Roman Bilinski of Rodin Motorsport won his first Formula 3 race on Saturday morning, finishing ahead of Martinius Stenshorne and Laurens Van Hoepen. Feeder Series spoke to Bilinski about what the result meant to his family, alongside Stenshorne and original winner Tim Tramnitz. 

By Tori Turner

MP Motorsport’s Tramnitz crossed the finish line 1.092s ahead of Bilinski and Stenshorne, originally taking home his second victory of the season. Hours after the race, however, he was handed a 10-second penalty for failing to engage the start set-up procedure on the formation lap, which dropped him down to 18th, far from the points.

ART Grand Prix’s Tuukka Taponen had the strongest launch from fourth on the grid, but a dive down the inside of Turn 1 left him with no choice but to cut the corner. Polesitter Laurens van Hoepen and Stenshorne instead battled for first heading into the corner, with both drivers running wide before Stenshorne emerged as the race leader. Van Hoepen briefly took the position back but had a snap of oversteer at Turn 5, which meant Stenshorne remained in first.

Tramnitz swiftly passed Taponen to move back up into third, whilst champion Rafael Câmara made up six positions on the opening lap before the first safety car was called.

Van Amersfoort Racing’s Ivan Domingues had an off entering Turn 1, careering through the escape road and coming to a stop just past Turn 1. Feature race polesitter Brad Benavides also ran into the back of Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak and had to pit with a broken front wing, receiving a 10-second time penalty. 

Racing resumed at the start of lap five, with Stenshorne producing a calm and controlled restart. Matías Zagazeta, who started sixth, made up another place and overtook Taponen for fourth at Turn 1. Tramnitz passed Van Hoepen for second as they made their way towards Turns 4 and 5. 

In the opening laps, Charlie Wurz had begun his hunt for crucial teams’ championship points for Trident, moving from 15th to 12th. On lap five, he overtook Campos rival Mari Boya to take 11th. Two laps later, he overtook another Campos driver, Nikola Tsolov, to move into the points-paying positions. He then passed Taponen on lap eight for ninth.

On lap eight, Van Hoepen attempted to take second away from Tramnitz at Turn 1 as Bilinski made a similar move on Zagazeta for fourth. But Tramnitz soon had the advantage, becoming the new race leader at the start of lap nine when he overtook Stenshorne. Bilinski followed suit and passed Van Hoepen at Ascari to move himself into the podium positions.

“It was a bit more difficult because I thought, at the beginning, about tyre saving quite a lot because it’s a bit on the soft tyre,” Tramnitz said. “We don’t have so much experience because all the tracks we are going to, the soft tyre is a bit or the characteristics of the tracks are very different, so this is pretty much the first time that it’s a normal track so we don’t have so much data on the soft tyre. 

“In the end, it’s always a bit of a surprise, and I realised at some point that I can push quite a lot and then I started pushing. The DRS games are always technical around here.”

At the start of lap 12, Bilinski lined up a move on Stenshorne into Turn 1 and crucially got ahead before locking up. Stenshorne cut across the corner at the same time, keeping his position briefly before Bilinski appeared beside him again. Heading into Turn 4, Stenshorne maintained second, but by the next lap, he was told to give the position back to Bilinski.

The two drivers briefly fought against each other again at the start of lap 15, with another lock-up from Bilinski and Stenshorne running wide once more. Bilinski remained ahead this time around, but their battling gave Tramnitz the opportunity to break from DRS range and build a gap out in front.

“I think we did a good lap one. Then Tim had a bit more pace, so he got us and I was able to stay with him,” Stenshorne said. “But when I was fighting with Roman, after I had to cut the track and let him by, we kind of lost him. Then it was a race for P2.”

“It’s not easy, especially if you’re the car in front without the DRS,” Stenshorne added. “It’s quite powerful, so you have to manage well, but unfortunately he did and I couldn’t get by.”

After losing eighth to Boya on lap 13, Wurz was involved in a race-ending incident on lap 15 after attempting to hold onto his position. Caught in the middle of Noel León and Brando Badoer, the Trident driver was squeezed into Turn 1. He went across the escape route and stopped with damage, triggering the second safety car. 

The safety car ended with enough time for a last-lap shootout, though Tramnitz and the two podium contenders held onto their positions with ease. 

Having started the race in seventh, Bilinski inherited the win as a result of Tramnitz’s penalty, a violation of article 1.6.1 of the F3 technical regulations and article 11.15 of the F3 2025 system user manual.

The result, Bilinski’s first victory in F3, was also the first triumph for a Polish driver in series history, dating back to its founding as GP3 in 2010, and the first victory for a Pole in international third-tier competition since 21 June 2003, when Robert Kubica won race one at the Norisring.

He also returned to the podium for the first time since finishing second in the Monaco feature race. His father, Henryk Bilinski, was tearful as he watched his son lift the trophy on the podium.

“It means, clearly as you saw, a lot,” Bilinski told Feeder Series. “It’s a very emotional sport. So much goes into it. He has personally sacrificed so much for me to be here, so I’m forever grateful for that. It’s nice to see some of the emotion like that, it’s cool to see. I just can’t thank him and my family and everyone that’s brought me to this position enough.”

After leading the race during the early stages, Stenshorne finished second, and Van Hoepen finished with a podium on his 20th birthday. DAMS driver Zagazeta took his season-best result of fourth after running close to the podium positions.

“I  think if the situation or the circumstance was a bit different and we had better tyres today, we could have fought for a podium,” Zagazeta told Feeder Series in the paddock. “I think [P5, later P4] was the maximum we could really achieve today. I’m really pleased with the result, but tomorrow I want to go for that podium.”

Boya overtook Giusti on the final lap to take sixth but finished fifth, earning Campos six crucial points in the teams’ championship. His teammate Tsolov was running in eighth before making contact with sixth-place finisher Giusti, dropping him out of the points to 23rd. 

“I think all of the drivers were quite aggressive. I made a good start. Then at the apex of T1, I was P1 but everyone cut [the corner], so I was P5 after T1,” Giusti told Feeder Series. 

“It was quite painful for me because no one took the corner in front of me. Then we were very fast and the issue is that we were kind of too fast, so in the exit of the last corner, I was too close to the guy in front and going off to the start of the straight, and then I get overtaken by some driver. The last race start was a mess. We had a lot of incidents during this lap, but P7 is a good base for tomorrow.”

León, who starts tomorrow’s feature race on the second row, originally finished seventh but also received a five-second penalty for the collision with Wurz and finished 19th. Callum Voisin ended up seventh to make it a double points finish for Rodin, having started all the way back in 20th, with Noah Strømsted taking three points for Trident by finishing eighth. After penalties were applied, Ugo Ugochukwu finished ninth and Théophile Naël finished 10th.

Before penalties, Câmara finished one place away from the points-paying positions in 12th, having made up a total of 18 places from his starting position of 30th, while fellow Ferrari junior Taponen finished nine places below in 13th. Câmara, however, got a 10-second penalty for going off track while defending his position against Taponen at Turn 4 late in the race, dropping him to 25th.

Additional reporting by Michael McClure

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency