Runners, riders, and some expectations…
The FIA season is upon us, with all three major championships beginning this weekend in Australia. Leaving F1, the championship for people who know what they’re doing (and Aston Martin), for pundits who know what they’re doing (and, inevitably, many even less competent than Aston Martin), we have Formula 2 and Formula 3. And me writing about them, because the feeder series are a lot more fun than the serious stuff.
Knock Knock!
Right, yes, good point, who’s there? Well, there’s 30 of them, which usually seems like a good number only to suddenly be about 20 too many in Monza qualifying, somehow even though they split it into two groups these days. Here’s who they are:
| Driver | # | Team | What they did last year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Theophile Nael | 1 | Campos | 8th in F3 |
| Ugo Ugochukwu | 2 | Campos | 16th in F3 |
| Ernesto Rivera | 3 | Campos | 4th in Eurocup-3 |
| Noah Stromsted | 4 | Trident | 6th in F3 |
| Freddie Slater | 5 | Trident | Champion, FRECA |
| Matteo de Palo | 6 | Trident | 2nd in FRECA |
| Mattia Colnaghi | 7 | MP | Champion, Eurocup-3 |
| Tuukka Taponen | 8 | MP | 9th in F3 |
| Alessandro Giusti | 9 | MP | 10th in F3 |
| Taito Kato | 10 | ART | 7th in FRECA |
| Maciej Gladysz | 11 | ART | 10th in Eurocup-3 |
| Kanato Le | 12 | ART | 14th in FRECA |
| Hiyu Yamakoshi | 14 | Van Amersfoort | 9th in FRECA |
| Enzo Deligny | 15 | Van Amersfoort | 3rd in FRECA |
| Bruno del Pino | 16 | Van Amersfoort | 23rd in F3 |
| Pedro Clerot | 17 | Rodin | 4th in FRECA |
| Brando Badoer | 18 | Rodin | 25th in F3 |
| Christian Ho | 19 | Rodin | 22nd in F3 |
| Louis Sharp | 20 | Prema | 26th in F3 |
| James Wharton | 21 | Prema | 18th in F3 |
| José Garfias | 22 | Prema | 4th in Euroformula Open |
| Michael Shin | 23 | Hitech | 3rd in Euroformula Open |
| Fionn McLaughlin | 24 | Hitech | Champion, British F4 |
| Jin Nakamura | 25 | Hitech | 10th in FRECA |
| Brad Benavides | 26 | AIX | 20th in F3 |
| Yevan David | 27 | AIX | 2nd in Euroformula Open |
| Fernando Barrichello | 28 | AIX | 7th in Euroformula Open |
| Nicola Lacorte | 29 | DAMS | 33rd in F3 |
| Nandhavud Bhirombhakdi | 30 | DAMS | 16th in FRECA |
| Gerrard Xie | 31 | DAMS | 29th in F3 |
(No, I didn’t make a mistake – for superstitious reasons, Formula 3 doesn’t run a number 13).
Just reading that last column might well give some of you an idea who’s good and who isn’t, assuming you’re familiar with all those series. Just in case you’re not:
F3: The series they’re all in this year. Clearly the strongest series in single-seater motorsport’s third tier, particularly if your target is F1.
FRECA: Formula Regional European Championship by Alpine, the first-amongst-equals Formula Regional series and the consensus strongest series in single-seater motorsport’s fourth tier.
Eurocup-3: A southern Europe-based series that uses similar cars to FRECA. A reasonable standard but definitely significantly weaker than FRECA.
British F4: A fifth-tier series. One of the stronger ones, but McLaughlin is definitely skipping a step.
Euroformula Open: In theory this is a third-tier series, using similar equipment to that used in Super Formula Lights, but the standard is fairly low and there are not usually that many entries. Last season most races had around 12 cars in.
And in case that didn’t clear things up, let’s take a quick look driver-by-driver:
The Favourite
Freddie Slater (#5, Trident): The consensus favourite, last year’s FRECA champion and the Audi academy’s first member is the “next big thing” in single-seater racing and probably ought to make it to F1 around when Audi are either getting good or pulling the plug. Generally both fast and consistent. Struggled in the opening rounds of the recent Formula Regional Oceania series in New Zealand, but came back strongly to finish second. Was overall fastest in winter testing. Trident are probably the best overall F3 squad, finishing first or second in the teams championship every year since 2020.
The Challengers
Ugo Ugochukwu (#2, Campos): He struggled in the early rounds of F3 last year, but profited from a raised weight limit (he’s a tall man) to record some decent results including a pair of podiums towards the end of the season. Campos is an upgrade over the once-great but stuttering Prema team, but still, nobody would have had him as a favourite had he not come out red-hot in Formula Regional Oceania, taking 2/4 races in the first round and holding off Slater’s late charge to secure the title. If he can sustain that form, he can challenge. However, his testing times were not particularly impressive.
Matteo de Palo (Trident, #6): took Freddie Slater all the way to the last round for the FRECA title last year, but it was de Palo’s second season in Formula Regional and Slater’s first, and he doesn’t have the benefit of experience this time. Still, he won four races in FRECA and was super consistent so a challenge can’t be ruled out.
Noah Stromsted (#4, Trident): The best-performing of the returning F3 drivers, Stromsted at least deserves a mention. But last year’s F3 field looked fairly uninspiring and Stromsted was a distant sixth with barely more than half champion Rafael Camara’s points. Furthermore, his attempt at Macau was unmemorable (though arguably better than Slater’s, given the latter crashed out trying to win compared to Stromsted’s anonymous 7th). Still, his testing times were reasonably strong, if generally slightly behind Slater.
The Maybes
There’s a few drivers who might well contend for race wins but are unlikely championship candidates. Brad Benavides scored two pole positions last year and occasionally looked like he belonged at the front, but usually looked like he belonged at the back. His team, AIX, are also frustratingly inconsistent. Théophile Nael went missing for large sections of last year’s F3 season but looked strong in the wet and put up some good testing times. Tuukka Taponen was right behind him in the championship, also took three podiums, but faded towards the end of the year, which is inauspicious. Alessandro Giusti was more consistent and scored the same number of points, but only took two podiums (one of which was a reverse grid race that featured very little passing). Pedro Clerot and Enzo Deligny both won multiple races and scored 235 points in FRECA last year (Deligny took third on countback), though it was their second season in both cases. Mattia Colnaghi might be a surprise package in that drivers from Formula Regional series that aren’t FRECA rarely impress in their first year, but he absolutely dominated the second half of Eurocup-3 and came 4th in Macau. James Wharton won a sprint race last year so I guess I shouldn’t rule it out again but it was probably a fluke as he only managed four other points finishes all year, none higher than 5th. Louis Sharp, Jin Nakamura and Kanato Le all managed to beat Slater and Ugochukwu to the line once in FR Oceania; maybe they can do it again?
The Also-Rans
Ernesto Rivera faded towards the end of the Eurocup-3 season and didn’t impress in New Zealand, so no reason to expect much from him.
Taito Kato was 7th in FRECA, but he also never finished higher than third, and didn’t look great other than a single win in this year’s FR Middle East trophy. It doesn’t seem like he’s got what it takes to step up
Maciej Gladysz looked like a driver who might have potential this time last year, taking the Eurocup-3 winter series and backing that up with a win in the first round of Eurocup-3’s main season. No finishes higher than 4th since says otherwise, though.
Hiyu Yamakoshi got one points finish in the last 11 races of last year’s FRECA season; if he’s going to feature at all presumaby it’ll be in the first half of the year.
Fionn McLaughlin has been promoted too fast. The British F4 champion struggled to even get on top of Formula Regional machinery in the Oceania Trophy; F3 is probably a step too far. Might be a decent candidate next year.
McLaughlin, at least, could justify a promotion with a title. Nandhavud Bhirombhakdi scored one top-5 finish in FRECA across two seasons, and moving up to DAMS, the weakest F3 team, is not likely to bring an improvement on that.
José Garfias was a last-minute addition to the Prema squad after Enzo Deligny decided VAR was a better bet (a sad indictment of what’s happening to the troubled Italian squad) but that said more about his money than his skill. Michael Shin and Yevan David are, technically, better than Garfias based on last year’s Euroformula Open results, but as David was the leading one of the trio and was tenth in FR Oceania with no standout performances, there’s no reason to expect much.
Drivers who finish below 20th in their first year in F3, like Bruno del Pino, Brando Badoer and Christian Ho, rarely recover much in the next year. Of the three, del Pino, who managed a second in the Imola sprint, has the most potential to surprise as Nikola Tsolov did in 2024 (mind, he was still 11th, but with three race wins….).
On the other hand I don’t think Gerrard Xie or Nicola Lacorte, who managed one point between them (nine fewer than Freddie Slater got in two guest appearances) will be surprising anyone, other than possibly other drivers who didn’t think they’d be occupying that space. They’ll be contesting last with Fernando Barrichello, who was largely prevented from finishing lower than 7th in Euroformula Open by it only having 8 full-season drivers.
Testing
Is broadly meaningless, particularly if you only examine fastest lap times. But it does provide some information in a spec series, and if we take fastest laps over an entire test we can at least be assured everyone was probably on a quali sim at the time (though conditions were likely a bit different).
Maciej Gladysz and Taito Kato are a bit of a surprise here, but broadly the expected contenders are towards the top.
Overall
It really should be Slater, and it kind of ought to be a season a bit like last year’s Camara quasi-stomp. But drivers still have a lot of variance at this sort of age, so who really knows?
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