Rodin Motorsport’s Brando Badoer secured his first Formula 3 victory in the Monaco feature race, overtaking Théophile Naël on the first lap and holding on for the remaining 26 to win by 0.527 seconds. Feeder Series spoke to the podium finishers about how they recovered from incidents during yesterday’s sprint race to achieve success today.

By Tori Turner

Badoer, who lined up on the grid second after qualifying first in group A, executed a perfect launch to snatch first place away from Naël heading into Turn 1. Slater cut across the escape road, as he did during yesterday’s sprint race, but held onto third place.

At the end of the lap, while fighting Maciej Gładysz at Rascasse, Tuukka Taponen struggled to navigate the exit and smacked into the wall, retiring for the second race in succession. The safety car was called out on track as a result of the incident, and Gładysz headed to the pit lane to replace his damaged front wing.

Racing resumed at the end of lap four with Badoer remaining in first place ahead of Naël and Slater, who was closing the gap to the Frenchman. However, the gap soon increased throughout the race, with Slater rapidly bleeding time in the final laps as he attempted to create space for himself to set the fastest lap.

“It was the strategy of pretty much everyone,” Slater told Feeder Series about his strategy. “You saw me and Ugo doing quite a similar thing, we were kind of backwards and forwards. As a racer, you want to keep pushing it every lap, but for the benefit of the championship and trying to get as maximum points as you can in any situation. 

“For me today, that was finishing third at that point after the start and trying to get the fastest lap. I knew what I had to do, so it’s just anything you’ve seen this weekend between all the drivers but also in other categories.”

By lap 15, Badoer had amassed a healthy gap of 1.4s over Naël as a DRS train formed from Ugo Ugochukwu in fourth to sprint race winner Gerrard Xie in ninth. 

On lap 16, Yevan David finally managed to pass Christian Ho for 18th place at Turn 18 after battling him for position for the previous laps. David was briefly noted for leaving the track and gaining an advantage, but no further action was taken. Three laps later, on lap 19, Fernando Barrichello limped back to the pits with a broken suspension after clipping the wall, becoming the race’s second retirement. 

On lap 26, Ugochukwu broke into Slater’s DRS range but did not manage to pass the Briton during the final laps. With the top 10 remaining the same since the opening lap, Badoer thus secured his maiden race win in F3 and his first win in any category in 500 days. The result comes just one round after he took his first podium in the opening sprint race of the season in Melbourne. With 28 points in the drivers’ championship, he has scored more than double the points in 2026 as he did in all of his difficult rookie season in 2025 with Prema Racing.

“The sprint race was chaotic,” Badoer told Feeder Series. “Yesterday, of course, I got taken out at lap one, which was unfortunate. I didn’t learn anything from the car and didn’t have any data after the sprint yesterday because of it. We were aware the big points were coming today and it turned out well.”

Having notched up four points from pole positions in both Melbourne and Monaco, Naël finally scored in a race for the first time in 2026 by finishing second. Slater held onto third to earn his second podium of 2026, finishing 16.713s behind Naël. Ugochukwu was only 0.722s behind in fourth. 

“I made a bit of a mistake yesterday, but the pace we showed was really positive and I knew coming into the feature race what I had to do and the pace we had,” Slater said. “For me, it was just about resetting and going again from a bit of a different position as going from the P10 position is very chaotic as normal. It was just valuable lessons from the sprint race for myself for the feature race.”

Ernesto Rivera placed fifth in his first feature race after returning from an injury that left him unable to compete in Melbourne. Bruno Del Pino, who was second in yesterday’s sprint race, finished sixth, and Alessandro Giusti took seventh place. Having inherited third place in the sprint race after Hiyu Yamakoshi was disqualified, Pedro Clerot ended up eighth in the feature race. Xie took ninth place, whilst Noah Strømsted rounded out the points-paying positions.

Prema Racing’s James Wharton scored the fastest lap of the race, a 1:25.150, on lap 16, but he was not eligible for points because he finished 18th. The extra point instead went to Slater. 

After this weekend’s results, Ugochukwu remains first in the championship standings on 43 points, having extended his lead by one point over Del Pino on 35. The Spaniard now has a one-point buffer over Slater after they headed into Monaco on equal points, while Badoer’s win vaulted him from ninth before Monaco to fourth in the standings. Naël’s podium also aids his hopes of challenging for the title as he moves up to fifth from 12th before the weekend.

AIX Racing’s Brad Benavides did not participate in the feature race after he broke three vertebrae in his opening-lap accident in the sprint race with Nandhavud Bhirombhakdi and Christian Ho.

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency