Francesco Simonazzi spent three years in the Euroformula Open championship with minnows BVM Racing, often challenging for wins against better-equipped teams. In 2025, Simonazzi will pivot to being BVM’s development driver as he starts his journey in endurance racing.

By Marco Albertini

Over the past few years, Simonazzi has become known in junior single-seater circles for his tenure in the Euroformula Open Championship with BVM Racing.

With the small team from Ravenna, approximately an hour and a half’s drive from his hometown of Reggio Emilia, Simonazzi won eight races from 2022 to 2024 as the team’s sole driver and one of few non-Motopark entries on the grid. The Italian driver finished third and runner-up in his last two years in the series.

Simonazzi currently sits 11th in the LMP2 standings in ELMS with the Duqueine Team, who took class pole at the first round, but he hasn’t fully left the world of single-seaters. As Euroformula Open switches from the Dallara 320 model to the Dallara 324 from this season, the 21-year-old has been involved in testing the new car and will remain with BVM as a development driver.

“The biggest difference is essentially the engine,” Simonazzi said. “As for the aero kit, there’s really nothing major aside from the removal of the side air box. Since the car is now turbocharged, you can’t use a restrictor anymore. The air intake is now from the top, so it’s become more like a Formula 4 in terms of air intake, with the air coming in from above, right at the roll bar.

“Speaking of the aero kit, there are some small cuts above the sidepods, because with the introduction of the intercooler and larger water radiators, you need much more airflow. But really, the engine is what makes the biggest difference.”

The new Toyota TGE33 engine, developed by Japanese auto parts manufacturer TOM’S, is a three-cylinder, 1.6-litre unit used in Toyota Yaris road cars. The spec engine replaces the 2.0-litre, four-cylinder Volkswagen and Mercedes units used in the series since 2019 and previously used in the FIA Formula 3 European Championship. All but two Euroformula Open drivers, both Gold Cup entrants, had raced with the Volkswagen unit in the last two years.

“The engine is slightly heavier because, even though it’s a production-based engine, it comes with a heavier clutch bell,” Simonazzi explained. “With the introduction of the turbo, things change a bit in terms of tyres and how they respond to this major change.

“The issue with this engine is that there’s a certain RPM range where the clutch shaft enters resonance.

“In the Super Formula Lights, for example, when it first started, the issue was that the clutch shaft was too weak. So what happened? It would break. The turbo would kick in and deliver a lot of torque right during that resonance phase. It was like snapping a toothpick. It would just keep snapping.

“So now, with Toyota, Dallara and Cosworth working on it, the issue practically doesn’t exist anymore. They’ve introduced more turbo lag so the turbo kicks in after that critical RPM range, just to make sure the problem doesn’t come back in the future.

“What’s interesting is that if you exited a corner at low revs, especially a slow one, the turbo would kick in just after 3,800 rpm and slam a massive amount of torque into your back.”

Despite having tested the new Dallara 324, Simonazzi is not set to drive in Euroformula Open this year. Instead, he will help BVM and their two new drivers, returnee Vladislav Ryabov and rookie Tymek Kucharczyk, with understanding the new car.

”Regarding my commitment to Euroformula, it’s simply about staying involved. Nothing is planned in terms of races for this championship,” Simonazzi said.

“The only thing I’ll likely be doing is training and helping with development at BVM. By combining it with my own training, I can help with tyre development, car setup development, and really contribute. It’s kind of a mutual help situation, but my main focus will be on ELMS.”

Simonazzi entered all of Euroformula Open’s last 79 races with BVM dating back to round seven in late 2021. As the sole driver for a small, single-car team, Simonazzi felt he had made a ‘life step’ over the years.

“It took me from being a driver who focused on simpler cars to one who at least learned the fundamentals of serious racing, with cars that actually wear you out and push you to the limit,” he said.

“Everyone says it: with the 320, there’s no actual performance ceiling. You can always try for a better lap time, but there will always be a slightly different setup, a slightly different tyre pressure, something the driver has to do differently to improve. We’re talking about tenths, hundredths, thousandths of a second, but it’s a car that’s truly unforgiving and teaches you the basics of driving.

“Not to say I haven’t done Formula 4 – of course I have – but I really think Formula 3 helped me more in this sense. I’m very attached to it: the ups and downs, the wins I had, the races I lost, the points I missed, the races I didn’t finish.”

What Simonazzi calls an F3 car is the Dallara 320, an evolution of the F317 chassis used in the final two seasons of European F3 before the series merged with GP3 to form the current FIA F3.

In its seven-year run from 2012 to 2018, European F3 was a popular choice for young drivers, and no fewer than 16 drivers went on to compete in F1.

All of the series’ frontrunning teams eventually moved to FIA F3 – except Motopark, who have instead found a home in Euroformula Open. The German team have won the last six teams’ championships across the main Motopark entity and CryptoTower Racing satellite outfit and have run roughly half of the drivers who have competed in the series since 2019. The two outfits have had at least five cars in every event held since 2021, many times making up the majority of the field. 

Since their return to the series in 2021, BVM Racing have only ever run Simonazzi. Last year, the team had five staff members present at Euroformula Open rounds: Simonazzi’s engineer, three mechanics, and team principal Giuseppe Mazzotti.

“Not having many competitors in recent years was a bit demoralising at times,” he said, “but I always told myself I’m here and I’ve got to try, because all these years I felt like David and Goliath.”

Another challenge to Simonazzi and other fledgling outfits was the series’ two tyre manufacturer changes in less than a year. At the end of 2022, Michelin, which had supplied tyres to the series since 2015, dropped out. On 8 March, Euroformula Open announced that the French manufacturer would be replaced by Seongnam-based Hankook, but a fire at Hankook’s plant in Daejeon just four days later destroyed 400,000 tyres. The fire forced the Korean manufacturer to withdraw from supplying Euroformula Open mid-season, with Pirelli, which supplies most championships on the European junior single-seater ladder, signed as Hankook’s replacement in May after just one round.

“In 2022, we had Michelin tyres and my team had some experience with them – not on this car, but at least with the tyres,” Simonazzi said.“Then in 2023, we started with Hankook, and it felt like we struck gold. The car worked great, responded well, mostly because my engineer had experience with Hankook and this type of Formula 3. Maybe the Hankook was just a better match for the car – stiffer carcass, more resistant to the high loads this car generates.

“Then came the South Korea incident, and Hankook’s production was limited. The championship brought in Pirelli, which created huge problems for us. The tyres were too soft and couldn’t handle high loads so it was unpredictable. We tried softening the suspension, raising the ride height and trying different solutions.

“By 2024, we had figured something out, but we lost all of 2023 trying to understand it on our own. Meanwhile, Motopark had way more financial resources than us, and they had six drivers. Not just that, but they also had Formula 3 and Formula 2 drivers testing too. So instead of six, they had 18, 24, pick a number – they always had data, always different setups to compare, making progress much easier,” Simonazzi continued.

“I remember we had to test one setup in free practice 1, another in free practice 2, then pick one for qualifying. That was always a challenge, but I think it helped shape me into a more precise driver, someone who adapts to the car and extracts the most from it.”

In the long gaps between rounds in the F2 and F3 calendars, drivers from both championships sometimes do private testing in Euroformula Open machinery. At Monza last August, for example, Ritomo Miyata, Oliver Bearman, Charlie Wurz, Oliver Goethe, Tim Tramnitz and Luke Browning all took part in three days of testing organised by Kateyama, though BVM and Simonazzi were not present.

Out of his eight victories in the series, Simonazzi labelled both of his wins at the Hungaroring last year as his best.

“There are a couple moments to choose from, but my best has to be last year in Hungary,” Simonazzi said. “It was kind of like [Daniel] Ricciardo’s redemption arc from Monaco 2018.

“Hungary was never my Achilles’ heel, but I’d never done particularly well there even though I liked it. It’s a very technical track, and I had trained a lot on similar circuits like Varano or old Cremona – not fast, but super technical, with all different kinds of chicanes.

“In 2022, I only managed a second place [as a best result]. In 2023, it was nearly a disaster as I barely made the top five. But in 2024 everything flipped.

“On Thursday, I was very fast in practice. Then on Friday, Motopark came back strong [in the second practice session]. Saturday, qualifying didn’t go as I hoped. I wanted pole, but by then Motopark got their setup right and took pole. After that, race one was a disaster as I got front wing damage, and it was a pretty forgettable race.

“On Sunday, though, I was on pole for race two and I told myself, ‘Let’s see what I can do.’ I had a pretty good start and defended well in the first few corners, and once I saw a clear straight ahead of me, I said, ‘This is it.’

“I started driving like I was in free practice, no stress, and it paid off. That idea of ‘don’t look in your mirrors’ really helped. Lap after lap, I built the gap. Not just holding them off – I was pulling away. By the end, I won by 12.6 seconds. There’s even a live video of me crossing the line alone.

“Then for race three, I started third due to the reverse grid. Overtaking in Hungary is tough, so I didn’t expect much. But in Turn 1, Bergmeister and Révész were battling and opened the door. I thought, ‘Perfect, I’m doing this again.’ And I did. I started driving like Thursday again, with pure joy. That time I won by 13.7 seconds.

“It’s a moment I’ll never forget, sort of like my revenge on Motopark. There were also others, like a dominant race two win in Portimão, but Hungary stays with me more.”

Previously, Simonazzi competed in Italian F4 from 2019 to 2021 for four different teams. The last of those was BVM, whom he joined in the second half of 2020.

Having scored only two points finishes across 2019 and the first half of 2020, with a best result of eighth at Imola, the Italian soon reached greater heights. He scored a best finish of sixth in the season-ending Vallelunga round in what was his third points finish in 11 races with BVM.

The following year, Simonazzi was 14th in points, having scored a best result of fourth at the Red Bull Ring. His season, however, was overshadowed by missing three rounds after a pre-event testing crash at Misano, where he felt he was faster than regular Italian F4 dominators Prema Powerteam.

In 2022, the year after he left Italian F4, the series switched to the Tatuus T4-F421 chassis. While Simonazzi praised the Tatuus F4-T014 as “easy to drive” and “responsive to setup changes”, he was less fond of the second-generation F4 cars.

Towards the end of 2023, Simonazzi raced for Rodin Carlin in the last two rounds of the FIA Formula 3 Championship. The Italian was the third driver for Rodin Carlin’s #21 car after Hunter Yeany and Max Esterson. Competing in the first five rounds of the season, Yeany scored a best result of 16th at the sprint race in Barcelona, which would be the car’s best result until Simonazzi took 14th on his first start at Spa. He had prior experience in Euroformula Open both there and at Monza, where he finished a season-best 11th in the feature race. 

The machinery was a veritable step up for Simonazzi, at least in pace. At Monza, the fastest lap in the Dallara F3 2019 chassis was a 1:37.301 set by Frederik Vesti in 2020. The fastest lap in the Dallara 320, a 1:41.418, came last year courtesy of eventual champion Brad Benavides.

But even with the speed increase, Simonazzi felt as though he had taken a step back instead of a step forward while driving the Dallara F3 2019 chassis.

“The jump was pretty sudden,” Simonazzi said. “We were working on it behind the scenes, but no seats were available.

“It ended up being a weird move. I think I had expectations of the car that were too high. It felt heavier than the 320, as it was less responsive. Nobody wants to admit it, but it’s true. It had more power, 130 to 140 more horsepower than the 320, but in terms of aero and handling, it felt like I was back in Formula 4.

“At Monza, the car was unstable under braking and you had to be super careful with brake pressure or risk locking up. The floor had to be too high per the regulations. There were restrictions on camber, tyre pressure, all that stuff. It didn’t feel like a step forward but a step back. I hate to say it, but it’s true: that car is not real Formula 3.

“My view has always been that not the Euroformula championship itself but the Euroformula car is the true Formula 3, like it used to be. The F3 up to 2018 was like my model. The 317, which evolved from the 312 –  that’s real Formula 3.

“That’s the car Verstappen drove when he finished third [in European F3 in 2014], and the following year, he was in Formula 1. Back in the day, there was no F2, and F1 drivers went straight from F3 because what F3 teaches you is how to use aero to your advantage and drive with precision.

“Sure, the new intermediate categories help, but they also slow things down. That’s just my opinion, but when I raced those newer cars, I felt like I couldn’t apply what I’d learned with the 320 in Euroformula.

“You had to manage tyre degradation intensely and watch out for a million parameters. There were technical limitations – sensors, clutch issues, steering wheels that overheated. I honestly felt like I went backwards.”

F3 has changed its chassis to the Dallara F3 2025 ahead of this season, but the car is only one factor behind Simonazzi’s decision to forgo further F3 opportunities. The 21-year-old is currently in his second year of computer science and engineering studies at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia in Modena. The financial and time commitment to remain in F3 would not have been worth the reward.

“The reasons I didn’t pursue that path weren’t just about the car. That world is more appealing and wealthier than Euroformula, but I also loved the 320 and I knew my full-time commitment wasn’t going to be as a driver.

“It didn’t make sense to invest in that world. It would’ve taken too much time and money.
With school and now university, I knew that world would eventually end, so instead of wasting time there, I stuck with a car I already knew well.”

Header photo credit: Euroformula Open Championship