Campos Racing took their first teams’ championship in Formula 3’s Monza round after one of the most thrilling feature races of the season, with their drivers Nikola Tsolov and Mari Boya securing second and third respectively in the drivers’ standings. Feeder Series sums up the main storylines from the series’ conclusion to its 2025 season at the Autodromo Nazionale Monza.

By Tori Turner

Ugo Ugochukwu topped the final practice session of the season and came close to taking his first pole position, but Brad Benavides beat him in qualifying. The American took his second pole position of the season, but he was unable to convert it to his first win come Sunday. Roman Bilinski won Saturday’s sprint race ahead of Martinius Stenshorne and Noah Strømsted after Tim Tramnitz lost the victory. On Sunday, Campos secured their first 1-2 finish in F3 with Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak and Nikola Tsolov to win the 2025 teams’ championship.

• Pre-weekend roundtable: How Trident boss Ricci is pushing the team for a double F3 title
• Qualifying report and quotes: Benavides hails ‘unshakeable faith’ after taking second F3 pole in Monza
• Sprint race report and quotes: Bilinski takes maiden F3 victory in Monza sprint after Tramnitz penalised
• Feature race report and quotes: Campos secures F3 teams’ title with first-ever 1-2 in Monza finale

1. Trident falls short of second teams’ championship

Heading into the final round, Trident were the favourites to win the teams’ championship after leading Rafael Câmara to the drivers’ trophy in Hungary. The team led the standings with 282 points and had 19 points over rivals Campos Racing. Having placed second in the standings for three consecutive seasons, the Italian outfit seemed overdue for a second title after their narrow 2021 triumph.

“The battle or the challenge for me to take the team title is not an easy one,” Trident team principal Giacomo Ricci told Feeder Series at the start of the weekend. “Trident and Campos have been extremely close throughout the season in terms of performance. Yes, we are entering the final race event with this small advantage in terms of 19 points. But again, you are scoring points with three cars. I see already in the past things can go well, but also things can turn on the opposite side.”

Trident’s championship hopes were dulled after a difficult qualifying session in which all three drivers finished outside of the top 12. Câmara originally topped Group A with a 1:38.520 but had his time deleted for exceeding track limits, ending up last. With the combined results, Wurz was 15th and Strømsted 19th. 

In Saturday’s sprint, Wurz fought his way through the pack to make up seven places, slotting himself into the points-paying positions. Despite his efforts, he retired from the race on lap 15 after an incident while going three-wide with Noel León and Brando Badoer into Turn 1. Strømsted managed to finish the sprint eighth after penalties were applied, gaining the team one point, whilst Câmara drove to 12th on the road but fell to 25th after a post-race penalty. Campos, by contrast, scored six points with Mari Boya’s fifth-place result.

Wurz’s bad luck continued when he retired from damage on the opening lap of the feature race. This shifted the responsibility of scoring crucial points for Trident to Strømsted and Câmara, who started the race back in 19th and 30th. The teammates produced incredible drives to finish sixth and fifth respectively, making up a total of 38 positions between them. However, their efforts proved futile, as Campos scored 45 points with Inthraphuvasak and Tsolov taking a 1-2 finish and Boya coming home ninth. 

In the end, Trident ended up 11 points behind Campos, leading them to finish second in the standings for the fourth year in a row. It was their narrowest defeat over the past four seasons, one that could have been avoided with more consistent results and a stronger final weekend.

2. Tsolov does the most to secure second

Campos teammates Mari Boya and Nikola Tsolov were separated by just two points before the season finale, establishing them as the two main contenders to take second in the drivers’ championship.

Tsolov had the upper hand on Friday when he qualified third in group B with a 1:38.467, 0.347s behind polesitter Brad Benavides. Boya, who was in the same group, finished only ninth. Their results left them fifth and 17th on the grid for Sunday’s feature race.

On Saturday, Boya charged through the pack after starting halfway down the grid. By the end of the first lap, he had made up five positions to put himself in 12th. Badoer and Wurz’s incident on lap 15 helped him gain two positions, which moved him to seventh, and on the final lap, Boya passed Alessandro Giusti to take sixth place. That became fifth after Tramnitz’s penalty for an increase of 12 positions throughout the race. Tsolov, who started eighth, was set to finish where he started until contact with Giusti at the final corner on the final lap sent him tumbling down the order and cost him crucial championship points.

Tsolov started the feature race in fifth and made his first overtake on lap three when he passed Noel León for fourth. He then overtook teammate Inthraphuvasak at the start of lap seven, moving him up to third. Ugo Ugochukwu’s spin later that lap moved him a further position into second, where he remained for most of the rest of the race. Though he fell 0.732s short of victory, he added 18 points to his total, securing his second-place finish in the standings with 124 points. 

Boya had made his way from 17th to ninth, but the eight positions and two points he gained were not enough to keep second overall with Tsolov’s significant haul of points. Still, third overall was a marked improvement on his previous two seasons, each of which he finished outside the top 10 and with less than half of his final 116-point tally.

Tim Tramnitz entered Monza with an outside chance of taking second in the standings. Once Câmara’s closest rival in the championship, he had failed to score points since the sixth round in Austria, which left him fourth with 93 points entering the final round. 

Qualifying fifth in group A, the Red Bull junior lined up in third for the sprint race. Tramnitz  passed Laurens Van Hoepen on lap five and Martinius Stenshorne on lap nine to take the race lead by the halfway point. He crossed the finish line in first place and stood on the podium, but he later received a 10-second time penalty after failing to engage the start set-up procedure, which dropped him outside the points.

On Sunday, Tramnitz suffered damage to his front wing on the opening lap after starting 10th. He pitted to replace the front wing and ended up at the back of the field, with little hope of recovering second or third in the standings. His race was far from over, however, and throughout the next 21 laps he clawed back all the positions he lost to return to 10th. That valiant effort gave him one point, leaving him fourth in the standings with 94.

3. Zagazeta rediscovers DAMS’ early-season pace

Before the final round in Monza, Matías Zagazeta sat 27th in the standings with six points. He had failed to score points since the season opener in Melbourne, where he finished fifth in the sprint race. In his second season in the series, he was far from taking another podium finish, which he achieved at Silverstone last year.

“It’s been a tough year,” Zagazeta told Feeder Series in the paddock. “We started off really well in Melbourne and I think our expectations went up quite a bit, but then as soon as we came to the next races we just couldn’t really understand what was happening. We were still doing a good job, making good overtakes and doing the best job we could in qualifying, but it was just never working.”

The Peruvian driver’s troubles in qualifying, however, ended this weekend in Monza when he qualified fourth in group B with a 1:38.482, 0.362s off polesitter Brad Benavides. The time placed him sixth and seventh on the grid for the two races. 

On the opening lap of the sprint race, Zagazeta passed Alessandro Giusti to take fifth before the first safety car period. He next lined up a move at the restart on lap five, passing Ferrari junior Tuukka Taponen at Turn 1 to reach fourth. Eventual race winner Roman Bilinski overtook him at Turn 1 on lap eight to drop him to fifth, where he remained until the chequered flag.

With Tramnitz’s penalty, Zagazeta moved back up to fourth and took his best finish of the season. The result was also DAMS’ best of the season after they previously achieved two fifth-place finishes, first with Zagazeta in Melbourne and then with Christian Ho in Silverstone. 

“We maximised what we have today, so pretty pleased with that,” Zagazeta said after Saturday’s sprint race. “It was a very intense race. Always in Monza you have great racing, so it was about being clever with the race, picking your moments and making good decisions. I think it was a good race from my side. It was very clever. I think we struggled a little bit for pace in the end of the race, so we had to defend quite a lot, so I’m pretty happy with the defensive performance as well.”

Despite aiming for a podium in the feature race, Zagazeta was unable to finish the season with a double points finish. After running sixth for the first six laps and gaining fifth on lap seven when Ugochukwu spun ahead of him, he encountered issues on lap 13. While battling to defend fifth from Stenshorne, he sustained damage to his front wing endplate as the Norwegian passed him.

Later that same lap, as Taponen attempted a move down his inside at Ascari, he took a trip through the wet grass and almost crashed into the back of Strømsted upon rejoining. More crucially, that off-track excursion obliterated his front wing entirely and left him unable to stop the car properly into Parabolica. He skidded off into the gravel and retired from the race, ending his season – and his time in F3 – on a sour note.

Results and standings after round 10 at Monza

Results	P1	P2	P3
Qualifying (Group A)	Ugo Ugochukwu, 1:38.613	Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak, +0.013s	Roman Bilinski, +0.054s
Qualifying (Group B)	Brad Benavides, 1:38.120	Noel León, +0.262s	Nikola Tsolov, +0.347s
Sprint race (18 laps)	Roman Bilinski, 35:02.802	Martinius Stenshorne, +0.353s	Laurens van Hoepen, +1.012s
Feature race (22 laps)	Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak, 44:11.907	Nikola Tsolov, +0.732s	Noel León, +2.152s

Final standings	Drivers	Teams
P1	Rafael Câmara, 166	Campos Racing, 314
P2	Nikola Tsolov, 124	Trident, 303
P3	Mari Boya, 116	MP Motorsport, 177
P4	Tim Tramnitz, 94	ART Grand Prix, 152
P5	Martinius Stenshorne, 89	Van Amersfoort Racing, 138
P6	Noah Strømsted, 84	Rodin Motorsport, 128
P7	Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak, 74	Prema Racing, 92
P8	Théophile Naël, 72	Hitech, 90
P9	Tuukka Taponen, 67	AIX Racing, 52
P10	Alessandro Giusti, 67	DAMS, 30

Read our takeaways from the previous round here.

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency