With its fifth race weekend of 2025 now in the books, Formula 3 has officially concluded the first half of its 2025 season. Feeder Series brings you the main takeaways from round five at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.

By Daniele Spadi

The Spanish track offered two races with vastly different outcomes. On Saturday, rookie Ivan Domingues, who was 32nd in the points entering the round, took home his first-ever victory in single-seater racing. He led Van Amersfoort Racing’s maiden 1-2 finish in F3, with Nikola Tsolov rounding out the top three. On Sunday, meanwhile, Rafael Câmara brought home a third feature race win after topping practice and claiming pole on Friday. Frenchmen Théophile Naël and Alessandro Giusti joined him on an all-rookie podium.

• Pre-weekend roundtable: Boya ‘confident’ entering home race after taking first F3 feature race podium
• Qualifying report and quotes: Câmara takes record fourth F3 pole in Barcelona as track position proves key
• Sprint race report and quotes: Domingues heads historic VAR 1-2 in Barcelona F3 sprint race
• Feature race report and quotes: Câmara dominates Barcelona feature race to take third F3 win of 2025

1. A weekend to remember for Van Amersfoort Racing

In 2025, Van Amersfoort Racing celebrate their 50th anniversary as a professional racing team. In what is their fourth F3 season since the series’ rebranding, the Dutch outfit had mixed fortunes in the opening rounds. They only managed to gather four points finishes, though two of these were race victories taken by Santiago Ramos.

In Barcelona, however, the team had arguably their best race weekend since they joined the series back in 2022. A great qualifying performance on Friday saw VAR place all three cars in the top seven. On Saturday, a chaotic sprint race gave Ivan Domingues, who had not previously scored points in F3, his first win in single-seater racing. The Portuguese driver led home VAR’s first 1-2 in the series thanks to Ramos’ second-place finish, and with Théophile Naël ending up fifth, the Dutch outfit enjoyed their first-ever triple points finish in F3 too.

“I think it’s just what we have been looking for, for all the season, since we started,” Ramos told Feeder Series afterwards.

The Mexican is Van Amersfoort Racing’s only returning driver, and he opened up about how he was helping his rookie teammates acclimatise to the series.

“I’ve been trying to share my knowledge, what I’ve learned from last year in F3,” he said in the post–sprint race press conference. “I know it’s a tough championship. I know it’s really tough, the format that we have, that we don’t have many laps during the weekend. I just try to share my mistakes and everything because at the end, obviously I want to win, but I also want the team to succeed with me.”

Sunday’s feature race was another great chapter of VAR’s story this season as Naël claimed a convincing second place after starting in third and passing Laurens van Hoepen at the second safety car restart. The Frenchman, who had not finished higher than 15th in any of the last six races, claimed his second feature race podium this season after he finished in third place in Melbourne. Sprint race winner Domingues also finished in the points in sixth, while Ramos had to retire on lap one after bouncing off the inside kerb at Turn 2.

Following their strongest race weekend of the season, Van Amersfoort Racing now sit fourth in the teams’ standings with 106 points, just 24 behind Campos Racing in second.

2. Is Tsolov Câmara’s main rival for the title?

So far this season, Rafael Câmara has proved to be the driver to beat over and over again. By claiming pole position, victory and the fastest lap in three feature races and a further podium finish in the feature at Imola, the Brazilian has held the lead of the drivers’ standings since the opening race weekend of the season.

The search for a title rival has gone on ever since. Teammate Noah Strømsted had emerged first, though the Dane has now scored just four points in the last four races. Callum Voisin looked strong after Bahrain, but with just one top-nine finish in the next six races, he has since dropped to ninth in the standings. Tim Tramnitz and Tuukka Taponen seem to have the pace and the consistency to challenge Câmara, but each of them lost valuable points with disappointing rounds in Barcelona.

The driver who has stood out in the past two rounds is without a doubt Nikola Tsolov. The Bulgarian, now in his third Formula 3 season, set the record for the most race wins in the series in Monaco last week, taking his fifth F3 victory in the feature race after starting from pole.

The Campos driver then backed up his performance with another strong showing in his team’s home race weekend in Spain. After qualifying in second, Tsolov was among the drivers who benefitted from the chaotic sprint race start to make up six places and cross the line third for his fourth podium finish of the season. A slow getaway on Sunday dropped him from second to eighth by the time the pack reached Turn 1, but he recovered to fifth come the end of the race thanks to a strong comeback performance.

Tsolov is now 26 points behind Câmara in the standings, and he has emerged as the Brazilian’s main challenger for the drivers’ title together with fellow Red Bull junior Tramnitz, who currently sits third, a further nine points behind the Bulgarian.

3. A familiar track helps rookies shine

In its past few seasons, the championship has seen some talented drivers join the series as rookies and challenge for the title straight away – as Câmara has shown himself capable of doing so far this year. He follows in the footsteps of Arvid Lindblad, Gabriel Bortoleto and Isack Hadjar, all of whom won multiple races in the first half of their rookie seasons and went on to contend for the title.

But these incredible results mask the fact that F3’s competitive grid and high-powered car poses a special challenge for rookies not used to either.

Getting up to speed with very little on-track testing is a daunting task, especially when tracks such as Melbourne, Bahrain and Monaco – where the majority of drivers have never driven before – appear in the first four rounds of the season. The Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, however, presents a rare opportunity given its regular presence on many junior series’ calendars as well as its frequent use for test sessions. The rookies who had been struggling so far had a shot at redemption, and some of them took it.

Ivan Domingues is one such example. The VAR driver had not finished inside the top 18 in any of the first eight races this season, but he entered Barcelona with the experience of having raced there in both Euro 4 and FR Europe in the last two years. He ultimately came away with his maiden victory in single-seater racing in Saturday’s sprint race.

His teammate Théophile Naël also bounced back after three challenging weekends, taking a career-best finish in the feature race after crossing the finish line in second position. The Frenchman had claimed two podium finishes here in 2023 on his way to the Spanish F4 title along with a sixth-place finish in FR Europe last year. 

Compatriot Alessandro Giusti, who had enjoyed a second-place finish in FR Europe around this track in 2024, took home his maiden F3 podium this weekend thanks to a last-lap move on Van Hoepen for third in the feature race. Last but not least, James Wharton also claimed his best result of the season in Spain with eighth in the sprint, eight months after taking home a spectacular double win in FR Europe.

4. The teams’ title fight is not over yet

After an impressive start to the season, Trident have built a comfortable gap in the teams’ standings. After their home race weekend in Imola a fortnight ago, the Italian outfit had a 59-point lead over MP Motorsport and 75 points over Campos Racing. A difficult run of form in the last four races, however, had shrunk their advantage. 

Team leader Câmara suffered two retirements in the last two rounds, while Strømsted and Wurz only scored a total of nine points combined during that time. Even with Câmara’s third feature race win in Barcelona, Trident as a whole didn’t seem as close to their peak as usual.

Campos have been the highest-scoring team since Monaco, taking home a total of 70 points in the last two race weekends alone compared to Trident’s 41. Led by Nikola Tsolov, the Spanish outfit have now climbed to second in the teams’ standings, just 46 points behind their Italian rivals. Both Mari Boya and Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak have contributed to their rise, with the Spaniard claiming a feature race podium in Monaco as the Thai driver got his first points since Melbourne with ninth in the Barcelona sprint on Saturday.

MP are also still in the hunt, sitting third with 126 points, 50 off Trident. The Dutch team have scored with at least two cars in seven of the first 10 races, including two triple points finishes. Behind them, VAR are now in fourth with 106 points following their historic run of form on Saturday, with Rodin Motorsport and ART Grand Prix level on 90 points each.

All of this matters even more because five-time and defending teams’ champions Prema Racing are seemingly out of the picture this season. They sit last overall with only eight points, 168 behind Trident, who edged them to the crown by four points in 2021 to become the only other outfit in F3’s current iteration to win the teams’ title. Who will follow in Prema’s footsteps this year and by what margin they will win remain critical questions to follow heading into the season’s second half.

Results and standings after round 5 at Barcelona

Results	P1	P2	P3
Qualifying	Rafael Câmara, 1:28.761	Nikola Tsolov, +0.216s	Laurens van Hoepen, +0.345s
Sprint race (21 laps)	Ivan Domingues, 35:54.369	Santiago Ramos, +2.108s	Nikola Tsolov, +4.292s
Feature race (25 laps)	Rafael Câmara, 43:36.807	Théophile Naël, +2.130s	Alessandro Giusti, +4.054s

Standings	Drivers	Teams
P1	Rafael Câmara, 105	Trident, 176
P2	Nikola Tsolov, 79	Campos Racing, 130
P3	Tim Tramnitz, 70	MP Motorsport, 126
P4	Noah Strømsted, 56	Van Amersfoort Racing, 106
P5	Tuukka Taponen, 51	Rodin Motorsport, 90
P6	Santiago Ramos, 45	ART Grand Prix, 90
P7	Alessandro Giusti, 45	Hitech, 37
P8	Théophile Naël, 43	AIX Racing, 27
P9	Callum Voisin, 41	DAMS, 10
P10	Roman Bilinski, 38	Prema Racing, 8

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency