Martinius Stenshorne took his second career Formula 3 win in the sprint race at the Circuit de Monaco, claiming his second podium of the season ahead of the ART duo of Tuukka Taponen and Laurens van Hoepen. Feeder Series spoke to all three drivers following the first race of the weekend about the start that decided it all.

By Daniele Spadi

The Norwegian, who had not scored in the last three races, was in prime position for points as he lined up on the front row of the sprint race grid.

As often happens in Monaco, the key moment of the race was the start. Polesitter Alessandro Giusti dropped to fourth even before getting to Turn 1 thanks to a sluggish getaway, enabling Stenshorne to take the lead of the race. Tuukka Taponen took second from teammate Laurens van Hoepen, who was held up behind Giusti.

“We have been struggling a bit with [race starts], with the new procedures and stuff,” Stenshorne told Feeder Series. “But luckily we’ve got it right today.

“During testing, we try to do some practice starts, but it’s not so easy to do it off the track, to have the right grip and everything, so it’s not really something that we have practiced off track.”

Chaos then ensued later during the opening lap. After points leader Rafael Câmara snuck by Noel Léon up the inside of Mirabeau Haute, the Mexican tried to get him back at the hairpin but could not find a way past. This put Léon at a disadvantage entering Turn 7, where Callum Voisin tried to get past him. As he did so, the two touched wheels and León tapped the barrier, leaving the Prema driver with damage to his left-front suspension.

Down the order, Imola feature race winner Santiago Ramos hit the back of Nicola Lacorte’s DAMS at the same corner, with Ivan Domingues and James Hedley behind unable to avoid the incident. With all four drivers plus León stopped on track with damage, the safety car inevitably came out on track and remained there until the end of lap eight of 23.

Stenshorne handled a crucial restart brilliantly to edge away from Taponen. The order of the top eight was unchanged from there, though there were passing attempts behind.

On lap 14, Noah Strømsted overtook Joshua Dufek at Sainte Dévote for 14th but hit the rear end of Brad Benavides one place further ahead. The Dane sustained front wing damage and a reported puncture, forcing him to pull into pit lane and retire the car.

Further down the field, Gerrard Xie snatched 20th away from fellow rookie Nicola Marinangeli at Sainte Dévote on lap 16, while AIX’s Benavides overtook Prema’s Ugo Ugochukwu for 12th at the same corner on lap 21.

But nothing changed at the front of the field as Stenshorne, with a margin of 2.253 seconds, claimed his second win in the series following his victory in Melbourne last season. The McLaren junior also set the fastest lap of the race on the penultimate lap.

Taponen kept his strong run of form going with second place, his fifth consecutive top-seven finish. Just as in 2024, third was Van Hoepen, who scored his first podium this season in doing so and contributed to the first ART double podium in F3 since last year’s sprint race at the Red Bull Ring.

The ART duo explained that their cars’ clutch mapping helped them execute the strong starts that put them in the podium places.

“In the off-season you can obviously practice your reaction time, but I think it’s really important to have the right procedure with the car and also the right clutch map for the start,” Taponen told Feeder Series. “In the end, the driver doesn’t have a lot to do with the start. You just need to have everything right. The tyre temp needs to be correct; the clutch map needs to be right. And after that, you just hope that you get a good reaction time and a good start.”

“It’s really important to have especially the good clutch map, trying to know which one you have to use at which conditions,” Van Hoepen added. “You really have to feel in the formation lap how much grip there is on track, so you know for the actual start what you have to do. It’s not always as easy, but today was okay.”

Behind the top three, Giusti maintained fourth but became the first F3 driver not to convert pole at Monaco into a race win. His MP Motorsport teammate Tim Tramnitz finished fifth to jump to second in the standings, 24 points behind Câmara, whom Charlie Wurz fended off for sixth.

In the fight for eighth, Voisin tried to force Mari Boya into a mistake, but the Rodin driver ended up touchingd the back of the Spaniard at the Nouvelle Chicane on the penultimate lap. That contact unsettled Voisin’s car on the exit and gave teammate Louis Sharp a chance to pass for ninth, leaving Voisin to round out the top 10 ahead of the third Rodin of Roman Bilinski, yesterday’s Group B pacesetter.

Feature race polesitter Nikola Tsolov, meanwhile, had a tough race, dropping to the back of the pack on the opening lap before pulling into the pits during the safety car with a suspected car issue. He went back out on track a lap later and finished the race 24th.

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency