Van Amersfoort Racing’s Santiago Ramos took his maiden Formula 3 victory in Saturday’s sprint race, finishing ahead of Martinius Stenshorne and rookie Roman Bilinski. Feeder Series spoke to Ramos after the race to find out how significant his result was for him and for his team, who celebrate 50 years of operation in 2025.

By Tori Turner

Having previously missed out on potential victories from pole in Imola and Barcelona last season, Ramos finally became Mexico’s first race winner in F3 and the first winner in the Dallara F3 2025 car on Saturday morning.

Leading all 20 laps of the race, Ramos delivered a calm and controlled drive despite coming under threat from Stenshorne multiple times. Bilinski in third was the best-placed rookie and became Poland’s first F3 podium finisher.

In the post-race press conference, Ramos said he had ‘waited for this moment for a long time’.

“I’m super happy to start the year like this,” he said. “It’s a big confidence boost not only for me but also for the team with the new car.”

Starting from pole, Ramos maintained his position heading into Turn 1 despite threats from Matías Zagazeta, who had a strong launch himself. Stenshorne moved on Bilinski for third at the same spot before the Rodin driver retook the position by sliding past in Turn 3.

Zagazeta got a slow exit out of Turn 6 and lost three places by the end of the second sector. Stenshorne, the 2024 sprint race winner, had been fifth but jumped to second as Tasanpol Inthraphuvasak went wide at Turn 11. The squabbling for positions behind Ramos helped him pull out an impressive five seconds ahead of them by the start of the second lap. 

“It was clear what I wanted to do for this race, so the strategy was just to try to pull out of the DRS range from the guys behind,” he said. “I started pushing more and more and obviously using more of the tyres. I knew that once I pulled ahead of them, it was going to be really hard for them to catch me.”

A virtual safety car was called at the start of lap two to recover the Trident of Charlie Wurz, who had stopped on track after making contact with Tim Tramnitz. Ramos’ margin fell to three seconds at the restart on lap three, but it took only half a lap before a full safety car was called when ART Grand Prix’s James Wharton ran deep into Turn 11 and collected feature race polesitter Rafael Câmara and ART teammate Laurens van Hoepen. 

The safety car was called in at the end of lap eight, and Ramos held on to his position despite having lost his gap. On lap 10, however, Stenshorne caught up to within a second of Ramos to gain DRS after the 21-year-old made a mistake under pressure. Stenshorne attempted an overtake heading into Turn 11 of lap 13, but Ramos fended him off. 

A DRS train had formed among the front five by then as Bilinski, Zagazeta and Inthraphuvasak closed in, but they soon fanned out again. A final safety car period came on lap 16 after contact between Javier Sagrera and Bruno Del Pino left them stranded on track, and it ran until the end of the race. 

Having never finished in the top 10 throughout pre-season testing, Ramos said he was unsure if he and Van Amersfoort could achieve such a result at Albert Park.

“After Barcelona in the test, we were strong in some parts and not so strong in another,” he told Feeder Series. “We were expecting to struggle a bit more here in Melbourne from what we thought. It definitely was a bit of a surprise.”

As they begin their semicentennial year, VAR will have another shot of victory in tomorrow’s feature race with Naël lining up third on the grid. Câmara and Noah Strømsted will line up on the front row for Trident, who became the first team to have all three cars not classified in a race in the current iteration of F3.

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency