Rafael Câmara took his third consecutive Formula 3 pole position at Imola on Friday, beating out Santiago Ramos and Noah Strømsted by two tenths of a second. Câmara and Ramos spoke to Feeder Series about the session and their seasons so far at the post-qualifying press conference.

By Martin Lloyd

The Trident rookie was imperious throughout the session, continuing his astonishing start to the season. Having already topped practice on Friday morning by 0.074 seconds, the Brazilian set a final qualifying lap time of 1:32.206 in the final minutes that would not be matched.

Throughout the rest of the qualifying session, Câmara was in control. He clocked the fastest of the initial lap times with a 1:32.909 set only seven minutes into the 30-minute session. Prema’s Brando Badoer was 0.233s behind, with Tim Tramnitz, currently second in the points, a further 0.176s back.

“I was not expecting to start the season like this, especially with the new car which was a big question mark for everyone with where we were going to start,” Câmara told Feeder Series.

“In Barcelona [pre-season testing], we did a very clean and tidy job. We got the right information and we knew the direction to go. It helped as well that we have three good drivers in the team, so we can develop the car and straight away know the right direction to go.”

Câmara had also set a purple first sector on his second quick lap of the session, but a red flag deployment with 11 minutes remaining for Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak’s beached Campos at Acque Minerali prevented the Ferrari junior from completing the lap.

Badoer had completed his own flying lap just seconds before the red flag was thrown, setting a 1:32.894 to overhaul Câmara at the top.

After the session resumed, many drivers chose to complete two warm-up laps before their fast laps, and it took almost six minutes for them to register improvements. Ramos was the first to beat Badoer, going 0.452 seconds quicker than the McLaren junior to take provisional pole with five and a half minutes remaining. 

It seemed for a while that Ramos would not be beaten as drivers including Tuukka Taponen, Louis Sharp and Roman Bilinski failed to overhaul the Mexican. But Trident sent their three drivers onto the track much later than every other team, so Câmara and teammates Noah Strømsted and Charlie Wurz were still to set their final flying laps. 

By then, Câmara was down in 14th place, so he needed at minimum a clean lap to avoid falling out of the top 12 that would be reversed for the sprint race. He achieved a much better result than that, setting a 1:32.206 to beat Ramos by 0.236 seconds. In doing so, Câmara became only the second driver to take three consecutive pole positions in the current F3 after Logan Sargeant achieved the feat with Prema at the two Silverstone rounds and Barcelona in 2020.

“I’m happy with what I achieved and how we started the season,” Câmara told Feeder Series. “Now it’s about keeping momentum and maximising the results. I hope [the season] continues like this! Most likely in the championship we will have a bad weekend, but this time we need to keep it strong.”

Ramos’ second-place finish in qualifying followed on from the pole position he took at Imola last year while racing for Trident. The Van Amersfoort Racing driver won the opening sprint race of the season at Melbourne but has not scored since then. 

“Being a driver involves many things. It’s sometimes not just the work we do but the work all the team does,” Ramos told Feeder Series. “We win and lose together. Sometimes there’s also mechanical things that can go wrong – I had a couple of those. I hope it’s over. We had it today. Luckily we were able to overcome those in qualifying.

“I know where I have to improve from last year,” he continued. “We can try to keep this streak going.”

Just eight thousandths behind Ramos was Mercedes junior Strømsted in third, with Taponen fourth. The cars went two by two after that, with the Rodin Motorsport pair of Sharp and Bilinski fifth and sixth respectively, the Premas of Ugo Ugochukwu and Noel León seventh and eighth, Campos’ Nikola Tsolov and Mari Boya ninth and 10th, and Tim Tramnitz and Bruno Del Pino 11th and 12th. Del Pino will lead an all-MP front row in the reverse- grid sprint race on Saturday morning.

Callum Voisin entered the round third in the championship, but a spin at the Villeneuve chicane left him unable to improve on his final run. This left the Briton a lowly 22nd on the grid for both races. The third Trident of Wurz was impeded at the Variante Alta and also failed to better his time, putting him 28th overall, 1.656 seconds behind his polesitting teammate. 

Brad Benavides and James Hedley are both competing in their first weekend of the season for AIX Racing, replacing Freddie Slater and Javier Sagrera respectively. Benavides, who raced in 2022 for Carlin, qualified 14th, with Hedley 23rd in his second F3 qualifying session after Monaco last year. Teammate Nicola Marinangeli finished 29th.

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency