Tim Tramnitz won his first Formula 3 race of the 2025 season after passing his rookie MP Motorsport teammate Bruno Del Pino early in the sprint race and fending him off for the rest of the race. Feeder Series spoke to podium finishers Tramnitz, Del Pino and Nikola Tsolov in the post-race press conference to find out how the race’s two safety cars played into their strategies.

By Tori Turner

Starting from reverse-grid pole, Del Pino kept his position heading into the first kink before Tramnitz, who started second, lined up to make a move into Tamburello. But Tramnitz was too far behind to pass his teammate without DRS.

When DRS was activated two laps later, Tramnitz got by at the first opportunity around the outside of Tamburello. The Red Bull junior then began to pull away, but two safety cars put his lead in danger.

The first came at the end of lap five, just after Del Pino closed on Tramnitz once more. Nicola Marinangeli pulled up at the side of the track exiting Tosa after losing a tyre. This triggered a virtual safety car, which later became a full safety car as his wheel nut lay on the racing line.

“With the safety cars, I managed to cool the tyres down a bit and manage the degradation,” Del Pino told Feeder Series. “When the safety car comes out, I was able to push to the maximum and always stay close to Tim.” 

Racing finally resumed at the start of lap nine, but contact between DAMS’ Matías Zagazeta and Rodin’s Callum Voisin at Tamburello brought out the safety car yet again. As this happened, Campos’ Mari Boya, who had been running third, experienced car issues and dropped down the order. He pulled into the pits at the end of the lap to retire from the race.

“I was now in the position to lead the restart, which is always different,” Tramnitz said. As for the feature race, he added, “it will be interesting to see how it is in dirty air. Usually, you try to let the tyres cool down during the safety car, but on this track you actually have to work for the tyres to keep them alive and keep the heat. You have a bit more work to do as a driver here.”

On the second safety car restart at the end of lap 11, Tramnitz maintained his lead with another well-timed launch as Tsolov began to put pressure on Del Pino for second. 

“I had the strategy to play the long game and try and make up places in the end. After looking at last year’s races,” said Tsolov, who has four F3 wins but no other podiums. “I started pushing a bit late in the race which was impossible to overtake. Tomorrow will probably be a different strategy as well considering our car was set up to be better.”

Del Pino held off Tsolov and caught up to within a quarter of a second of Tramnitz on lap 14, but the podium positions remained the same until the race finish. The top three stayed within DRS range of one another throughout the closing laps, with Louis Sharp in fourth also within a second of Tsolov.

With that result, Sharp took his first F3 points from eighth on the grid. During the early stages of the race, the Rodin driver was one of the fastest drivers on the track, which helped him pull off a double overtake on the two Premas of Ugochukwu and León on lap three.

On the penultimate lap, Ugochukwu dropped from fifth to seventh after running wide at Acque Minerali. Having put pressure on the American driver for several laps before that, Rodin’s Roman Bilinski inherited fifth place and secured the second top-five finish of his rookie season.

Noah Strømsted finished sixth, though he is currently under investigation for a practice start infringement. Tuukka Taponen, who finished seventh, is also under investigation for allegedly forcing León off track on lap 14. Ugochukwu managed to finish eighth after his earlier mistake, ahead of León.

The third MP of Alessandro Giusti rounded out the points with 10th place, just 0.469 seconds ahead of championship leader and feature race polesitter Rafael Câmara. 

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency