Trident driver Leonardo Fornaroli won the 2024 Formula 3 drivers’ title Sunday at the Autodromo Nazionale Monza with a final-corner overtake in a race many have considered to be among the greatest in series history. We tell you what happened and describe the emotions on the ground.

By Michael McClure

Everyone knew F3’s title decider Sunday morning was going to be intense. But what transpired defied all expectations.

In a roughly 40-minute, 22-lap shootout to determine which of Leonardo Fornaroli, Gabriele Minì, Luke Browning or Arvid Lindblad would be the 2024 F3 champion, Italy’s Fornaroli ultimately won out by passing Christian Mansell for third at the final corner of the race, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat.

Trident’s Fornaroli and Prema’s Minì, both Italians racing at home, were the main protagonists entering the race, separated by five points – 135 for Fornaroli, 130 for Minì – and lined up first and third on the grid.

Fornaroli got a strong launch from pole position as Minì fought for a slipstream off Alex Dunne, who started second and attacked the Trident driver on the opening lap. The Irishman finally got past at the end of lap one on the inside at Parabolica while the other Trident of Sami Meguetounif passed Minì for third.

Fornaroli shaped for moves several times more in the opening laps, but none of them worked. The race was soon neutralised for a multi-car incident that led to the retirements of Cian Shields, Sophia Floersch and Matías Zagazeta, though more decisive for the title battle was the fact that the charging Browning, seven points behind Fornaroli entering the race and starting from 13th, had spun and damaged his wing.

That forced him to pit, and with fourth contender Lindblad needing to win from 17th on the grid but still outside the points, the title battle became a veritable two-horse race early on.

The restart came on lap seven – and about a minute later, it all nearly came undone. Fornaroli went wide at Ascari and took a trip through the grass, rejoining two places behind Minì. That points swing was enough to tie the two contenders, and the Prema driver would have won on countback thanks to his win at Monaco.

But just as quickly, Christian Mansell got past Minì for third, leaving the two rivals nose to tail on lap eight – literally. As the Alpine junior went wide at Turn 6 on lap eight, Fornaroli tapped the rear of his car with his nose. The incident left a small blemish on the nose of the Trident, though evidently not enough to stop him from taking fourth off Minì into Ascari right after.

Meguetounif took the lead on lap nine from Dunne as the Irishman began to drop back. Two laps later at Della Roggia, Mansell – who had lost part of his nose in contact with the third Trident of Santiago Ramos – was past too.

Meguetounif was too far out in front to catch and romped to victory by 3.948 seconds. But on this occasion, taking victory was not his primary goal.

“It was tricky mentally for me, starting with my teammate that played [for] the championship,” Meguetounif says. “I had nothing stupid in mind on him. I was more about to help him to get the title. Also for the team it’s what they deserve, so that was the plan.

“When I was behind Leo in third position, I was waiting for him to go to get Dunne and I was protecting him from Minì behind me and this situation was good.

“At the end, he made a mistake, so I managed to pass him not on purpose, and from that I just had crazy pace. I went on the move on Dunne quite easy, and from that I pulled away every lap. When I had a big gap, I managed my tyres, fuel, and plank protection, and from that it was a management race.”

It took until lap 15 of 22 for Fornaroli or Minì to make a move, and they dispatched Dunne on consecutive laps. But even having moved up to fourth, the Alpine junior saw his title hopes fade with every lap he completed. Fornaroli just had to cruise.

Except that he didn’t, and on lap 18, after passing Mansell, he locked up entering the braking zone in Turn 1. He gained track position over Minì but flat-spotted his tyres, and when the Prema driver took third from Mansell into Ascari later that lap and began closing on him, the title battle suddenly reignited.

Minì threatened a move on lap 20 and finally got past the Trident into Turn 1 on lap 21, the penultimate lap, and at the next chicane Mansell retook third place from Fornaroli after the championship leader went over the kerbs.

It had swung Minì’s way. Surely. But Fornaroli had a lap and a half to steal back the place – and the title.

“When the two drivers behind me passed because I did lots of flat spots and wheelspin so my tires were not so good,” Fornaroli says in reflection, “I asked to my engineer, ‘Am I still champion?’ He said, ‘You have to overtake the guy in front.’

“I struggled a lot in the two last laps. Luckily the last lap [Mansell] was fighting with Minì, so I managed to gain a bit.

“I tried Della Roggia but I completely locked up, so I went straight. I knew almost the last one was Ascari, so I couldn’t.

“Going to Parabolica, I said, ‘Okay, I’m not close enough, but I’ll try to send it.’ I went in, he was very fair to leave enough space for me, and I managed to take the title in the last corner. It’s incredible for me.”

When he spoke to Feeder Series from Trident garage shortly after celebrating with the team, Fornaroli was joyful but reserved in his jubilation. In the post-session press conference at noontime, Fornaroli said it was the best day of his life – but he admitted he’d had better drives.

“It wasn’t a good race because I did plenty of mistakes, including the first one in Ascari,” he said. “I didn’t take the win again even if I was hoping for more. But this time, I don’t care. I will try to take it in the future.”

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Fornaroli’s early junior career displayed hallmarks of the remarkable consistency that would come to define his F3 days. In 2020, Fornaroli took ninth place in Italian F4, his first season in cars, with one podium at Monza, 12 points finishes from 20 races and zero non-finishes.

The next year he took his first win from pole position at Misano and added six podiums and points in all but four of the remaining races to finish fifth in the points. His only non-scores were retirements.

His 2022 Formula Regional Europe season mirrored his 2024 F3 season in striking ways. Fornaroli finished all 20 races and scored points in 15 of them. But despite never taking the rookie win in a race or standing on the overall podium, he won the rookie title by four points. He crossed the line third among the rookies in the deciding race at Mugello, one place behind rookie title rival Joshua Dufek.

When Fornaroli stepped up to F3, which has longer and tougher races than FR’s or F4’s, in 2023, a weakness emerged, says his F3 race engineer, Alessandro Brambilla.

“Leo has natural talent,” Brambilla tells Feeder Series. “It was a bit hidden in the deep, but the speed was there. So for me already, in the half of the season last year, he was very quick on qualifying laps, but we were not able to manage the tyre at all.

“And so during the last winter … the job was just focus on race pace. And we did so many race sims.”

On several occasions in 2023, a season he finished 11th, Fornaroli qualified well but dropped back significantly in races. In 2024, Fornaroli qualified in the top six for nine of the 10 rounds and never finished outside the top 12 – even in a chaotic, rain-hit feature race that he arguably had the pace to win.

“The only bad moment was the England race. He was really unlucky because of the situation,” Brambilla adds. “He always did his job for me.”

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Fornaroli entered the season-ending Monza round with a one-point advantage over Minì, with five other drivers still holding a mathematical chance of winning the title. The four drivers behind him entering the round – Minì, Browning, Lindblad and Dino Beganovic – had all fought for or won an overall single-seater title before, but the scenario of an outright title decider was new to Fornaroli.

The pressure was high all weekend, and Fornaroli appeared nervous in the paddock before the big race. So team manager Giacomo Ricci, himself a junior single-seater driver in the 2000s and early 2010s, did his best to relieve it.

“I try always to say to leave things quite easy,” he says. “I know it’s tough, but what I have to say is if I say, ‘Okay, it’s all about this race,’ all the pressure is on you.

“I do it completely the opposite. I simply say to him, ‘It’s just another weekend. You have all the potential to do well.’ And we did the best preparation possible for the race event, like the other one. Nothing special and went forward.”

Fornaroli had finished the sprint race eighth, one place ahead of Minì, and secured an extra point for setting the fastest lap on the ninth tour of 17.

Brambilla talked Fornaroli through the feature race, as he had done for the 37 previous F3 races run by the 19-year-old. 

“We kept calm until the end. Also the voice in the head was really smooth, and we just said to him you have to pass. If not, it’s okay. But we didn’t push too much, just to not create more barricade that for sure was already there.”

While Fornaroli battled with Minì and Mansell in the closing laps, Brambilla “tried to stay calm until he passed the finish line”. But Ricci experienced more emotions.

“They are quite difficult to describe, what’s happening at that moment on the pit wall. It was quite crazy. It’s simply something special to win the championship on the last corner of the last lap.

“It was crazy because I heard at first that the other people [from Prema], they were screaming and celebrating, and one moment after was our turn.”

Fornaroli is Trident’s second drivers’ champion in F3 and in the team’s history across several series. He is also the second F3 champion for Trident consecutively after Gabriel Bortoleto, who likewise won the title on 1 September last year, on the Friday of the race weekend.

Trident, meanwhile, ended the year second in the teams’ standings with 281 points, 71 behind champions Prema, as Meguetounif and Ramos finished eighth and 16th among the drivers. 

Ricci said Fornaroli was “always positive” even when the team and its drivers had fallen behind in their respective points standings. 

“He never gives up. He’s always been extremely fast and consistent, especially in qualifying. It was for me the strongest by far.”

His qualifying pace made him a hard act to follow for his teammates.

“We can see consistency on his results, but he’s also consistent on the driving. Whatever the position, the day, the track, the start, the tyre, he’s always there,” Meguetounif says. “I could match him sometimes, but this guy was always there, and that’s what I missed to be as good as him.”

Both Meguetounif and Ramos also say they appreciated his transparency.

“Especially on new tracks, we struggled a bit more between Sami and me,” Ramos says. “Because he was [in his] second year, he already knew a bit, so he helped us a bit on the sim.”

“Having his data, I learned a lot every time he was quicker,” Meguetounif says. “He has been full of advice this year, very good in the approach, talking about his experience of the first season to help me. It’s not often that you find a teammate that nice with you.”

The Trident team was fully united in their goal to get Fornaroli the title. Minì’s teammates started 10th and 18th and, despite their best efforts, could do little to help the Italian out from so far back. But Meguetounif in fourth and Ramos in fifth had more of a chance.

“At the beginning, we knew what we had to do. We knew we had to try to push Leo forward and try to keep Minì behind,” Ramos says.

Things eventually fell apart for him after his touch with Mansell, and once Fornaroli made the mistake on lap 7 and Meguetounif got past, the three Tridents were largely on their own. But Ramos had to be on guard.

“When I had the chance to overtake Minì, I tried to go for it, and then it didn’t work. After that he braked way too early, so I locked everything. I tried to avoid him because I knew that if I crashed him, it would look like I did it on purpose, so I did my best to try to avoid him. I ended up flat-spotting everything and caused the damage I had over in the car,” Ramos explains, referring to a trip through the grass at the first chicane on lap 10 that damaged his floor, sidepods, and left-rear wheel.

Ramos supported his teammate on track but recognised the bigger picture. “It was a fair championship for both. I think both deserved to win, and at the end, racing is racing,” he says.

Fornaroli and Minì are no strangers on track. Separated in age by three and a half months, the Italian duo competed together in 2020, 2022, 2023 and 2024 and were even teammates at Hitech GP for the first two rounds of the FR Asia season.  

“I struggled a bit in that three races,” Fornaroli recounts. “Gabi had already one year of experience more than me, so I learned a lot about him. He managed [to help] me to improve in qualifying and in the races, and in the last weekend I did, I took P3 but then unfortunately I had a penalty.

“But also thanks to him and [current F2 leader] Isack Hadjar that was also my teammate, I managed to improve a lot during the three weekends, and that shows that Gabi is a very good driver.”

Minì was disconsolate when he returned to the paddock, hugged by members of the Prema staff and accompanied by his parents and younger brother later on.

A bad outcome soon became worse when it was found that his Prema car had tyre pressures that were below the minima stipulated in the F3 technical regulations. The technical delegates reported pressures of 14.89 psi for the front left and 14.69 psi for the front right, below the minimum of 15.5, and 14.09 psi for the rear left and 13.76 for the rear right, below the minimum of 14.5.

He was disqualified a few hours after the race’s conclusion, though it ultimately had no effect on his championship placement or those of other drivers. Fornaroli was thus promoted to second in the race, only his second such finish this year, while Mansell rounded out the podium places. What was once a two-point gap between Fornaroli and Minì ballooned to 23.

The F3 decider had already provided enough drama to satiate most racing fans. Then came Bortoleto’s last-to-first charge to victory in the F2 feature race, Larry ten Voorde’s sealing his third Porsche Supercup title before his retirement from the category announced today, and Charles Leclerc’s victory for Ferrari in front of the Tifosi. It was a banner day of headlines across all series on the F1 package.

The subheadline from Fornaroli’s title victory was the fact he accomplished it with zero victories. It is a feat accomplished only once before in 21st-century junior single-seater racing – in the 2017 Formula Renault Northern European Cup – and one that speaks to the Italian’s remarkable ability to score points. In lieu of taking a race win, something 12 other drivers achieved this year, Fornaroli had seven podiums, six of them in feature races, and points in 18 of the 20 races. His worst finish was 12th in the Red Bull Ring sprint race, which he started 24th.

Furthermore, Fornaroli finished all 20 races, making it his third consecutive season with zero non-finishes – likewise a stunning record. His last retirement from a race came in the third round of FR Asia back in February 2022.

Where Fornaroli goes next is yet to be publicised, but he confirmed in the post-race press conference that a deal had been signed and would be announced soon. All indications point to a step up to F2.

Because of the rule preventing F3 champions from continuing in the category, Fornaroli’s F3 career has come to a close. So too, inevitably, will the F3 and even single-seater careers of several drivers with whom he shared the grid. Sunday’s race was the final one for the series’ Dallara F3 2019 car, which has been used in 110 F3 races as well as the 2019 and 2023 editions of Macau Grand Prix. It will be replaced by the Dallara F3 2025 next year.

It was always going to be the race that marked the end of F3’s current six-year chapter – but never could there have been a more compelling ending.

Editor’s note, 7 November 2024, 03:45 CET: A previous version of this article suggested that no driver had won a 21st-century junior single-seater title without winning. This feat was accomplished once before, by Michael Benyahia in the 2017 Formula Renault Northern European Cup.

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency