MP Motorsport’s Tuukka Taponen delivered a sensational late qualifying lap to snatch pole position away from Freddie Slater at Formula 3’s Hungaroring round, with Taponen’s teammate Mattia Colnaghi completing the top three. Feeder Series spoke to the MP duo, Brando Badoer and Ugo Ugochukwu about how the session unfolded and its significance for their campaigns.

By Michael McClure and Daniele Spadi

Taponen has had a long and tumultuous path to his maiden pole since he made his F3 debut almost exactly two years ago as a substitute at Spa-Francorchamps.

The Finn’s rookie season in 2025 was a tale of two halves. He finished on the podium twice in the opening four rounds and notched points consistently. After that auspicious start, however, he scored points on just two other occasions until the end of the season and slipped back to ninth in the standings.

These flashes of promise pushed him to remain on the F3 grid for 2026, when he switched from ART Grand Prix to MP Motorsport. His hopes of fighting for the title, however, were thwarted by a rough start to his sophomore campaign that saw him score no points in the first two rounds of the season.

Though he started racking up points from Spain onwards, he had only had one frontrunning qualifying performance this season – third in Austria – before last weekend in Spa-Francorchamps, where he took his best-ever qualifying result with second place. A first podium went begging as he fell back late in the race, but he put himself in prime position to make amends with his first pole position at the Hungaroring.

Not only was it his maiden F3 pole, but it was also MP’s first since the final round of the 2022 season in Monza in the hands of Alexander Smolyar.

Taponen also became Finland’s first polesitter in F3 or predecessor series GP3 since Aaro Vainio, his driver coach, took pole at the same circuit in 2013 for Finnish team Koiranen GP.

“It’s been tough,” Taponen told Feeder Series in the post-qualifying press conference. “We have been working super hard to get to the front. It looks like we have achieved it, and I can just smile for that and be really proud of what we have been able to do.”

When the session got underway, the entire grid committed to doing three qualifying laps, and everyone ventured out on track by the time three minutes had passed. Pedro Clerot, the first to set a timed lap, went to the lead with 23:42 remaining on a 1:34.263, his first flying lap, but his advantage lasted only a few seconds. Rodin teammate Badoer, Noah Stromsted and Slater all took turns at the top before Théophile Naël put in a 1:33.533 with 23:20 remaining, aided by a purple middle sector.

Taponen was amongst the group that left pit lane a minute later than the others, causing him to run out of sequence. He had led the session briefly between Clerot’s two laps, but the Ferrari junior’s first proper effort fell just 0.019s short of Naël’s benchmark.

Minutes later, everyone was back in pit lane to tweak their setups and put on new tyres. The pause didn’t last long, and with 16 minutes remaining the full field was on track again for their second runs. With 13:04 remaining, Slater avenged his dethroning and went to the top with a 1:33.451, setting a purple first sector along the way. Badoer followed with a 1:33.523, and Nicola Lacorte of DAMS sprang a surprise moments later to go second with a 1:33.515.

After another break in the action with 10 minutes to go, drivers returned on track for their final efforts, but few improved – or so it seemed. Slater, Lacorte, Badoer and Naël all failed to go better, setting faster opening sectors but falling back in the latter two-thirds of the lap. Colnaghi jumped to second with a 1:33.475, and points leader Ugochukwu improved to fifth – though Slater’s provisional pole put his one-point lead in jeopardy.

And then, out of sequence, came Taponen, who with 1 minute and 41 seconds remaining delivered a 1:33.411, besting Slater by four hundredths. In no sector was he outright the fastest, but he seemed to extract everything from his MP machine.

Colnaghi wound up third for his best qualifying of his F3 career. His result meant MP put two cars in the top three of an F3 qualifying session for the first time in their history.

“Obviously, it’s not been the best first half of the season for us,” Colnaghi told Feeder Series.

“We’ve struggled a bit in some tracks and been good at some. Just lacking a bit in general, in some places, and I feel we’ve worked really hard with the team and as drivers, me, Tuukka and also Sandro [Giusti]. The team in general has just been putting so much effort. 
Obviously, they want the best for us, and they’ve been pushing a lot to get us back up there.”

Lacorte also stood out en route to fourth, his own best F3 qualifying performance, as Badoer rounded out the top five.

“It was a pretty clean session,” Rodin Motorsport’s Badoer told Feeder Series in the paddock.

“The runs were good and the team did a good job. It was important to qualify in the top five to have a good starting position for both races, especially in such a close championship fight, so we are quite happy about it. We know what we could have done better, but we’re looking forward to pushing hard in the races.”

Just one thousandth behind the Italian, but with a markedly different outlook on the session, was Ugochukwu in sixth.

“It wasn’t the easiest quali in terms of the tyres, keeping them alive, but I think we made the right step throughout,” the American told Feeder Series in the paddock. “We maximised the last push at the end. Of course, we wanted to maybe be a little bit further up, but from P6 we could go forward in both races.”

“My mindset has shifted to the race,” he added. “The tyres will be a key point in the race, so we’ll try to be on the good side of that and we’ve got to take the opportunities when they come.”

Campos teammates Naël and Ernesto Rivera followed Ugochukwu in seventh and eighth. Jin Nakamura qualified ninth and will start fourth tomorrow – the same position from which he won the sprint race at Spa – with Gerrard Xie rounding out the top 10.

ART Grand Prix teammates Maciej Gładysz and Kanato Le qualified 11th and 12th respectively, putting them on the front row for tomorrow’s sprint race. It marks ART’s first front-row lockout in an F3 race since the 2024 Hungaroring feature race, when Laurens van Hoepen beat Nikola Tsolov to pole.

The third MP of Alessandro Giusti, 0.336s behind Taponen, qualified 13th, only three thousandths off Le and thus reverse-grid pole.

Strømsted, who stopped on track with technical issues in practice, never managed to maintain his early pace and qualified 23rd, while early championship frontrunner Bruno Del Pino qualified only 24th after hitting a Straight Mode board on his second run exiting Turn 11, which left him with a damaged front wing.

Tight margins defined the session, with 18 drivers qualifying within half a second of Taponen and 27th-placed Clerot, who had set the fastest opening sector, within seven tenths of the polesitter. Hiyu Yamakoshi – originally 30th, 1.108s behind Taponen – was disqualified for having team members work on the car after the session ended, but his starting position will not change.

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency