Nikola Tsolov will make his Formula 2 debut with Campos Racing this weekend in Qatar after finishing runner-up in his third season of F3 this year. The Red Bull junior spoke to Feeder Series about the two teams that have brought him there. 

By Calla Kra-Caskey

Nikola Tsolov entered his third F3 season with a heavy load of pressure on his shoulders. The 18-year-old had one purpose in returning to the series – to win – handed to him at the end of last year, when he joined the Red Bull Junior Team, by none other than Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko himself. 

“We were in talks at Campos to join the team around here last year in Monza,” he told Feeder Series at the F3 finale in Monza earlier this year. “And then randomly I had a meeting with Helmut right after the feature race, which wasn’t planned, I wasn’t prepared for it, so I felt under pressure a lot. 

“Right after the race I ran to the office.… We were talking and he told me, ‘Next year is no joke. You need to win, and that’s the only thing you need to do.’ And I told him I’m ready to do that and I’m prepared. So he gave me the opportunity, which I’m thankful for. Obviously I hope he’s happy with the job with me so far, and it looks like it will keep going, the collaboration.”

Tsolov fell just short. After 10 rounds, he clinched the runner-up spot behind rookie phenom Rafael Câmara of the Scuderia Ferrari Driver Academy, who had in Hungary become the first driver to win the championship before the final round. 

Regardless, Tsolov’s hard work has paid off. With regular F2 driver Pepe Martí’s departure for Formula E, the Bulgarian earned an early promotion to Campos’s F2 squad for the final two rounds this year ahead of his full 2026 campaign with the team. He’s one of four drivers to have joined the series mid-season, joining Laurens van Hoepen and Martinius Stenshorne, who both debuted last time out in Baku for Trident, and Stenshorne’s replacement this weekend, James Wharton.

“Before the season started, I was planning on fighting for the championship for sure, which was pretty much happening,” Tsolov said. “But then obviously [there was] a bit of trouble mid-season with disqualifications and wrong tyre choices in Silverstone.”

Tsolov got a strong start to the year, winning the Monaco feature race from pole and taking three other podiums to put himself second, 26 points behind Câmara, at the season’s halfway point. Then at round six in Austria, things unravelled, with his disqualification from feature race victory at the Red Bull Ring for a plank wear infringement followed by his descent from pole to 20th on slick tyres in a wet feature race a week later in Great Britain. 

There was also the matter of the new F3 car, to which both Tsolov and Campos had to adapt as they simultaneously got to know each other again. The Bulgarian driver had started his single-seater career with a victorious Spanish F4 campaign for the Spanish team in 2022, but he then spent his first two F3 seasons with ART Grand Prix while under the Alpine Academy umbrella. 

“It’s a new car, it’s your third year, and it has to work, right? So if the car is not good enough, we would be in a lot of trouble,” he said, “because as a third-year, you’re expected to perform. 

“We worked a lot of the season to make sure the car was perfectly fine. Also the engineers, they didn’t really take a winter break just to work on the car, which I’m super grateful for. I think we had a good start and even better progress through the year.”

That progress led Campos to the teams’ championship. Their charge was led by Tsolov but supported by Mari Boya, who finished just eight points behind him for third in the drivers’ championship, and Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak, who rounded out the season in seventh. Inthraphuvasak and Tsolov sealed the team’s first F3 title in the final round with a cool and composed one-two finish. 

Tsolov’s Campos reunion was smoothed by familiar faces in his garage. 

“I have the same engineer [José Perez] as I did in F4, so it’s good to be back working with him,” Tsolov said. “We didn’t take much time to get into the dynamic, and I think that was a key and really important for me.”

Still, their success was far from a guarantee. There were the risks of messing up the new regulations, of course, but there was also the team’s history: Campos had never finished above fourth in the F3 championship. 

“The team has progressed a lot [since I last raced for them]. In ’22, they were in the back side of the pack, let’s say, and now we’re fighting for the teams’ title. So it’s honestly incredible, and I’m really proud of the work they’ve done, and I’m proud to be part of the team and work together.”

It’s easy to forget that when Tsolov won for Campos in Spanish F4, he was only 15. After taking 13 wins in the series – an incredible eight of them in a row – on his road to the title, he stepped right up to F3, entering only three winter series races in the FRegional tier before his debut in Bahrain. He struggled significantly in F3, finishing 22nd in his first season with ART GP and scoring points only twice. In his second year with the French team, he finished 11th in the standings with three victories, but he still finished outside the top 10 more often than not and ultimately split with Alpine.

His success now raises the question of whether he would have done anything differently if he could. 

“It’s difficult to say,” Tsolov said. “Everything happens for a reason. So maybe if I came in later, I wouldn’t have been in Red Bull or in Campos. So for me, it happened in a way that it’s best for me right now because I’m still young. I’m a lot more experienced and it’s quite important to be young and experienced. 

“The issue for me was that I wasn’t really prepared for it in terms of testing. I didn’t have the budget to test, which was the main issue. I think that’s what made my first year hard. And it’s very hard to learn during the year. With races, you don’t do many laps, as you see. 

“Even in the second year, I didn’t do any tests. For me, that was the difference. If I had done a lot more testing like some other people do, I think it would have been fine.”

Although it was his third year in the championship, Tsolov, at a month shy of 19, still has plenty of room to grow. The Red Bull–Campos partnership has helped him on that front, especially living near the team’s base in Alzira, Spain, where he can train with the team every day. 

“My dedication has risen as well,” he said. “I’m a lot more involved with the sport this year especially, which has been helping me a lot. The work you do off track is so much… with Red Bull they give you exams, they do sim with you and you work with very high-placed engineers when you do sim, so you learn so much. And that has been the key for me and difference in mentality as well.”

“I go in every day to the workshop and I want to learn something new about the car – about the way, for example, Max [Verstappen] does things, the way Oscar [Piastri] does things in F1 [to] learn from the best,” he said. “And then obviously in Red Bull, with the technical side of the car, there’s endless things you can learn about.”

Interview by Michael McClure

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency