Formula 3 races for the third consecutive weekend starting tomorrow at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, the home race of two drivers on the 2025 grid. Feeder Series spoke with Mari Boya, one of the Spaniards, to find out his expectations after he won at the circuit in 2024.

By Tori Turner

On his second F3 race weekend at his home circuit, Boya secured his only victory in the series during the sprint race. After sitting in third for the opening laps of the sprint, Boya inherited the lead when the leading pair of Sami Meguetounif and Santiago Ramos tangled on lap three. The Spaniard remained in first place for the rest of the 21-lap race.

The win on home soil was the highlight of Boya’s sophomore season. He managed to score points only twice more after his victory despite a consistent start to the season and ended up finishing 15th in the championship standings with 45 points.

Boya’s start to his third season in F3 was shaky, as he finished outside of the points-paying positions in both races in Melbourne and the Bahrain sprint race. But he seemingly turned a page after his performance in the Bahrain feature race, in which he scored his first points of the season with eighth place. He has scored points in three of the four races since, highlighted by a third-place finish in the Monaco feature race – his first podium on a Sunday. 

The 21-year-old is currently 10th in the standings with 32 points.

“I think we come from a good dynamic with two weekends that have gone really well,” Boya said. “The Saturday in Imola was quite bad luck with what happened. We had quite good pace to be on the podium.”

Boya had been in contention for a podium during the sprint race in Imola when he experienced car issues on lap nine that forced him to retire from the race a few laps later. Fellow Spaniard Bruno Del Pino took home his first podium of his rookie season with second place.

Campos also comes to Barcelona with momentum from having won the Monaco feature race with Nikola Tsolov in addition to Boya’s third place. The team have also won at Barcelona in each of the past three years with three different drivers from Spain: David Vidales in 2022, Pepe Martí in 2023 and Boya in 2024.

Both Boya and Tsolov showed strong pace throughout post-season testing in 2024 and pre-season testing earlier this year. Boya topped the post-season test in Barcelona when he set a time of 1:27.209 on the second day, with Tsolov just behind in second. In pre-season testing in February with the new F3 cars, Tsolov set the fastest time overall on a 1:26.618, with Boya fifth fastest.

Whilst the drivers first drove the Dallara F3 2025 at the circuit during pre-season testing in February, most have also gained experience at Barcelona in other categories. All of this weekend’s 30 drivers bar GB3 graduates Louis Sharp and Gerrard Xie have raced here throughout their junior single-seater careers.

“I feel confident. This has always been a track that all my team and I have been strong here, mainly in testing,” Boya told Feeder Series. “It’s true that this is a track that all the drivers know really well because nearly all the tests from all the categories are here.”

Boya said tyre management in qualifying would be the deciding factor for the weekend because of the high levels of degradation around the 14-turn circuit, where overtaking is also notoriously difficult. For this weekend, Pirelli have allocated the hard compound, which was last used at round two in Bahrain.

“Having that last lap with the first set in qualifying, the tyre deg will be crucial because I expect no big difference between all the drivers. I think this is the most crucial thing and I feel prepared for it.”

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency