Trident’s Freddie Slater took his second consecutive pole position of the 2026 Formula 3 season in a qualifying session marked by a multi-car accident caused by the pack’s slowing down in an attempt to find a tow. Feeder Series spoke to Slater and Hiyu Yamakoshi, who finished third, about the key moments of the session and whether the qualifying format should be changed to prevent similar incidents in the future.

By Tori Turner

When the session began, the drivers wasted no time in heading out on track as the rain was already sprinkling across the circuit and intensifying by the minute. All 30 drivers completed their first flying laps in succession, with Freddie Slater going fastest with a 2:05.150 ahead of Tuukka Taponen with a 2:05.401.

Roughly half the drivers then went faster on their second laps, with Noah Strømsted rising from sixth to fourth, Pedro Clerot from ninth to seventh and Brando Badoer from 15th to eighth.

Then, with just over 22 minutes remaining, the majority of the grid was slowing down along the Kemmel straight, causing a traffic jam. This was the first of several moments in which drivers, desperate for a tow for their upcoming runs, tried to optimise their track position.

After this contretemps, five drivers – including Yamakoshi in third and Mattia Colnaghi in sixth – opted to dive into the pits at the end of the lap. In the end, with more rain anticipated, all but three of the remaining drivers all headed back to the pit lane with 17 minutes remaining, Slater receiving an adjustment to his front wing.

Everyone had returned to the track with 13 minutes remaining, and as the clock approached the final 10 minutes of the session, Théophile Naël became the leader of the pack, which once more clustered into a traffic jam as they approached Les Combes. Many drivers became impatient in the middle of the traffic, with some even driving off the circuit to gain the optimal track position.

Further along the lap, the field bunched up again through Pouhon and, led by Naël, snaked along at slow speed to Les Fagnes. So came the instruction to the Frenchman over the radio:

— “Watch out with penalties,” his engineer said. “Remember what they said on the briefing.”

— “Yeah, but no one will want to pass me now,” Naël replied.

— “Just go very slow, and we’ll see what happens.”

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What happened seconds later showed precisely the dangers of employing such tactics around this circuit. Upon rounding the left-hander, Strømsted, running in the middle of the pack, rear-ended the back of Yevan David’s car and went airborne before crashing back down onto the circuit. His momentum caused him to strike James Wharton’s car, with José Garfias also hit by David’s hobbled car. Behind,  Hiyu Yamakoshi could not avoid Nandhavud Bhirombhakdi and ploughed into the back of the DAMS driver, breaking his front wing and ending up in the barriers.

Race control almost immediately issued a red flag, halting the session with 9:38 left. Many viewers just as quickly decried the familiar sequence of events that led to the pile-up. F3 has already implemented a split qualifying format at Monza, where aggressive jockeying for track position in qualifying had become commonplace.

“We should have a minimum speed at least,” Yamakoshi told Feeder Series when asked whether the qualifying format should change more broadly. “I think this time when we had the crash, we were less than 20 kilometres per hour, which is not ideal especially at the high-speed corner. For me, we should at least have to be more than 60 kilometres. More than 20 kilometres or something – then I think it’s less chance for a crash.”

“It’s very tough to say and it’s very hard to avoid,” Slater added. “We’ve got 30 cars on such a crucial track for the tow, so it’s hard to say what can be done, and I’m sure the stewards and the FIA will do a good job of trying to analyse it and see what they can come up with.”

Ten drivers were placed under investigation for ‘driving unnecessarily slowly on the racing line, driving side-by-side during qualifying, leaving the track without a justifiable reason, and/or leaving the track and gaining an advantage’ during the lap on which the red flag was flown. This includes Naël and Ugo Ugochukwu, who are both in the top 10. Strømsted was also summoned to the stewards for both causing a collision and being the cause of a red flag. Should he lose his best lap, he would fall to eighth.

Ten minutes later, the clock started to count down once more, but the pit exit remained closed. A message from race control with 7:20 remaining then confirmed that the session would not be resumed. As a result, Slater achieved his second consecutive pole position of the season, having topped qualifying in the previous round at Silverstone. 

“It was dry on the first run when we did all our best laps,” Slater told Feeder Series on the approach to qualifying in slippery conditions. “We were more scared that more rain was coming, so that made us go to an out-push sequence and then do two [flying laps] in a row. After that, we had the pit stop and the rain started to come more and more. From then on, it was going to be tough to beat the lap times we already set in the first run, and then the red flag stopped everything and we then got a lot more wet.”

Taponen finished second behind Slater in his season-best qualifying result, having previously finished third in Austria. Yamakoshi and Strømsted finished third and fourth despite being caught up in the session-ending melee, while Ernesto Rivera ended up fifth, the only Campos driver in the top five. 

Colnaghi finished in sixth ahead of Clerot and Badoer. Championship leader Ugo Ugochukwu could only manage ninth, whilst his Campos teammate Naël failed to uphold his early-season form and finished 10th. Hitech’s Jin Nakamura finished 12th, meaning he will provisionally line up on the front row for tomorrow’s sprint race alongside countryman Taito Kato, who qualified 11th.

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency