradation went forwards. I was struggling with fronts at some point on braking, and it was just a mess, a little bit of deg everywhere, which made life difficult.”

Only slightly ahead in qualifying, but finishing in the top four of both Bahrain races was Tuukka Taponen and he was proud that his team ART Grand Prix made a “good step up from Melbourne” where it went points-free and Taponen qualified 24th.

The one-month gap before round three at Imola left plenty of time for data analysis, but also to have a break as the Monaco and Barcelona rounds were in the weekends immediately following Imola.

Rodin Motorsport’s Callum Voisin called the calendar’s triple-header “very mentally challenging by the end”, but there was not a performance drop-off trend in the paddock across the three events since teams mostly became more competitive.

Qualifying

Driver	Mean start pos.	Median start pos.	Standard dev. of start pos.
Camara	5.8	1.5	8.67
Tsolov	7.1	6.0	6.47
Stromsted	9.5	9.5	5.52
Ugochukwu	10.4	7.5	7.98
Benavides	10.8	13.5	7.69
Bilinski	10.8	10.5	5.88
Wurz	10.8	8.0	7.17
Tramnitz	10.9	12.0	4.13
Slater	11.0	11.0	1.00
Stenshorne	11.4	10.5	4.22
Giusti	11.7	11.5	3.69
Boya	12.3	14.5	6.83
Taponen	12.9	9.0	8.47
Leon	13.1	13.5	6.76
Inthraphuvasak	13.2	12.0	7.57
Voisin	14.2	17.0	9.02
Nael	14.9	20.0	8.08
van Hoepen	15.0	17.0	6.39
Dufek	15.0	14.5	2.74
Ramos	16.0	16.0	8.68
Badoer	17.1	15.5	6.32
Sagrera	17.5	17.5	2.50
del Pino	18.0	21.0	8.99
Wharton	18.6	20.0	5.06
Sharp	18.7	19.5	6.28
Ho	18.9	21.5	7.02
Domingues	20.3	21.5	6.02
Zagazeta	21.7	24.0	6.69
Xie	23.5	26.0	7.30
Carrasquedo	24.5	24.5	1.50
Lacorte	24.6	26.0	4.88
Hedley	24.6	26.0	6.09
Johnson	25.3	27.5	5.54
Marinangeli	28.4	28.5	1.11

green text signifies top 10 in metric, red text signifies bottom 10

Campos continued its qualifying struggles, although Tsolov and team-mate Mari Boya were the top two in Monaco and converted that into first and third in the feature race. At Imola, Tsolov had said “we’re only improving each time we go out on track, so we keep finding a lot of new things,” and felt his Monaco weekend went right from the start.

The strong Monaco results showed confidence with the car but also with the famed street circuit. Other drivers lacked that, were more heavily impacted by the tricky to navigate traffic and conceded performance through caution. Boya was frank that Campos was still “losing a bit” over a lap but “especially in the races, I would say we are the most competitive ones”.

With overtaking almost impossible, and with some drivers backing off during the races to create fresh air for themselves and go for fastest lap, it masked where teams were still trailing in single-lap or long-run pace.

“We thought Trident was unstoppable, especially in the beginning of the season. But they have weak points as well. We can tell the last two rounds they’ve been having their flaws,” Tsolov remarked at the time.

Ramos had successfully pressured Camara into overworking his tyres to win the Imola feature race, with Camara later being asked to let team-mate Stromsted past. In Monaco, Stromsted crashed in practice and Trident’s highest-placed driver on the feature race grid was Wurz in seventh. Camara lined up 11th after being penalised three places for not meeting the minimum delta time under red flag conditions.

But the points leader headed to Barcelona “quite, quite relaxed” and proceeded to top practice, qualifying and win the feature race yet again. Tsolov was 10th in practice, and not on course to do much better in qualifying until he made the needed procedural breakthrough late in the session. It was a moment his team-mates didn’t seem to benefit collectively from, unlike in other line-ups, and one where the driver led the way rather than Tsolov’s engineer who he previously had in Spanish Formula 4.

Nikola Tsolov

“Before the weekend, I thought we were going to be really strong, but then things changed and we haven’t been finding what we need until the last [tyre] set where we did. I did. I did something really different, so I’m glad it worked out.”

Tsolov jumped to second with his final lap, and team-mates Mari Boya and Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak were 15th and 16th. In rounds one to four, Tsolov’s average grid position for feature races was 8.5. In the next four it was 2.8, and Camara’s was 3.3.

A slow start consigned Tsolov to finishing eighth in the Barcelona feature race, and while he was on the sprint race podium his feedback was similar to Bahrain after using his “bad” set of tyres.

“It was quite difficult. We had a lot of oversteer, even following [other cars], and it was just a bit about surviving at some point. I was quite close to spinning off in a few corners, which is not usual.”

Despite Ramos having already delivered VAR a sprint race and feature race victory earlier in the year, Theophile Nael felt the team made a breakthrough at Barcelona. It was reflected by all three of VAR’s drivers qualifying in the top seven, Ivan Domingues leading home Ramos in the sprint race then Nael starring in the feature race by having his tyres well prepared for a safety car restart where he went around the outside of ART GP’s Laurens van Hoepen to take second place.

“We were missing something in Monaco and Imola. I think we found what’s happened and we did something really good on the car this weekend and hopefully we can manage to do it again in the second part of the season,” Nael said at the time.

Round six at the Red Bull Ring took place four weeks later, and this time it was Tsolov who topped practice, qualifying and dominated the feature race. After taking pole, he was quick to remind media why he was now qualifying at the front.

“In Barcelona we had an issue in [tyre] set one and two. I was not really fast, and then I did different things on the warm-up in set three which pumped me up to P2. So then we had time to analyse, which was good, and I think we found most of the things we need.”

Noah Stromsted

Brad Benavides was second fastest in Red Bull Ring qualifying – as AIX Racing showed its advantage at ‘power tracks’ which has been evident in Formula 2 and FIA F3 – 0.176 seconds off pole and 0.002s ahead of Stromsted. While most went for two runs, each featuring two sighting laps then two to three flying laps, Stromsted took a different approach after a mistake-filled first run.

“Instead of doing a cooldown lap and then going for a third push, I decided to box, and put on a new set of tyres to do one push lap. That was more about getting the feeling in the car [with] the track with the soft tyres. And it worked quite well. Then we went with everyone in the end, on our third set of tyres. And I left it for the last lap [to go for pole].”

ART GP struggled for pace at the Red Bull Ring, as would also occur at Spa-Francorchamps and to a lesser degree at Monza, but James Wharton was victorious in the sprint race as qualifying 12th put him on reversed-grid pole.

“I feel some teams have got it quite easy. They put the car down in Barcelona pre-season test and were fast. But we’ve had to work quite hard,” he told Formula Scout. “I spent nearly six days in a row on the sim in ART trying to prepare for these next couple of races.”

There was a twist in the title fight the next day, as Tsolov was disqualified from victory due to his front plank being below the minimum accepted thickness. The plank itself was damaged, but since Campos couldn’t prove to stewards that the damage induced the excessive wear, nor identify an event that triggered the damage, it couldn’t prevent Tsolov being removed from the race results. That meant Camara left the track 24 points clear rather than leading Tsolov by just one point.

Camara had showed suprerior race pace (measured over a consecutive run of 10 laps) while chasing Tsolov in the race, but that worked his tyres too hard and he then suffered a drop-off that consigned him to finishing sixth on-the-road. It contrasted heavily to Barcelona, since this time Tsolov was able to maintain a strong pace around the high-speed bends late into the 26-lap race. He lapped in the 1m24s in three of the last four laps, a pace only team-mate Boya in fourth could match on his starting set of tyres. Only eight drivers in total were able to go sub-1m25s even once after their rubber was 20 laps old.

Rolling race pace average

Pos	Driver	Pace	Pos	Driver	Pace	Pos	Driver	Pace
1	Camara	100.306%	12	Taponen	100.824%	23	Domingues	101.142%
2	Boya	100.432%	13	Leon	100.842%	24	Ho	101.176%
3	Tsolov	100.524%	14	Bilinski	100.902%	25	Johnson	101.253%
4	van Hoepen	100.577%	15	Benavides	100.970%	26	Zagazeta	101.317%
5	Stromsted	100.616%	16	Ugochukwu	100.977%	27	Carrasquedo	101.360%
6	Tramnitz	100.694%	17	Wharton	101.020%	28	Dufek	101.370%
7	Stenshorne	100.724%	18	Badoer	101.022%	29	Xie	101.374%
8	Inthraphuvasak	100.724%	19	Ramos	101.060%	30	Lacorte	101.519%
9	Giusti	100.733%	20	Hedley	101.086%	31	del Pino	101.625%
10	Wurz	100.758%	21	Voisin	101.113%	32	Marinangeli	101.633%
11	Nael	100.759%	22	Sharp	101.127%

Driver did less than three rounds. No average when only one event attended

There were 13 races across the season (taking in all tracks bar Melbourne) which featured enough uninterrupted green flag running for rolling race pace to be calculated, and the advantage of clean air while leading meant the on-the-road winner was quickest every time bar Camara’s costly on-the-limit laptimes at the Red Bull Ring and in the Hungaroring sprint race where Prema’s Ugo Ugochukwu went from sixth to second in the 11 laps between safety car periods.

Since his sole retirement was in Melbourne, and he had no races where laptimes lost to track limits violations prevented a 10-lap rolling average from being formed, Voisin was the sole driver whose season average for race pace was taken from 13 races.

He came 14th in the championship and was 21st on average race pace, but the order (seen in the table above) mostly reflected the championship. One or two high-scoring races can easily lift a driver up the points table while their average pace would put them in a far lower position for the season, and much rarer this year was a driver whose pace was consistently strong but wasn’t reflected by their championship position.

Van Hoepen was such an outlier, who on race pace had an average deficit to the fastest driver only bettered by Camara, Boya and Tsolov yet came 12th in the standings. The Barcelona sprint race was the only time van Hoepen showed the pace to win, but the only time his pace was over 101% of the benchmark was the Monaco feature race and he still finished that in sixth.

After finishing third in the sprint race there, FIA F3 sophomore van Hoepen said “this year has been a way harder start for me than” in 2024 despite being with the same team.

The three ahead of van Hoepen on race pace were consistent, repeatedly maximised their pace once they knew how to and it was shown by their averages all bettering the fastest driver in races from 2024 when a win-free driver was champion.

Points scored

Feature races			Sprint races
Pos	Driver	Points	Pos	Driver	Points
1	Camara	138	1	Stenshorne	54
2	Boya	85	2	Tsolov	44
3	Tsolov	75	3	Inthraphuvasak	42
4	Tramnitz	68	4	Giusti	32
5	Stromsted	63	5	Boya	31
6	Nael	58	6	van Hoepen	30
7	Taponen	46	7	Ugochukwu	30
8	Bilinski	40	8	Tramnitz	26
9	Stenshorne	35	9	Bilinski	25
10	Giusti	35	10	Wurz	25
11	Voisin	35	11	Stromsted	21
12	Inthraphuvasak	32	12	Taponen	21
13	van Hoepen	30	13	Ramos	20
14	Wurz	28	14	Wharton	19
15	Ramos	28	15	Camara	18

Green text signifies sprint race tally exceeding feature race tally

A driver with big contrasts was Inthraphuvasak. He on average was the 18th fastest on absolute pace, and his average starting position for feature races in the season’s first half was 18.2. In the second half it was 8.2, he was on reversed-grid pole twice and that helped him become 2025’s third-highest scoring driver in sprint races and eighth fastest on race pace.

His first win was at Silverstone, where Campos was rapid and he didn’t initially maximise it. Tsolov took pole, Boya was fourth fastest and he was 12th in qualifying.

“My pace has always been there to be in top five,” he claimed after sprint race victory. “It’s just about putting things together, and we struggled with that so far. This weekend, again qualifying a bit unlucky, with a problem and a mistake from my side.”

Hitech GP’s Martinius Stenshorne — sixth on absolute pace and seventh on race pace — finished runner-up to Inthraphuvasak from sixth on the grid in a charging drive. It contributed to the 54 points he scored in sprint races, a tally last reached by a driver in 2021, and like the Campos driver he was enjoying an upwards shift.

Stenshorne said “in the beginning of the season we struggled a bit for race pace”, or “a bit up and down”, but from the Red Bull Ring onwards he was happy with it and he rose from 11th in the standings to fifth in the season’s second half.

Two of the last three rounds were on tracks with long straights, Spa-Francorchamps and Monza, and Benavides was on pole at both. While his AIX team-mates were outside of the top 27 on the grid, Benavides’s pace was genuinely representative of the team’s competitiveness at these circuits in Formula 1’s support series.

Those results helped Benavides be the fourth fastest driver in 2025 on single-lap pace, and the abandonment of the Spa feature race after two laps (both behind the safety car) meant no points and no chance to improve his race pace average.

Brad Benavides

The American’s average start position was 18th in the season’s first half, then 6.4 in the second half. He only scored twice, with his ninth place at the Red Bull Ring followed by fourth in the season-ending Monza feature race in which he led six green flag laps before falling down the order.

Ugochukwu was another driver to cite the Red Bull Ring for a “big turnaround”, particularly in race pace. The laptimes supported his comments, and he went on to finish second in two sprint races which he started from outside the top five. While his single-lap pace was 10th best in the field, still the highest-placed Prema driver, he had the fourth-best average starting position for feature races. It was 15.8 in the season’s first half, then fifth from the Red Bull Ring, where Ugochukwu’s car shed its orange paint to help him meet the minimum weight limit.

One garage which had a less productive time as the year went on but still placed strongly on pace and points was MP Motorsport. Tim Tramnitz said the team “weren’t so happy with the start of the year” due to needing to go on recovery drives, but he came fourth in the championship and team-mate Alessandro Giusti was 10th.

Almost three quarters of Tramnitz’s points came prior to the Red Bull Ring though, with a single point from the last four rounds, while Giusti’s nine-race scoring run was followed by one point in five races. MP was still third in the teams’ standings.

Laps led

1 Camara 97   2 Tsolov 62   3 Inthraphuvasak 39   4 Stenshorne 31   5 Ramos 27   6 Tramnitz 26   =7 Domingues & Wharton 21   9 Benavides 15   10 Boya 12   =11 Slater & Stromsted 10   =13 Voisin & Nael 4   =15 Dufek & del Pino 2   17 Ugochukwu 1

The post Who was fastest in FIA Formula 3 2025? appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: ACI Sport

While the final margin was large, Freddie Slater was made to work hard to become FREC champion in 2025

Freddie Slater was many people’s favourite for the title heading into the 2025 Formula Regional European Championship. The Briton had a record-breaking run to the 2024 Italian Formula 4 title with Prema, and remained with the team for the step up to FRegional, hoping to emulate its previous champions Dino Beganovic, Andrea Kimi Antonelli and Rafael Camara.

Over a 10-round campaign, the last for the first-generation Tatuus T-318 chassis after seven seasons of use, fortunes ebbed and flowed as five drivers from five different teams set the pace. Trident’s Matteo De Palo matched Slater from round one at Misano onwards, but then a dominant double win for Slater in the Monza season finale crowned him with a big points gap.

Slater and Prema possibly made the task than it should have been. The team seemed to lack its pace advantage from past seasons, and between them the drivers in Prema’s three other cars amassed a points tally that was under 44% of Slater’s own.

“[Winning the title feels] pretty crazy, especially with the year we’ve had. It’s not been smooth sailing – we’ve had many wins but also a lot of downs – and it’s been super close,” was Slater’s assessment of the outcome of his campaign.

After being crowned at Monza, he admitted “we’ve made a lot of mistakes, some in our control, some out of our control”.

Slater thanked his mechanics “for fixing all my mistakes and crashes” but is arguably unduly harsh on himself, such are his high standards. His most significant mistake came on the opening lap of the season-opening race, when he squandered his pole advantage through wheelspin, then was trying to go alongside De Palo through turn one when he was spun out after a hit from behind.

De Palo went on to win, forging a 25-point lead Slater took five races to negate. In round six at Imola, a mistake outside of his control cost Slater 18 points when he was disqualified from second due to missing valve caps on his left-hand wheels.

His only podium-free weekend was at the Red Bull Ring. Technical issues meant he qualified 18th for race one, and finished it in 12th, then he was fourth in race two, when he said “the step we had to take was huge and there is not much chance for overtaking”.

Slater at Misano

Slater was the only driver to win both races in a weekend, doing so at both Paul Ricard and Monza. His seventh victory In the season’s penultimate race secured him the title and showed maturity, speed, intelligence and a winner’s mentality.

While he clearly had enough speed to pressure Evan Giltaire for the lead, Slater bided his time as the Frenchman’s tyres slowly gave up the fight. With De Palo down the order after a grid penalty and first-lap wing damage, Slater knew “I just had to wrap it up today” as he told Formula Scout with a smile that evening, but ultimately couldn’t resist the opportunity to do so with a victory.

Arguably his best drive of the year had come a few weeks earlier at Hockenheim, as he charged from fourth to first on a damp track, passing Giltaire, Akshay Bohra (twice) and De Palo before disappearing into the distance.

Slater managed to retain an air of chilled insouciance despite the pressures of the tight run-in against De Palo, and rarely looked flustered, in or out of the cockpit.

His eight wins matched the tally of Gregoire Saucy in 2021 (the first season following the merger with Formula Renault Eurocup), but five fewer than the 13 that Frederik Vesti managed in the 2019 season, which had three more races. Slater’s overall points haul of 313 beat the 20-race record of last year’s champion, Camara, by four.

Slater will unsurprisingly follow Camara’s path to Trident in FIA Formula 3 for 2026, with his camp confiding that “the deal had been done quite early”. Only a brave gambler would bet against him enjoying a similar season to his predecessor.

At the start of the season, the main opposition to Slater had been expected to come from sophomores Giltaire at ART Grand Prix and Pedro Clerot at Van Amersfoort Racing.

Giltaire had started his year by defeating Slater to win the Formula Regional Middle East championship and thus headed back to Europe in an optimistic mood as the highest-placed returning driver. Clerot had finished the previous season just four points adrift of Giltaire. Both had stayed with their 2024 teams, looking to build on solid rookie seasons.

De Palo

However, De Palo struck early by winning the opening race at Misano and would provide the most constant challenge throughout the season.

His victory on the Adriatic coast was not only his maiden win at this level, and his first in cars since Spanish F4 in 2023, but also the first win for his Trident team in its fourth season in the series. “We felt a lot of emotion,” recalled De Palo, and the outpouring of elation on the pit wall as he crossed the line was certainly uplifting.

Clearly, De Palo gelled perfectly with the team; the switch to an Italian team from Sainteloc Racing seemingly providing him with confidence and reassurance.

Trident team manager Luca Zerbini was not surprised by De Palo’s performance:

“From the very first moment we started to work with him, from testing at the end of last season, on the simulator, at all the technical meetings, we saw that is very good, to be honest,” he said. “In winter testing he was performing very, very well. He felt very good with the team straightaway and vice versa.

“He’s smart, and always happy, I would say. We laugh a lot, because sometimes he says funny things also on the radio. But he feels the pressure, like every driver, of course.

“At the end of the day, when you work hard, and you have a good driver in the car, results will come. So, maybe it was a surprise for a lot of people. To be honest, we couldn’t foresee how good the season would be, but we knew that it was going to be a very good season with him.”

Zerbini believes that this year’s results prove the strength of his team’s set-up and staff continuity.

“Last year could have been much better. [Roman] Bilinski had that road accident and was out for a few races. Even when he came back, he was still not at his best, but we were still performing with [Michael] Belov.

De Palo at the Red Bull Ring

“I’m proud of that because the team is very stable, also from the technical point of view. We have three engineers working together since day one in FRegional and even though they are quite different, they are able to work very well together,” he explains.

On De Palo’s day, he was untouchable. His three subsequent wins at the Hungaroring, Red Bull Ring and Barcelona were dominant. He showed that was prepared to fight his rivals wheel-to-wheel as he demonstrated in the opening corners at Misano and Barcelona.

He was a model of consistency, only failing to score points twice – the second race in Austria and the Monza opener – both due to contact damage. Unlike Slater, De Palo was never able to dominate a weekend, his best overall weekend results being a win and a third.

He was unsurprisingly a “bit sad” at losing out in the final weekend and said he “needed to step back a little.”

When he does reflect on his year, one that secured him a place on McLaren’s driver development programme, he can be rightfully proud, even though the way in which he ultimately lost out was a sad and arguably undeserved conclusion. Next year, he will need to take Slater on again, but this time from across the same garage.

Two drivers tied for third place, Clerot and R-ace GP’s Enzo Deligny, with the French-Chinese driver taking the position by virtue of his four victories.

Deligny was a driver with something to prove as he also returned for a second season, having been dropped by the Red Bull junior programme over the winter.

His speed was never in doubt. Indeed, he was arguably the outright fastest driver in FREC this season, even having a slight edge on Slater: measured by the average gap to the best qualifying time in each qualifying group, Deligny was marginally the fastest qualifier of the year, despite struggling in the colder morning temperatures at Monza.

Deligny

Significantly, each of the top qualifiers had at least one disastrous qualifying session, whereas in 2024 Camara managed to post a time among the top four in his group at every race.

As the average times clearly show, the gap at the front was minuscule; evidence of the tightness of this year’s championship.

Qualifying performance

What Deligny lacked was consistency, although he had clearly made huge strides in maturity since his disappointing rookie season.

He was off-the-pace at the opening and closing rounds, where his team-mates Bohra and Jin Nakamura mostly struggled too, while a spin at his home event at Paul Ricard in the summer cost him dearly.

On his day, Deligny was blisteringly quick, as his wins at Spa-Francorchamps, Imola, Barcelona and Hockenheim proved. He and Slater put on some of the seasons’ best battles, notably at Spa and the Hungaroring.

The weekend in Budapest showed both sides of his character, driving a beautiful race to lead and then re-pass Slater when a technical issue arose. A third-placed finish was then lost when he was disqualified for driving in a “dangerous” and “erratic” manner on the slow-down lap.

“This year wasn’t easy,” Deligny commented. “I think the competition has been the toughest it’s ever been. We took four wins, nine podiums and four pole positions and still we barely made it into the top three.”

After what he acknowledged had been a “tricky year” in 2024, he felt that he and R-ace GP had made “a big step”, saying: “we worked really hard during the winter on the set-up and tyre management, and our speed was really good.”

His team principal Thibaut de Merindol agrees that “Enzo has improved a lot compared to last year”.

“He always has been potentially very quick. From the first test we did with him during the summer of 2023, he was able to drive the car very fast but it was very all over the place in many aspects. Where he has improved a lot is, I think, that he’s much more mature as a human being. He’s much more integrated in the team in terms of communication, in terms of feeling comfortable with everyone around.

Deligny

“He opened up a lot. We can joke, we can have fun. Last year he was like a very young teenager; very shy, very defensive. So, he made a huge step. Then the work with the team is much more efficient and I think he’s feeling much more comfortable, and then the performance on track comes.

“Overall, looking at the statistics, I think he’s the best performer in qualifying. We made some mistakes, we lost some points, talking about Hungaroring, but he’s on his way to getting better and better, and he did a mega step.

“When he lost Red Bull, I think it forced him to analyse the situation and understand that he had to change something. I’m very happy.”

And with good reason, as R-ace GP managed to wrestle the teams’ championship back from Prema for the first time since 2021, largely thanks to Deligny’s points. He will move on to Prema for his rookie F3 season in 2026.

Van Amersfoort Racing, like Trident, scored its maiden FRegional win with Pedro Clerot in 2025, just as the popular Dutch team celebrated its 50th year in motor racing. To add icing to the birthday cake, the first win came at Zandvoort, just 80 kilometres west of the team’s base at Zeewolde, with a host of former drivers and guests braving the rain to join in the festivities.

Clerot took both poles in the Netherlands but got mugged into Tarzan in race one by a fast-starting Slater. However, he made amends in race two, with team-mate Hiyu Yamakoshi following him home to make it an even more special weekend for the local team.

The team struggled at the start of the year with Clerot failing to score in either race at Spa, his only non-points finishes all year. As he told Formula Scout at the end of the year: “the year has been 90% strong. After Spa, we’ve been fighting for poles everywhere and I’m happy with the progress we’ve made.

“Spa and Misano were not so good – Misano is a very specific track – but in Zandvoort and Barcelona we had the pace.”

Clerot leads home Yamakoshi at Zandvoort

Though he ultimately just missed out on third in the standings, Clerot “looks back very positively on the season and two years of working well with the team, and not disappointment about the championship.” He swaps VAR for Rodin Motorsport for the move up to F3 in 2026.

The last of the five stand-out drivers, Giltaire somehow remained philosophical and in good humour despite a season that started strongly with a win and a second at Misano before plunging into a deep hole. He and his ART team kept battling and managed to dig their way out of the trough to bounce back with a very strong performance at the last two rounds at Hockenheim and Monza.

The car was clearly not a match for the machines of Prema, at least in Slater’s hands, or R-ace GP, and his defence of the lead at Monza on tyres that were losing grip rapidly was heroic.

Formula Scout has documented his struggles during 2025 previously, and it seems at the time of writing that a berth in Super Formula Lights in Japan beckons. But have no doubts – Giltaire, like the four who finished above him, would enrich any Formula 3 grid. Europe’s loss, though maybe only temporary, is Japan’s gain.

So, what of the rest?

Bohra was the only other driver to win a race, the Indian-American taking a perfect pole position, fastest lap and win at Imola. De Merindol sees a similarly positive development in him as with Deligny: “For a rookie, I think he’s done a very good season. Okay, obviously, Freddie Slater is a rookie as well, but we know the amount of preparation, the experience and the background of Freddie, which Akshay doesn’t have at all.”

Like his team-mates Bohra was off the pace at Misano and Monza, but was able to lead the team’s attack in races such as Paul Ricard where Deligny faltered.

Formula Regional Europe welcomed four Japanese drivers in 2025, helped by both Honda and Toyota placing junior drivers in the series. Hiyu Yamakoshi stayed with VAR where he had shone in F4, SF Lights race winner Jin Nakamura joined R-ace GP, while French F4 champion and Taito Kato lined up at ART Grand Prix, alongside sophomore Kanato Le.

Kato

Yamakoshi admitted to feeling extra pressure to beat his compatriots: “they are nice friends, so I don’t want to break our friendship, but racing is racing, so I want to beat them on the track, of course.”

Honda protege Kato was undoubtedly the most impressive, often pushing more experienced team-mate Giltaire hard. From mid-season he was a regular points scorer, aided by the presence in the paddock of Honda guru Takuma Sato, finishing the year with two fourths at Monza.

Yamakoshi had surprised many in Italian F4 in 2024 but could not match those results upon stepping up to FREC. A poor weekend at Misano dented his confidence, although a front row start and podium in the following race at Spa got his season underway. He followed it up with another second place at Zandvoort, and excelled in the wet part of qualifying, but his year rather tailed off thereafter with just one points finish after the summer break.

Toyota junior Nakamura took time to adapt but his season was the reverse of Yamakoshi’s, picking up momentum from Paul Ricard, apart from a terrible weekend at Imola. However, his season lacked consistency with too many mistakes blemishing his record.

He initially found the step down from SF Lights quite “difficult, because of the lack of grip” but the move had been driven by a push to learn “the tracks, the teams, everything” about racing in Europe. The presence at race weekends of Kazuki Nakajima and Kamui Kobayashi from Toyota provided extra support and motivation, making him, he said, “the happiest man in the paddock.”

The attraction for the Japanese contingent overall, he believes, was the “competitiveness of this championship; every team has good performance.”

All four Japanese drivers will move up to FIA F3, with Nakamura the only one to trade teams, moving to Hitech TGR as his backer looks to move him onto the next step towards F1.

Nakamura

Rashid Al Dhaheri looked promising on occasions at Prema, as the step up to a more powerful car seemed to suit his style after F4. If he remains in FREC, the Mercedes-AMG F1 junior could show his potential. He followed Slater home to take second-place finishes at the Hungaroring and Paul Ricard, where he also topped his qualifying group, in a mid-season run of strong results.

For team-mate Jack Beeton the year was a nightmare from beginning to end. Runner-up to Slater in Italian F4, he now struggled to even score points. His Monza weekend summed up his year: crashing at the first corner in race one, incurring two separate grid penalties for misdemeanours in qualifying for race two and then leaving for IndyNxt testing before the second race.

Prema fielded Doriane Pin in a fourth entry from the second round at Spa, with her F1 Academy commitments taking priority. However, amid the constant swapping from F4 to FRegional machinery she struggled to make an impression and ended her campaign after Paul Ricard to focus on her ultimately title-winning F1 Academy season.

The fourth Prema car was run as a wildcard entry for Pin’s then fellow Mercedes juniors Alex Powell and Yuanpu Cui in three late-season rounds. Neither could get a handle on the car in the limited running available.

Prema has been the gold standard in FRegional since its beginning, with the exception of the very start of the Alpine era, so its apparent struggles were surprising. Was Slater’s talent such that he could compensate for any inherent deficiencies in the set-up or were the other drivers unable to extract the maximum from a front-running car?

Having said that, Prema still got close to the teams’ title in a year when no team apart from R-ace GP took wins with two different drivers.

VAR’s Dion Gowda picked up the official rookie title but with most first-year drivers ineligible having driven in the Middle East series, he had close to no competition. Of the other “eligible” rookies only Edouard Borgna did a full season, although offered little challenge.

Gowda leads Bedrin

Nikita Bedrin put in some strong performances at Sainteloc Racing, notably at the Red Bull Ring, but the team lacked any experienced back-up for most of the year.

For RPM and G4 Racing the sooner the year could end, the better. At least both gained entries for the 2026 championship, not without some drama in G4’s case.

Both seemed to operate revolving doors for their driver line-ups. G4 went through six drivers while the Italo-Irish squad managed to get through 10 drivers in the two remaining cars alongside ever-present Giovanni Maschio.

In truth, Keith Donegan’s team was using the latter part of the season as an extended driver test for 2026 and, Jan Przyrowski, Ean Eyckmans, Reno Francot, Tomass Stolcermanis and James Egozi all showed promise on their limited appearances.

Both outfits have the potential to run at the front and win races, and the series would be poorer without them.

Of the two new teams, Akcel GP only appeared on the eve of the season start and disappeared again after Imola, while CL Motorsport went for experience in their driver line up, and series veteran Belov duly delivered once he had joined the Italian-based team from Spa.

FRegional Europe goes into a new era in 2026 – new Tatuus chassis, a new Toyota-based engine from Autotecnica, and increased direct FIA involvement in technical and marketing matters. In addition, it will introduce some reversed-grid races as part of an overhaul of the calendar.

The final round at Monza also marked the 100th race of the championship’s partnership with Alpine, having adopted the Alpine-badged, Oreca-developed engine from 2021 following its merger with the Formula Renault Eurocup.

The end of the partnership with Alpine marks the end of Renault’s involvement in the junior single-seater ladder. The history of Formula Renault dates back to 1971 and counts the likes of Lewis Hamilton, Charles Leclerc and Oscar Piastri among its graduates. FRegional Europe had continued the link through the “by Alpine” suffix to its official championship name.

Nevertheless, the championship can go into its next phase full of optimism if the quality of this year’s drivers is a guide.

The post How Freddie Slater ended a Formula Regional Europe era on top appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: James Gasperotti

John Bennett has swapped Van Amersfoort Racing for Trident to keep his place on the Formula 2 grid for 2026.

The British-Irish driver was a surprise addition to the F2 grid for the final two rounds of the 2024 season with VAR having spent all three years of his single-seater career until then racing in GB3, where he was runner-up last year.

Having scored points in his debut feature race in Qatar, Bennett remained with VAR for the full 2025 season, although he scored just a solitary point this time in the Monza feature race.

While VAR has already signed Nico Varrone for next season and with Rafael Villagomez expected to continue alongside him, Bennett has found a new home at Trident as team-mate to Laurens van Hoepen.

“I’m extremely happy to race with Trident Motorsport in the 2026 FIA Formula 2 Championship,” said Bennett. “I am very grateful for this great opportunity and to continue fighting in the second tier. I can’t wait to get on track and achieve excellent results together.”

Team manager Giacomo Ricci added: “We are very pleased to announce that John Bennett will race for Trident Motorsport in the 2026 FIA Formula 2 Championship.

“He is a driver we had the chance to observe during the recently concluded season, where he showed solid development. I am confident that the British driver has all the qualities needed to work well with our technical staff and deliver a competitive campaign.”

The news of Bennett’s signing means that 20 of the 22 seats on the 2026 grid have now been officially filled prior to the start of post-season testing in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday.

The post John Bennett makes Trident switch to remain in F2 for 2026 appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: ormula Motorsport Ltd

Laurens van Hoepen will race full-time in Formula 2 next year with Trident, after joining the team for the last three rounds of the 2025 season.

A 19th place was the 20-year-old Dutchman’s best result in a qualifying session from his short spell on the grid, and his highest place finish in a race was 14th in the sprint race at Yas Marina Circuit last weekend.

For the last two years his main focus has been on racing in the FIA Formula 3 Championship with ART Grand Prix. He was 13th in the 2024 standings with three sprint race podiums, including second place on debut, and came 12th this season with two sprint race podiums.

“I’m excited to compete in [F2] next season with Trident,” said van Hoepen. “The experience gained in the three appearances I made in this championship has been very useful in preparing for this step. Together with the technical staff, we made progress that will be fundamental for next year. We have an intense and challenging season ahead of us.”

Next year will be the first since 2021 in van Hoepen’s career in which he has not raced for ART GP. Before F3, he did two Formula Regional European Championship seasons with the team.

“We are very pleased to announce that Laurens van Hoepen will contest the 2026 F2 championship with Trident,” said the team’s manager Giacomo Ricci.

“He is a driver we’ve had the chance to get to know and appreciate in the final part of this season. After his positive debut in Baku, van Hoepen immediately felt comfortable with the team. I am sure the Dutch driver has all the qualities required to do a great job with our technical staff and to compete in a highly competitive season.”

The post Laurens van Hoepen makes his step up to F2 with Trident full-time appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd

Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak will make his Formula 2 debut in this weekend’s season finale at Yas Marina Circuit.

The 20-year-old Thai was announced last month as stepping up to the championship in 2026 with ART Grand Prix, and will now get some crucial race experience in the Dallara F2 2024 car.

He will replace James Wharton in Trident’s line-up, after the Australian made his debut last weekend at Losail in a one-off. Wharton was 21st in qualifying, retired from the sprint race following a collision and was a penalised 19th in the feature race.

“I’m really excited to be racing in the final round of the F2 championship with Trident,” said Inthraphuvasak.

“It’s a great opportunity, and I want to thank everyone who made it possible. I’m looking forward to making the most of this weekend and preparing as best I can for next season.”

Inthraphuvasak began this year with a cameo in the Eurocup-3 winter series, with his results putting him 14th in the standings, then he embarked on a sophomore campaign in the FIA Formula 3 Championship. After scoring only three times in the season’s first half, Inthraphuvasak went on to win three races and rose to seventh in the points table.

Last month he joined Trident for the FIA Formula Regional World Cup-awarding Macau Grand Prix, qualifying 12th, finishing the qualification race in 13th and the main race in 16th.

“We are pleased to be able to field Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak in the final round of the F2 season,” said Trident’s team manager Giacomo Ricci.

“I consider him one of the most talented drivers we have seen in the FIA F3 Championship this year. We had the opportunity to see Tasanapol’s skills in the Macau GP, where he raced with us and immediately proved to be fast and competitive. Although he is making his debut in the category, I am sure he can also do well on the Yas Marina circuit.”

The post F3 race-winner Inthraphuvasak to debut in F2 with Trident this weekend appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: Trident

James Wharton will make his Formula 2 debut this weekend at Losail, joining Trident in a revised line-up.

The team ran Max Esterson and Sami Maguetounif in the first 11 rounds, then parted ways with the pair ahead of the most recent round in Baku last month and signed Laurens van Hoepen and Martinius Stenshorne.

It was announced last week that van Hoepen would keep the seat for the last two rounds at Losail and Yas Marina Circuit, while Stenshorne has switched to Rodin Motorsport for the rest of the season.

“I am incredibly grateful to Trident Motorsport for giving me this opportunity to race in the F2 championship,” said Wharton.

“It’s definitely a huge step in my career; there will be new challenges, starting with a more powerful car, longer races, increased tyre degradation, and pitstops. There will be a lot to learn, but I’ll try to make the most of this opportunity.

“Even though I won’t be racing in F2 next year, this is definitely a great opportunity to learn something new, grow, and bring home a good result.”

The 19-year-old Australian was Formula Regional European Championship runner-up and sixth in FRegional Middle East with Prema in 2024, then stepped up to the FIA Formula 3 Championship this year with ART Grand Prix and came 18th in the standings with one win but only three other points-scoring races. He will stay in F3 for 2026, joining Prema’s line-up.

“We are extremely happy to be able to field James Wharton in the next round of the F2 Championship,” Trident’s team manager Giacomo Ricci said.

“He is undoubtedly one of the most talented emerging drivers we have seen in FIA F3 this year. James is an extremely capable and fast driver. Making his debut in Lusail will certainly be a great challenge, but we have carried out intense preparation work that, I am confident, will bear fruit.”

The post James Wharton to debut in F2 with Trident at Losail appeared first on Formula Scout.