Laurens van Hoepen will return to Formula 3 in 2025 with ART Grand Prix after finishing his maiden F3 season 13th in the drivers’ standings. The Dutchman sat down with Feeder Series in Monza earlier this year to discuss his 2024 season and why he’s coming back for another F3 campaign instead of moving up to F2.

By Daniele Spadi

After two seasons in FRegional Europe, Van Hoepen stepped up to F3 in 2024 and immediately impressed by taking podiums in his first two sprint races of the season in Bahrain and Melbourne. He had started both races from reverse-grid pole and finished second and third respectively.

His streak of points finishes in sprint races continued with another podium in round four in Monaco, but he did not score in a feature race until the Red Bull Ring, where he finished eighth on Sunday while also setting the fastest lap of the race.

His best on-track results appeared to have come in Hungary, where he put his ART on pole and crossed the line second in the feature race in second place. He was later disqualified when his car was found not to have met the minimum weight requirement.

The 19-year-old ended up scoring in nine of 10 sprint races, only missing the final one of the year in Monza. He started 29th for both races after being caught up in an accident in qualifying but rose to 13th and eighth in the two races. The 21 places he gained on Sunday was one of the highest totals of anyone across the season. 

“I would say I’ve done a good job this year,” Van Hoepen told Feeder Series when asked to reflect on his season as a whole. “We lost quite a few points, so I think we could have done a lot better championship-wise. But overall, pace-wise, it was really strong. I think we did a good job getting the maximum out of the car most times, so I’ve been happy with how I drove.

“Of course, there’s a lot of room for improvement. But I think especially towards the end of the season, even though I didn’t score that many points the last couple of rounds because of unlucky circumstances, I really feel like I did a really good job, improving every round.”

Van Hoepen said one-lap pace was his biggest strength this year.

“I think I’ve been quite strong in qualifying, getting the maximum out of the car every time,” he said. “A couple of times I’ve been in the top 12 but, even though I was in the top 12, I still made a huge mistake. For example in Bahrain, I qualified P12, luckily, but I made a mistake with shifting, so the easiest thing. Otherwise I could have been P4 or P3, which is a shame, but at least the pace has been really strong that way.”

In seven of the 10 races this year, ART put all three of its cars in the top 12 in qualifying, a record among the 10 teams on the grid. Having better starting positions helped the team rise to third in the teams’ standings after finishing eighth in 2023, when the team never managed to put all three cars in the top 12 and scored only two podiums in F3 all year.

“The team always gave me a good car in quali, so that of course helps,” Van Hoepen said. “And then the feeling that I have, I really try to feel where the limit of the car is and be on it for the whole lap, which has worked quite well.”

Van Hoepen joined ART for his FR Europe debut back in 2022 and has stayed with the French outfit ever since. He is also still mentored by former F1 driver Nyck de Vries, who raced for ART in GP3 in 2016 and won the F2 title with them in 2019.

Though the engineers and mechanics around Van Hoepen are different from those he had in FR, he said he “really enjoyed” the atmosphere in 2024. He said he also benefitted from having experienced teammates in Christian Mansell and Nikola Tsolov, who each had one full F3 campaign under their belts with Campos and ART respectively.

“Especially before races happened, I could ask, ‘What do you think is going to happen? How would you handle this kind of deg?’” Van Hoepen said. “It’s always nice to have experienced teammates next to you to learn from their experience. It’s definitely helpful also having some quite experienced engineers, and I have good relationships with my engineers here.”

While most of his F3 rivals started their single-seater careers in F4, Van Hoepen jumped straight from shifter karting into FR-level machinery in late 2021, when he joined the Ultimate Cup Series with Graff Racing. He impressed by winning seven of the nine races he entered before joining ART to race in FR Europe the following year.

Did skipping F4 entirely hinder Van Hoepen’s career in any way? 

“I think it did a bit,” he admitted. “I basically went straight to FRECA, and in FRECA you’re not allowed to test during the year and before the season, or not as much as in F4, so I missed putting new sets [of tyres] and going. I missed all those new tyre runs in the beginning of my career.

“In the end, when you do a test ,you can only do four new tyres, whereas if you do F4 you can do so many over a season. [Missing] that really hindered me a bit. 

“I think race pace–wise, it has really helped me not doing F4, or at least doing KZ instead of F4, because there I really learned how to manage the tyres. Especially now in F3, where you really have to manage the tyres, I think it definitely helped.”

After two seasons in FR Europe, in which he claimed two overall podiums at Zandvoort in 2023 and a best result of 10th in the drivers’ standings that year, he moved up a level to ART’s F3 division.

His first F3 outing came at the challenging Macau Grand Prix. Around the 6.120-kilometre street circuit, he charged from 22nd on the grid to 14th in the qualifying race and finished 10th in the main event, ahead of both Mansell and Tsolov.

Van Hoepen excelled in his only previous street circuit outing at Monaco in FR Europe in 2022, finishing eighth in both races and winning the rookie class. But Macau posed an altogether different challenge.

“For Monaco, it could have helped a bit, but Macau is in a league of its own,” Van Hoepen said. “Macau is so, so crazy. It’s nothing I’ve ever experienced or also will never experience again. It was so, so, so bizarre. So I think for the actual season it didn’t help so much, but it was amazing.”

Van Hoepen’s 2024 F3 season was perhaps his best full campaign in single-seaters so far. What could he improve going forward?

”Not necessarily making less mistakes – of course I could make less mistakes because I still make too many … but also making the right decisions at the right time,” Van Hoepen answered. “I always go for it if the opportunity is there, but sometimes I could have done things a bit differently maybe too, and that would have helped me.”

In order to do so, the Dutchman will spend another year in F3 with ART rather than jumping straight to F2, which he felt would have been premature.

“You want to arrive to F2 well prepared, so you can immediately shine. I’ve learned a lot this year, but ultimately, it might be better to do another year of F3, just to fight for the championship in F3, and then maybe go to F2,” he said. “What’s most important is that you’re ready to go to F2, and I’m not sure if I’m ready yet.”

Interview by Michael McClure

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency