Formula 3 got the ball rolling for 2025 in Melbourne with a weekend full of on-track battles and changeable weather conditions. Feeder Series brings you the main takeaways from this year’s season opener.

By Daniele Spadi

F3 always provides spectacle, and the 2025 season opener did not disappoint. Albert Park hosted the opening round for the first time in the championship’s history, and the weekend’s variety made for the perfect stage for competitors to showcase their hard work during the winter.

Trident made their 2025 intentions clear on Friday by locking out the front row with Rafael Câmara and Noah Strømsted. In the sprint race, Santiago Ramos secured Mexico’s first F3 race win Saturday after fending off 2024 Melbourne sprint race winner Martinius Stenshorne. Rain hit the track on Sunday, but the conditions did not affect Câmara, who kept the lead through a safety car restart and took his maiden F3 win after the race was halted two laps before its scheduled conclusion.

• Pre-weekend roundtable: The biggest challenges F3’s rookies will face in Melbourne
• Qualifying report and quotes: Câmara leads Trident 1-2 in first F3 qualifying of 2025
• Sprint race report and quotes: VAR’s Ramos taking ‘big confident boost’ from maiden F3 victory
• Feature race report and quotes: Câmara: Trient 1-2 in Melbourne feature ‘big relief’ after triple sprint DNF

1. Trident are (once again) on top…

Having collected the drivers’ title in the last two seasons, Trident’s main goal for the 2025 season will be to take home the teams’ crown as well – a feat the Italian outfit only achieved once back in 2021.

The opening race weekend of the year was kind to Trident overall. Though all three of their cars retired from the sprint race, the team leave Melbourne with 54 points to their name, 25 more than their closest rival Van Amersfoort Racing. They do so having taken a 1-2 finish in a wet feature race.

Câmara led the team throughout the  weekend. The Brazilian impressed right from the beginning, topping the standings in free practice and leading a dominant Trident 1-2 in qualifying. The reigning FRegional Europe champion was taken out in a race-ending crash on Saturday, but he wasted no time on Sunday and dominated the feature, securing his first win in the series during his maiden F3 weekend. It’s a feat that 2023 F3 champion and F1 graduate Gabriel Bortoleto, likewise of Brazil, also achieved with the Italian outfit two years ago.

Câmara’s teammates also performed well during the season opener. Rookie Strømsted made an immediate impact, securing the team’s front-row lockout in qualifying and holding his nerve in the feature to come home in second. Austria’s Charlie Wurz rounded out the weekend with sixth place on Sunday, one position away from the impressive fifth he scored with Jenzer last season in the very same race.

2. …as their rivals struggle to get going

Though Trident’s performance came as no surprise, it differed starkly from the fortunes of the other two top teams from 2024.

Prema Racing dominated the teams’ standings in 2024, but in 2025, they didn’t get off the blocks as they would have hoped. In qualifying, both Noel León and Brando Badoer, who hit the wall in Turn 2 during the session, ended up at the tail end of the top 20, with Ugo Ugochukwu being the team’s best performer in eighth.

The American got off to a slow start from fifth on the grid in the sprint and dropped out of the points early on, while Badoer failed to make up any ground in the two races. The team scored a single point in each race, one from León’s rise to 10th in the sprint and another from Ugochukwu’s finishing in the same position in the feature. Their two-point weekend haul was the lowest in team history at this level.

It was an even tougher weekend for ART Grand Prix, who surged to third in last year’s teams’ standings. They were the only team not to take points in Australia in what was their first scoreless weekend since Barcelona in 2023. And for the first time in team history in F3 or GP3, all three ART cars failed to reach the top 15 in qualifying, with Laurens van Hoepen the highest finishing driver in 17th.

In the sprint, James Wharton missed his braking point in Turn 11 on lap three, hitting the back of Câmara’s Trident and collecting Van Hoepen in the process. All three drivers retired. Tuukka Taponen recovered to 13th in the sprint from 25th on the grid and Van Hoepen rose to 12th in the rain-affected feature, but those results weren’t enough to lift ART from last position after the opening round.

3. Experience matters

The knowledge advantage held by returning F3 drivers coming into 2025 was at a low given the introduction of the new Dallara F3 car. Though rookies monopolised the feature race podium in challenging weather conditions, experience still proved an important factor, especially in racecraft and on-track battles.

Ramos and Martinius Stenshorne lit up the track in Saturday’s sprint race. The former defended his reverse-grid pole with confidence en route to becoming the first Mexican to win a race in championship history, while the latter made several incisive moves that propelled him to second position.

It was also a fantastic weekend for AIX’s Nikita Bedrin, who was called up by the team to fill their third seat for the first race of the season. Bedrin produced one of his strongest F3 weekends ever, finishing in sixth position in the sprint race and holding on to fourth on Sunday to sit fourth in the points after round one. His 2024 teammate Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak also enjoyed a strong start to his season, finishing fourth in the sprint and seventh in the feature for Campos Racing.

Strong performances in one of the two races from Tim Tramnitz, Charlie Wurz and Matías Zagazeta mean that of the 15 drivers who scored points throughout the weekend, 10 are F3 returnees.

4. A positive debut for the new car

Before the start of the season, several returning drivers talked to Feeder Series about their adaptation to the new Dallara F3 2025, praising its driveability and overall speed. But  whether the new car would deliver on the series’ promises for closer racing and more overtaking opportunities remained an open question.

Though it’s hard to weigh the actual effect of Dallara’s new piece of machinery given the tricky weather conditions of the feature race, the amount of quality racing produced by the 30 drivers in the sprint race was nonetheless impressive.

Drivers seemed at ease in following their rivals closely, especially in sector three, the circuit’s most technical section. Having four DRS zones certainly helped, but the wheel-to-wheel racing was enjoyable to watch. Martinius Stenshorne, Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak and Roman Bilinski in particular put on a show during the opening laps of the sprint race, swapping positions across several laps.

Even with DRS disabled and only a handful of green-flag laps in the wet feature race, drivers could follow one another and set up moves.

Round two in Bahrain will help paint a more complete picture, but as far as first impressions go, the Dallara F3 2025 has made a promising debut.

Results and standings after round 1 in Melbourne

Results	P1	P2	P3
Qualifying	Rafael Câmara, 1:34.999	Noah Strømsted, +0.129s	Théophile Naël, +0.567s
Sprint race (20 laps)	Santiago Ramos, 42:20.594	Martinius Stenshorne, +0.408s	Roman Bilinski, +0.676s
Feature race (16 laps)	Rafael Câmara, 34:43.966	Noah Strømsted, +0.517s	Théophile Naël, +1.152s

Standings	Drivers	Teams
P1	Rafael Câmara, 28	Trident, 54
P2	Théophile Naël, 19	Van Amersfoort Racing, 29
P3	Noah Strømsted, 18	AIX Racing, 17
P4	Nikita Bedrin, 17	Campos Racing, 16
P5	Martinius Stenshorne, 14	Hitech, 14
P6	Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak, 13	Rodin Motorsport, 12
P7	Santiago Ramos, 10	MP Motorsport, 10
P8	Roman Bilinski, 10	DAMS, 6
P9	Tim Tramnitz, 10	Prema Racing, 2
P10	Charlie Wurz, 8	ART Grand Prix, 0

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency