Formula 3 returned to Barcelona to close off its first pair of back-to-back rounds in 2026. It was a weekend of comebacks for many, with Prema Racing finally winning a race with the Dallara F3 2025 car and Théophile Naël converting pole to victory on his third attempt for Campos Racing at their home track. Feeder Series summarises the key points and performances you may have missed from the third round of the season.

By Tori Turner

Théophile Naël delivered his strongest weekend to date in the championship, topping Friday’s practice session before going on to take his third consecutive pole position of the 2026 season. He cruised to a lights-to-flag victory in Sunday’s feature race, with his Van Amersfoort Racing driver Hiyu Yamakoshi and Campos teammate Ugo Ugochukwu joining him on the podium. On Saturday, James Wharton delivered Prema Racing their first victory in almost two years during the sprint race, with Freddie Slater and Gerrard Xie also finishing in the podium places.

• Pre-weekend roundtable: F3’s Clerot: ‘Close’ team environment key to improved Rodin results
• Qualifying report and quotes: Naël takes third F3 pole in a row in Barcelona as Campos secure 1-2 at home
• Sprint race report and quotes: Wharton bounces back from injury to take Prema’s first F3 win in two years
• Feature race report: Naël restores home glory to Campos with maiden F3 victory in Barcelona

1. Campos maintain points lead with home win

After taking wins at their home track for three consecutive years from 2022 to 2024, Campos Racing were temporarily dethroned last season when they failed to score another victory in Barcelona, though they still managed a podium finish. As the reigning teams’ champions, they headed to Barcelona with a strong line-up led by drivers’ championship leader Ugo Ugochukwu, already a race winner this season. The biggest challenge, then, would be whether they could convert their clear one-lap speed into victory, which they had failed to do in Monaco with Théophile Naël.

The team took their first step towards achieving this feat during Friday’s qualifying session. Naël took his third consecutive pole position this season, with Ugochukwu ensuring the Spanish team locked out the front row of the grid by being 0.039s behind his teammate. Ernesto Rivera was further behind, but he still managed seventh overall to put him in contention for points in both races.

However, the results of Saturday’s sprint race were suboptimal. Rivera was forced to retire from the race early on because of technical issues, whilst Ugochukwu made a costly mistake and spun himself out of the race. Naël managed to score points, making up four positions during the race to finish eighth overall.

On Sunday, Naël led every lap of the feature race to take his maiden win and restore Campos’ run of success at Barcelona. Ugochukwu got a lacklustre start but still joined him on the podium by finishing third in the race, while Rivera finished seventh, ensuring all three cars scored points. Naël’s win also means that Campos has won two out of the three feature races thus far – their best start to a season yet – while their Sunday haul of 46 points is the biggest in a single race in team history.

Crucially, Campos scored 51 points across the weekend, which meant they maintained first in the teams’ standings with a total of 126 points. Ugochukwu remains first in the drivers’ championship with 58 points, whilst Naël’s win promoted him from fifth to second in the standings with 52 points.

2. Van Amersfoort Racing’s consistency continues…

Van Amersfoort Racing have emerged as one of the strongest teams this season throughout the first three rounds. They started off the 2026 season on a high with Bruno Del Pino’s sprint victory in Melbourne, mirroring their start to the previous season with Santiago Ramos winning the same contest in 2025. Their success continued in Monaco, where Hiyu Yamakoshi originally took the sprint win before he was disqualified. Heading into Barcelona, they were on track to produce another set of solid results, and they did.

Despite being second in the teams’ championship with 99 points, Van Amersfoort are the only team to have had at least one driver finish in the points in every race thus far this season. This consistency continued in Barcelona, where they became the only team to have all three drivers in the points for both the sprint and feature race. In the sprint race, they occupied positions five through seven, while they improved to second, fifth and sixth in the feature race.

Sunday’s feature race offered Yamakoshi in particular an opportunity for redemption, as he secured a podium finish – this time without any technical infringements. Starting third on the grid, he executed a perfect launch to pass Ugochukwu for second straight away and remained there for all 25 laps of the race. He also scored the fastest lap, a 1:32.408, early on in the race on lap five, which added an extra point to a points total that elevated him to seventh in the drivers’ standings.

Across the weekend, the Dutch squad scored a total of 52 points, one more than their rivals Campos Racing. If their consistency continues throughout the rest of the season, they will be in a strong position to fight for the teams’ championship later on.

3. …as Del Pino becomes their likeliest title contender 

If there’s one driver that has surprised everyone during the opening three rounds of the 2026 season, it has to be Del Pino. The Spaniard is the only driver on the grid to have scored points in all six races thus far, displaying an incredible level of consistency that has granted him the chance to be in the fight for the championship this year.

Del Pino has shown a substantial level of growth since his rookie season in 2025, when he raced for fellow Dutch team MP Motorsport. He scored points on four occasions, which left him only 23rd in the end-of-season standings with 16 points. The highlight of 2025 was his podium during the sprint race in Imola – offering a glimpse of the potential he could unlock this season. 

Despite missing out on a podium this weekend, Del Pino didn’t need to finish in the top three to continue his streak of consistency in Barcelona, where he scored a total of 13 points. Six seemed to be the Spaniard’s lucky number during his home race, as he qualified sixth during Friday’s qualifying session with a 1:28.621 and finished both races in sixth as well, having made up one position from seventh on the grid during the sprint. He ran as high as third in the middle stages of the feature race, though he tumbled back down the order to finish sixth after suffering from tyre degradation late on. 

The lack of a podium, however, means he has dropped one place in the championship standings. Now sitting in third, he is four points away from Naël in second and only 10 points back from Ugochukwu’s lead. 

4. A weekend of comeback drives

James Wharton returned to the top step of the podium with Prema Racing during this weekend’s sprint race, 350 days after taking his maiden victory in F3. This marked a turnaround for Wharton on a personal level after he suffered a collapsed lung from his collision with teammate Louis Sharp in the season opener. Moreover, the result showed signs of a significant improvement for the embattled Italian outfit as a whole. 

Last season, the team struggled with the new regulations, failing to win a race for the first time since the series’ rebranding in 2019. The start of the 2026 season looked just as bleak for the five-time series champions even before their costly crash in the Melbourne sprint race. All three Prema drivers have scored points on only one occasion each this season. However, Wharton’s victory has shown that Prema is capable of winning races again and that more regular trips to the podium may well follow this season.

Wharton’s former teammate and longtime rival Tuukka Taponen also needed a positive weekend in Barcelona to try to pull him out of a slump of substandard results. Off the back of a disappointing double retirement in Monaco, he headed to the circuit with zero points compared with the 20 he had already picked up after two rounds last year. 

A qualifying result of ninth overall with a 1:28.733 gave him an advantage for Saturday’s reverse-grid sprint, which he started fourth. He finished the race where he started, just 0.455s away from the final podium position, and gained seven points. He also remained in his starting spot for most of the feature race, but he lost five spots in the final two laps as his tyres lost performance and ultimately came home 14th.

Taponen’s Saturday performance offered a glimpse of the form he had displayed throughout his rookie season in 2025. Still, there is a long way to go for both the Finn and MP Motorsport, who sit only sixth in the teams’ standings despite boasting three highly rated F1 juniors in their line-up.

Results and standings after round 3 at Barcelona

Results	P1	P2	P3
Qualifying	Théophile Naël, 1:28.263	Ugo Ugochukwu, +0.039s	Hiyu Yamakoshi, +0.135s
Sprint race (21 laps)	James Wharton, 36:57.355	Freddie Slater, +1.044s	Gerrard Xie, +1.701s
Feature race (25 laps)	Théophile Naël, 39:36.183	Hiyu Yamakoshi, +0.740s	Ugo Ugochukwu, +7.110s

Standings	Drivers	Teams
P1	Ugo Ugochukwu, 58	Campos Racing, 126
P2	Théophile Naël, 52	Van Amersfoort Racing, 99
P3	Bruno Del Pino, 48	Rodin Motorsport, 57
P4	Freddie Slater, 47	Trident, 56
P5	Brando Badoer, 41	ART Grand Prix, 34
P6	Enzo Deligny, 28	MP Motorsport, 21
P7	Hiyu Yamakoshi, 23	DAMS, 20
P8	Gerrard Xie, 20	Prema Racing, 14
P9	Taito Kato, 18	Hitech, 6
P10	Pedro Clerot, 16	AIX Racing, 6

Read our takeaways from the previous round here.

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency