Campos Racing Formula 3 driver Sebastián Montoya was our guest on last week’s episode of the Feeder Series Podcast. He described what he considers his greatest race performance and offered insight into the challenges of the tyres used in F3 last year.

By George Sanderson

With a smile beaming across his face, Sebastián Montoya recalls a fond memory.

2 July 2023. Formula 3 feature race. Red Bull Ring, Spielberg, Austria.

Even Steven Spielberg, the Oscar-winning American film director who shares a name with the town, would struggle to paint a picture as vividly as Montoya – affectionately known as Sebas – does in describing the events. It’s hard not to smile along with him.

“Being able to go P15 to fighting for the podium was really cool because that was one of the few times where the way everything flowed was really nice,” Montoya says.

Montoya, then an F3 rookie and Red Bull junior racing for Hitech GP, had risen from a midfield position at the start of the 26-lap race to be part of a five-car battle for the win on the final lap. Just two seconds covered the five drivers, with Zak O’Sullivan holding on for his first feature race win ahead of eventual champion Gabriel Bortoleto.

But Montoya’s final lap did not go as smoothly. Running side by side with Colapinto and battling for third, the pair made contact into Turn 6, sending Montoya into the gravel. The incident caused the Colombian to fall to 10th at the chequered flag and see a solid points finish slip away. He subsequently received a 10-second post-race penalty for causing the collision, which dropped him to 20th.

“Obviously the last lap wasn’t ideal. Franco [Colapinto] and I were both fighting for the podium, and the fact that none of us got on the podium was not what we wanted.

“But just the way it worked with communicating with my engineer, knowing where I wanted to be, knowing what I wanted to do and then executing that, that’s exactly … the kind of the thing you want as a driver,” he says.

“It opened my eyes to like ‘wow, I’m not that bad. I can really do a good job!’”

There was one moment from the race that Montoya particularly cherishes.

“On lap three or four, when Dino [Beganovic] was in the lead, I remember I came out of the last corner [and] I saw him entering the first corner and I was like, ‘I’m gonna chase him down!’”

And chase him down was exactly what Montoya did. By lap 18, he had caught the Prema driver for fifth and went for an audacious move around the outside of the downhill Turn 6, the first of two consecutive sweeping left-handers.

“It was the best pass I’ve ever done. Going through Turn 6 on the outside, him pushing me wide on to the gravel, then doing the pass from the gravel round the outside of Turn 7… that, for me, is one of the best passes I have made in my entire life.”

The overtake was one of 10 nominated for the 2023 FIA Action of the Year Award, which was ultimately won by Fernando Alonso for his last-corner pass on Sergio Pérez for third place in the Brazilian Grand Prix.

Montoya also tells us that the Austrian F3 weekend was special for him because of the limited preparation he had that weekend. He beached his Hitech in the gravel during practice and lost valuable track time, while he only had a couple laps in the qualifying session.

Then the sprint race on Saturday was run in wet conditions, meaning that he went into the feature race with very little experience on the soft tyres.

This of course put him at a disadvantage, particularly given the famously high degradation of the Pirelli tyres used in F3 last season. The Hungaroring feature race and both races at Spa-Francorchamps later in July were shortened over concerns that the tyres would not last the originally scheduled race distances.

“The tyre was actually falling apart. Those are things that, as a driver, you really have to manage,” he says.

“The old [2023] hard tyre you could really push. You could put temperature into it and slide around with it at a certain level and get away with it, whereas the medium tyre … I remember the first test, we looked at it and it started graining. That’s how bad it was!”

Whilst Montoya may joke, he also says that these differences in longevity meant drivers had to adapt their driving styles to extract the best out of each compound.

“You go from tyre to tyre changing your driving style and then adapting to the track and then adapting to the car. And then by the time you realise, you’re already done with quali!”

For the 2024 season, F3 has brought new medium and hard compounds, with only the soft tyre – used last year at Monaco, the Red Bull Ring and Monza – remaining the same. Montoya, aged 19, sits 12th in the standings on 11 points.

You can hear more from Sebastián Montoya as he answers your questions in the latest episode of the Feeder Series Podcast, hosted by Jim Kimberley.

Header photo credit: Diederik van der Laan / Dutch Photo Agency