DAMS driver Gerrard Xie was named the winner of the Formula 3 sprint race late on Saturday after original winner Hiyu Yamakoshi of Van Amersfoort Racing – who crossed the line in first place, 10 and a half hours before – was disqualified for a technical infringement. In a post-race press conference before his exclusion from the results, Feeder Series spoke to the Japanese driver about how he managed the race.

By Tori Turner

Heading down to Sainte Dévote, reverse-grid polesitter Yamakoshi remained in first place with no changes within the top five. Clerot took to the escape road, as did a number of drivers behind him, but did not lose a position as he returned to the track in third. 

The first lap remained incident-free until they reached the Fairmont hairpin, where Tuukka Taponen, who started seventh, ambitiously lunged down the inside of Ernesto Rivera. The pair touched at slow speed, stopping both of them and causing a knock-on effect on the drivers behind. The drivers slowed, almost as if in a traffic jam, to avoid Taponen and Rivera.

As a result, four drivers retired from the race. The instigator, Taponen, eventually came to a halt inside the tunnel after sustaining damage to his front wing during the collision, whilst Brando Badoer stopped by the barriers at Portier while attempting to take avoiding action. In the same incident, Brad Benavides clipped Nandhavud Bhirombhakdi’s rear wheel, launching him into the barriers before Christian Ho smashed into the back of his car. James Wharton headed into the pit lane for a front wing change, with Taito Kato also coming in. 

The safety car was initially deployed to facilitate the cars’ removal from the track, but with the safety difficulties of extracting Taponen’s car from the tunnel, race control decided a red flag would be needed. This allowed Campos to change Rivera’s front wing after he picked up damage from the earlier contact.

After a red flag in excess of 30 minutes, racing resumed with a rolling start under a time limit, as race control confirmed that there were just under 23 minutes left in which the race could be completed. Clerot was ordered by his engineer to let Del Pino through into third place after his opening-lap corner cut. Meanwhile, Jin Nakamura attempted to make a move on Théophile Naël for 10th at the hairpin but could not pass him.

On lap six, three laps after the initial restart, another safety car was called after Freddie Slater attempted to dive down the inside of Rivera at the hairpin. The Briton clipped Rivera’s left-hand side, causing the Mexican to spin. As Slater slowed to avoid further contact,  Naël rear-ended him, threatening another extensive clean-up operation with the trio stranded on the exit of the hairpin. All three drivers were eventually able to continue, though they had been overtaken by the field and had no hope of gaining any points from the race. Slater later received a 10-second time penalty for causing a collision.  

The incident promoted Nakamura, Maciej Gładysz and Kanato Le to the top 10. After the initial restart on lap eight, there was a brief virtual safety car period due to further debris on the track from Slater’s front wing. 

There was no change within the top 10 for the remaining six laps, with Yamakoshi crossing the line first. 

“I knew that Monaco is really difficult to overtake,” Yamakoshi told Feeder Series after the race. “I knew the tyre pressure was a bit higher than last year. We didn’t make any risk because we’re in Monaco and … everything so we don’t really know what’s going on in the race and how the degradation goes. I just managed as much as I can, with the last two rounds ending up with shorter races.

“I also had a few safety car cars, so it’s a bit easier than what I expected to think about management-wise. I basically saw the gap and tried to find where I lost the time and where I can actually gain the time, so that’s basically what I did. I’m not going to hit the wall every lap. That’s the main point, especially to stay on track.”

The results, however, were left provisional for hours, and Yamakoshi and VAR were summoned to the stewards at 18:45 for an alleged breach of articles 1.5.2, 1.5.3 and 17.1 of the 2026 FIA F3 technical regulations. The front push rods designated for the left- and right-hand sides of the car had been mounted on the opposite sides. Following an apparently lengthy deliberative period in which the stewards weighed the letter of the law in the technical regulations against VAR’s assertions that the labelling ‘LH’ and ‘RH’ were not designated as corresponding to the left and right sides of the car in the spare parts catalogue, a decision was handed down at 22:15 local confirming that Yamakoshi was disqualified. That came roughly 10 and a half hours after the race ended and only nine and a half hours before the start of the feature race tomorrow at 7:45 local.

Xie therefore finished second, claiming not only the first podium and victory for a Chinese driver in this iteration of the championship but also the first such result for the DAMS team, who joined the championship last year. Yamakoshi’s Van Amersfoort teammate Del Pino was promoted to second – mild consolation for the loss of a second consecutive double sprint race podium for the team after their 1-2 in Melbourne. Clerot was promoted to third for his own maiden podium.

Alessandro Giusti finished fourth, with Noah Strømsted fifth. Ugo Ugochukwu made up two positions from ninth on the grid to cross the line seventh, which became sixth after Yamakoshi’s disqualification. He also set the fastest lap of the race that was eligible for points. Nakamura, who started 15th, finished seventh, with Gładysz eighth and Le ninth. Full points were awarded to the top 10 drivers per the FIA sporting regulations as 18 of 23 laps were completed, just above 75 per cent of the original race distance. 

Who would receive that final point, however, was not so simple to determine. A slew of post-race penalties were given to nine different drivers for a variety of infringements. Taponen and Benavides were given five-place grid penalties for the feature race for their involvements in the opening-lap melee at the hairpin; Nicola Lacorte, Matteo De Palo and Enzo Deligny were given 10-second penalties for cutting the opening corner; and Deligny, Louis Sharp, Michael Shin, Fernando Barrichello and Yevan David were given 30-second post-race penalties for having team members touching their cars after the 15-second signal had been given prior to the restart of the race.

Lacorte, who originally finished 11th, would have inherited 10th place and the final point after Yamakoshi’s disqualification, but his penalty shuffled him out of that position. The next four drivers behind him were De Palo, Sharp, Shin and Deligny, all of whom also had penalties. With that, José Garfias, who started 26th and crossed the line 16th, was rather astonishingly promoted to 10th for his and Prema Racing’s first F3 points of 2026.

Additional reporting by Cliona Sheerin and Michael McClure

Editor’s note, 6 June 2026, 22:07 CEST: This article was updated with the pending investigation into Hiyu Yamakoshi and Van Amersfoort Racing for alleged breaches of the technical regulations. Further updates will follow.

Editor’s note, 6 June 2026, 23:03 CEST: This article was updated to indicate that Yamakoshi had been disqualified from the race after the investigation was concluded, promoting Gerrard Xie to victory. Other post-race penalties were also enumerated.

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency