Rafael Câmara walked away from the penultimate round of the 2025 FIA Formula 3 Championship with a title in hand, beating his rivals to the feature race victory after they suffered setbacks from a poor qualifying. Feeder Series analyses the main points from the series’ ninth round at the Hungaroring.

By Tori Turner

Câmara started off the weekend strong by topping the practice session, hours before taking his record-breaking fifth pole position of the season, which put him in the perfect position to take the title on Sunday. Taking advantage of his rivals’ poor qualifying results, Câmara stormed to his fourth feature race win, ahead of Mari Boya and Tuukka Taponen. On Saturday, Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak claimed his second sprint victory of the season, denying Ugo Ugochukwu his first win, whilst Charlie Wurz picked up another podium finish. 

• Pre-weekend roundtable: How different levels of experience have shaped this year’s F3 drivers
• Qualifying report and quotes: Câmara closes in on F3 title with record-breaking fifth pole
• Sprint race report and quotes: Inthraphuvasak fends off Ugochukwu to take F3 sprint win in Hungary
• Feature race report: Câmara crowned F3 champion after fourth feature race win in Hungary

1. A round to forget for Tsolov and Tramnitz

Campos Racing’s Nikola Tsolov entered the penultimate round second in the championship standings, with 28 points separating him from Câmara. After the two races at the Hungaroring, Tsolov found himself third in the standings after an abnormally weak qualifying performance left him down the order on a track where overtaking is notoriously tricky.

Whilst Tsolov proved to be fast in the opening runs of qualifying, he ended up down in 21st, 0.527 seconds slower than Câmara. The Bulgarian showed he had pace in the sprint, making up six positions to finish 15th, but he was unable to gain the crucial points he needed to stay in contention.

Still, his incredible drive from 21st to sixth in 14 laps on Sunday kept the excitement alive. If he reached the podium places and Boya won the race, Tsolov would remain in the championship fight, but he failed to overtake anyone else after lap 14 and ended up in a DRS train behind Charlie Wurz in fourth. Regardless, Câmara had managed to keep Boya behind, taking away any opportunity for the title battle to go to Monza.

Similarly, Tim Tramnitz, who entered the round 33 points behind Câmara, struggled in qualifying and could only produce a lap worthy of 17th overall, putting him out of position on the grid. The Red Bull junior failed to score points in both the sprint and feature, finishing 13th in each contest.

The German’s championship dreams were firmly extinguished on the opening lap of the feature when he spun while attempting to pass Santiago Ramos, dropping him down the order. Whilst he managed to recover to 13th, it was simply not enough.

2. Câmara seals the deal with rivals’ misfortune – and quiet determination

With all his main rivals apart from Boya qualifying outside of the top 12, Câmara set himself up to take the title on Friday afternoon. A time of 1:32.510, just 0.008s ahead of Boya’s best, handed him a record-breaking fifth pole position and crucially first on the grid for Sunday’s feature. He still had two races to complete, however, before he had a chance to be crowned champion.

Saturday’s sprint proved that, despite being within touching distance of the championship, he still had obstacles to overcome. Faced with the reversed grid, Câmara lost a position on the opening lap to Noel León, though he regained 12th after Alessandro Giusti’s accident and passed León for 11th on lap four after the Mexican ran wide at Turn 7. Benavides passed him at Turn 6 on lap six before handing the position back because he cut the corner, though León had gotten past the Ferrari junior in the meantime as well. 

On the 11th and 12th laps, Câmara overtook Taponen and Xie respectively to move into the crucial points-paying positions. He then took advantage of León and Naël’s incident on lap 15 to be elevated to eighth. The Trident driver fought Boya for seventh on the final lap of the race but ultimately ended up 0.375s behind his rival.

It was Câmara’s race to lose on Sunday, but the Brazilian successfully held off any challenges for the win to ensure he took the championship. He led every lap of the race after a rolling start in tricky conditions played to his advantage, though he had to control two safety car restarts throughout the 23 laps. In the closing stages of the race, Boya, in second, attempted to pile pressure on him, but Câmara was undeniably the fastest driver on the track. He crossed the line 1.937s ahead of the Spaniard to be crowned the 2025 F3 drivers’ champion.

Câmara became the first Ferrari junior to win the championship since Robert Shwartzman, who won the inaugural title under the series’ F3 identity back in 2019. He also follows in the footsteps of countryman Gabriel Bortoleto, who likewise won the F3 title as a rookie with Trident back in 2023 and went on to win the F2 championship last year.

3. Consistency is key for Ugochukwu 

Ugo Ugochukwu had a troubling start to his rookie season in F3, scoring four points in the first half of the season. Since the sixth round in Austria, however, the McLaren junior has found convincing pace in his new-look carbon-fibre livery, a deliberate choice by Prema to strip off the papaya paint from his car to reduce weight. 

On that first weekend with the change, he qualified in the top 10 and finished on the podium in the sprint race before earning a post-race penalty for leaving the track and gaining a lasting advantage. The 18-year-old returned to the podium last weekend in Belgium, finishing second in the sprint and marking an important milestone of 100 podiums for Prema Racing. 

In Hungary, he narrowly missed out on his maiden win when he drove from sixth on the grid to second during the sprint. Despite making contact with Giusti on the first lap when battling for fifth, Ugochukwu continued his charge as he passed teammate Brando Badoer for fourth on lap five. Just two laps later, he moved into the podium positions when he overtook James Wharton at Turn 1, and a move on James Hedley exiting Turn 4 on lap 11 set him up to chase down Inthraphuvasak for the win.

A lock-up at Turn 1 on the final lap put an end to his challenge for the win, but another second-place finish was still impressive given his form earlier on in the season.

Ugochukwu looked to be in contention for another podium finish on Sunday. Starting seventh on the grid, Ugochukwu passed Wurz for sixth on the opening lap before passing Théophile Naël around the outside of Turn 2 on the next lap. After a safety car period, he attempted to take fourth from Gerrard Xie into Turn 5 on lap seven, but Xie collided with the side of his car. The contact caused the McLaren junior to spin and stop in the run-off area, ending his race.

Of Ugochukwu’s 41 points, 37 have come in the last four rounds, a tally exceeded by only four drivers. If he continues his late-season streak of podiums, he will be one to watch heading into the final round Monza, where he took his maiden FRegional victory last year. 

4. Wurz’s podium momentum continues

Another driver who has flourished in recent rounds is Trident’s Charlie Wurz. The 19-year-old lacked consistency in the first half of the season, finishing in the points on three occasions before Austria with a best finish of sixth in the Melbourne feature race. Since the midpoint of the 2025 championship, however, he has scored points in five out of the seven races and, like Ugochukwu, took his maiden podium last weekend in Belgium’s sprint race.

Wurz likewise made back-to-back podium appearances with his third-place finish in the sprint race at the Hungaroring. Starting seventh on the reversed grid, the Austrian got ahead of Ugochukwu on the opening lap before being passed by the American at Turn 1 on lap four as the pair fought for fifth. 

Ugochukwu was by then long gone, but Wurz made a climb of his own. On lap 14, he overtook Badoer for fifth before taking fourth away from James Wharton right before the safety car was called on the next lap. Wurz then passed James Hedley at the inside of Turn 1 on the last-lap restart, securing his second third-place finish of the season.

On Sunday, Wurz added another top-five finish when he came home fourth, just 0.627s shy of the final podium position. He started sixth on the grid, with a 0.227s gap to polesitter and teammate Câmara. The Austrian fell to seventh after being passed by Ugochukwu on the opening lap. On lap seven, he passed Naël for sixth on the entry of Turn 1 before moving up a further two positions following the incident between Ugochukwu and Xie.

After the safety car restart on lap 12, Wurz was more than a second behind Taponen in third, but he gradually chipped away at the gap throughout the second half of the race. On the penultimate lap of the race, he pounced on Taponen down the inside of Turn 1, but the Finn managed to stay ahead, preventing Wurz from taking another podium finish.

Results and standings after round 9 at Hungaroring

Results	P1	P2	P3
Qualifying	Rafael Câmara, 1:32.510	Mari Boya, +0.008s	Tuukka Taponen, +0.142s
Sprint race (19 laps)	Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak, 35:28.270	Ugo Ugochukwu, +0.820s	Charlie Wurz, +1.430s
Feature race (23 laps)	Rafael Câmara, 47:14.331	Mari Boya, +1.937s	Tuukka Taponen, +12.994s

Standings	Drivers	Teams
P1	Rafael Câmara, 156	Trident, 282
P2	Mari Boya, 108	Campos Racing, 263
P3	Nikola Tsolov, 106	MP Motorsport, 166
P4	Tim Tramnitz, 93	ART Grand Prix, 144
P5	Martinius Stenshorne, 80	Van Amersfoort Racing, 136
P6	Noah Strømsted, 73	Rodin Motorsport, 108
P7	Théophile Naël, 70	Hitech, 81
P8	Tuukka Taponen, 67	Prema Racing, 75
P9	Alessandro Giusti, 57	AIX Racing, 38
P10	Charlie Wurz, 53	DAMS, 23

Read our takeaways from the previous round here.

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency