Formula 3 was back on track at Albert Park for the 2026 season opener. An action-packed weekend featured intense fights and daring overtakes, with Bruno Del Pino and Ugo Ugochukwu winning the first two races of the season. Feeder Series brings you the main takeaways from round one of the 2026 championship.

By Daniele Spadi

Campos Racing started on the front foot on Friday. Ugochukwu led the sole practice session and finished second in qualifying, with his teammate Théophile Naël taking pole. On Saturday, the sprint race was interrupted after seven full laps of racing because of a heavy crash involving Prema Racing teammates James Wharton and Louis Sharp. This allowed Del Pino to secure his maiden F3 win early, leading home a Van Amersfoort Racing one-two with Enzo Deligny in second as Brando Badoer finished third. The feature race was dominated by Ugochukwu, who won an F3 race for the first time in his career ahead of Freddie Slater and Taito Kato.

• Pre-weekend roundtable: How ‘legendary’ Prema forged this year’s F3 title favourites
• Qualifying report and quotes: Naël leads Ugochukwu for Campos 1-2 in Melbourne F3 qualifying
• Sprint race report and quotes: Del Pino heads VAR 1-2 in Melbourne sprint shortened by Prema teammates’ crash
• Feature race report and quotes: Ugochukwu claims maiden F3 victory in Melbourne feature

1. Ugochukwu is the one to beat…

So far, Ugo Ugochukwu has undoubtedly been one of the stars of the year across multiple junior single-seater championships. The American got off to a flying start to 2026 in FR Oceania, taking home the drivers’ title after a campaign perfect for preparing his sophomore F3 season.

Driving for reigning teams’ champions Campos Racing, Ugochukwu was brilliant across the entire opening weekend of the season. He dominated practice, finishing 0.427 seconds ahead of the rest of the field, and looked to have secured pole in qualifying before his teammate Théophile Naël stole it on his very last attempt.

Perhaps Ugochukwu’s strongest trait this weekend, however, was his race pace. The 18-year-old rose from 11th to eighth in the seven laps of racing held on Saturday, and though he missed out on points because of the shortened race distance, he looked like a serious contender for a top-five finish.

Other than when he slipped from second to third at the start of the feature race, his Sunday was near perfect. He quickly regained second from Freddie Slater on the run up to Turn 9 before taking the lead from Naël on lap four at the same place.

After that, he handled everything – including a safety car restart – with ease, showing impeccable racecraft and great pace to take a convincing maiden F3 win in Melbourne. He will get to round two as the championship leader, with a lot more eyes on him after such a good opening act.

2. …and so are Campos Racing 

Ugochukwu was not the sole Campos Racing driver to shine, as Naël was also impressive throughout the entire weekend. The Frenchman topped the standings in surprising fashion in Friday’s qualifying, coming out of nowhere on his final attempt to score his maiden pole position in the series.

Just like his American teammate, Naël didn’t score points in the sprint with the race’s truncation, finishing 10th. Even though he ultimately failed to score points, his feature race performance was strong.

A near-imperceptible jump start forced the stewards to hand him a five-second time penalty mid-race, which prevented him from having a realistic shot at the win. Still, he was sitting in second until the very end of the race, defending from Slater and looking to finish in sixth position despite the penalty.

Then, a safety car deployment at the end of lap 20 due to Michael Shin’s crash at Turn 5 closed up the pack, and by running until the end of the race, it nullified his chances of a points finish. He ultimately dropped to 12th having crossed the line third.

Campos Racing’s third driver Patrick Heuzenroeder, who subbed in for the injured Ernesto Rivera, was unable to score points as well, though he seemed to be more comfortable with the car as the weekend went on. He finished 23rd in the sprint and 17th in the feature.

Though Campos failed to capitalise on their promising pace in the opening weekend of the season, they are still likely to be the team to beat this year. The Spanish outfit sit second in the teams’ standings with 27 points, three fewer than Van Amersfoort Racing has.

3. Experience pays dividends

With the 2025 F3 season featuring a brand-new F3 car, some rookies had more trouble adapting to the series compared with previous seasons. Excluding Rafael Câmara, the rest of the top five in the drivers’ standings was filled with returning drivers as rookies struggled to leave their mark.

Some of those rookies have stayed for a second year in F3, and the season opener in Melbourne saw them shine. It was the case for Spain’s Bruno Del Pino, who leaves Albert Park in third place in the drivers’ standings with a maiden F3 win under his belt.

The 19-year-old secured victory in the shortened sprint on Saturday before rising from 11th all the way up to fourth in the feature race. Throughout, he showed great signs of improvement on his rookie season, which he had finished in 23rd place.

Other returning drivers also stood out in Melbourne despite not maximising their potential across the weekend. Coming off a disappointing 2025 campaign with Prema Racing, Rodin Motorsport’s Brando Badoer looked rapid in both qualifying and race trim and left Australia with his maiden F3 podium by taking third in the sprint. The Italian was also fighting for fifth in the feature race before spinning at the final corner on lap nine. He ultimately finished in 16th after making a couple more mistakes, though he looked much quicker and at ease with the Dallara F3 2025 relative to last year.

The same can be said for Nicola Lacorte. Having failed to score points in 2025, he got off to a much better start this year as he took a surprising fifth in qualifying for DAMS. The 18-year-old came in 11th in the sprint but shone in the feature, sitting as high as third on lap 16, when he overtook Slater for a spot on the podium.

Unfortunately, everything came undone the following lap, as a collision with Noah Strømsted and a further five-second penalty for moving before the signal at the race start dropped him outside of the top 10. He was also handed a 10-second time penalty after the race for failing to engage the start set-up procedure ahead of the formation lap, thus falling to last place in the final classification.

4. A start to forget for some

Where there are winners, there are also losers. In the opening round of the season, some drivers struggled uncharacteristically, most notably Matteo De Palo, who had a weekend to forget. The Trident driver and FR Europe runner-up was considered among the favourites, though his debut performance was far from what he would have envisioned.

The Italian crashed out in the early stages of qualifying, thus jeopardising his chances of scoring points. Starting from the back of the field, he ultimately finished outside of the top 20 in both races and will need to bounce back quickly from round two if he is to fight for another title.

MP Motorsport teammates Tuukka Taponen and Alessandro Giusti both had scoreless performances too, though the two returning drivers had differing fortunes. The Finn was unlucky to miss out on reverse-grid pole by just 0.093s, but thereafter, he failed to make inroads in either race. The Frenchman was nowhere near the pace he had showcased at the end of the 2025 season, finishing 21st in the sprint and 15th in the feature.

Prema Racing also had a disappointing season opener. The team looked to be on the rise at the end of an incredibly difficult 2025 season, and things seemed to be going better in Melbourne too: Wharton took eighth in qualifying, while Sharp finished in 13th, just 0.038s off 12th and thus sprint race pole.

The two found themselves fighting for seventh during the sprint but came together after an aggressive battle on lap eight, thus putting a premature end to their race. Sharp was hospitalised for further checks, and both drivers were deemed by medical staff to need rest after the crash, so they sat out the feature race.

José Garfias was the sole Prema driver on track on Sunday, though a puncture early on put him out of contention for any result worth noting. Though Wharton was classified seventh in the sprint race, the reduced points allocation meant he took home no points. The Italian outfit left the opening round of the season without having scored points, one of only two teams not to do so.

5. Melbourne delivers once more

Since its addition to the F3 calendar in 2023, Melbourne has produced some amazing racing throughout the years. The revised layout that was introduced back in 2022, coupled with F3’s fast-paced racing, proved to be a phenomenal combination yet again this year.

With the introduction of the new Dallara F3 2025 car last season, it became even more evident why Albert Park has become a fan favourite on the F3 calendar. Having also served as the season opener since last year, Melbourne has been the theatre of fearless battles and close races no matter the weather conditions.

This year proved to be no different. Drivers could easily follow one another throughout the 5.278-kilometre circuit, pulling off overtakes at almost every corner on the track despite an issue that prevented drivers from using DRS on Saturday. Scraps across the field were as intense as they were entertaining to watch.

The feature race was as entertaining as it could have been, with plenty of fights that included daring overtakes and strategic moves. Naturally, the four DRS zones helped increase the odds of close racing, but most of the merit belongs to other factors.

The increased flow of the circuit’s new layout, which features fewer mid-speed corners and sharper braking zones, mean drivers suffer less from dirty air woes while increasing overtaking opportunities. Adding to that is the nature of the new Dallara F3 2025, which enables closer racing thanks to its redesigned aerodynamic profile. Drivers can follow each other closer than before, which was proven by the sheer number of overtakes in Albert Park.

Results and standings after round 1 at Melbourne

Results	P1	P2	P3
Qualifying	Théophile Naël, 1:34.187	Ugo Ugochukwu, +0.021s	Freddie Slater, +0.082s
Sprint race (7 laps)	Bruno Del Pino, 11:35.440	Enzo Deligny, +1.381s	Brando Badoer, +2.712
Feature race (23 laps)	Ugo Ugochukwu, 42:59.653	Freddie Slater, +0.693s	Taito Kato, +2.272s

Standings	Drivers	Teams
P1	Ugo Ugochukwu, 25	Van Amersfoort Racing, 30
P2	Bruno Del Pino, 18	Campos Racing, 27
P3	Freddie Slater, 18	ART Grand Prix, 26
P4	Taito Kato, 16	Trident, 20
P5	Enzo Deligny, 12	Rodin Motorsport, 7
P6	Maciej Gładysz, 10	AIX Racing, 6
P7	Brad Benavides, 6	Hitech, 2
P8	Pedro Clerot, 4	MP Motorsport, 1
P9	Brando Badoer, 3	Prema Racing, 0
P10	Noah Strømsted, 2	DAMS, 0

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency