James Wharton’s sophomore season in Formula 3 was punctuated by a nasty crash at the Melbourne opener that left him with a lung injury, but he made a full recovery and soldiered on undeterred through the summer. Feeder Series caught up with the Prema Racing driver at the most recent round in Budapest to discuss his season, his recovery process, and his expectations for the final two rounds.

By Tori Turner

At first, James Wharton’s biggest concern was results.

Four points had gone begging because of the collision with teammate Louis Sharp in the sprint race earlier on Saturday. His Prema-run Dallara F3 2025 had been heavily damaged in the violent rear-first impact against the Turn 5 barrier, but parts could always be replaced. Starting the first feature race of the season from eighth, Wharton would have another chance to score in front of his home crowd at Melbourne the next day.

And then, as he waited for the results of his post-crash assessments, another fear arose. Maybe he wouldn’t score. Maybe he couldn’t even try.

“It took a while for me to realise that I wouldn’t be racing on Sunday,” Wharton said. “I never thought that was even a thing. My full mentality was to get back in the car and try to score some points on Sunday – let’s say, to bring the weekend back.

“When you’re getting told by doctors you’re not allowed to race, it’s very tough. It’s something no driver wants to hear, and especially me when I knew it was such a pivotal year.”

Wharton had been withdrawn from the feature race on the advice of medical professionals. Reports after the weekend confirmed that the high-speed impact left him with a pneumothorax – a collapsed lung, restricting his breathing.

“At the end of the day, the doctors are doing their job,” Wharton added, “and you can’t get upset at that.” 

While the incident soiled what was meant to be a joyful return to F3 at Wharton’s home circuit, the proximity came with a silver lining. The Albert Park circuit in Melbourne is just a half hour’s drive from Wharton’s hometown, Bundoora. That meant when he was not cleared to fly back to his residence in Milan, Italy, he could continue recovering at home with his parents and sister.

Things had been looking good beforehand. He placed eighth in Friday’s qualifying session, 0.434 seconds away from polesitter Théophile Naël. Having lined up fifth for the reverse-grid sprint race, he was in a comfortable position to fight for the top three before falling into the clutches of Sharp, running eighth.

On lap eight, after Wharton pushed Sharp off track at Turn 4, the two collided and speared into the tyre barrier. While the pair walked away, the race was red-flagged and ultimately not restarted because of the amount of clean-up required to fix the barriers.

Having a collapsed lung came as a shock to Wharton, who said he had never previously been in hospital because of a racing incident in his career. 

“With a lung issue, it’s bigger than motorsport, so I had to fix that. I was very lucky that we didn’t do Bahrain,” he said. “At the same time, it’s never good to start the year like that. At least I’m healthy now.”

The cancellation of the championship’s second round, originally scheduled for 10–12 April, gave Wharton the chance to recover without being further limited by missing a round. By time of the series’ in-season test session in May at Spielberg, added after the Bahrain cancellation, he had been cleared to fly to Europe – and drive there too.

Two weeks after that test and just under three months after the crash, Wharton was back racing again, now at the even tighter and more demanding Circuit de Monaco. He was far from his Melbourne performance, however, crossing the line 22nd in the sprint – though penalties later promoted him to 15th – and 18th in the feature race. 

One week later, his fortunes changed again. After qualifying 11th and starting second for the reverse-grid sprint race in Barcelona, he secured his second victory in F3, finishing 1.044s ahead of current points leader Freddie Slater. He could not repeat his results in the feature race and finished outside the points in 12th.

Since his win in Barcelona, Wharton has scored points at every round except round six at Spa. He placed fourth in the Spielberg sprint race and 10th in the Silverstone sprint race. In Budapest, he secured his first-ever double points finish in F3, with eighth and seventh. These results mean that, curiously, he has scored at the same four rounds as he did in 2025.

Still, Wharton feels there have been missed opportunities. The crash in Melbourne is one, a penalty for weaving that dropped him from fourth to 11th in the Silverstone feature race another. A heavy accident less than 10 minutes into the practice session in Monaco – his first outing on a race weekend since his Melbourne crash – left him with little track time before perhaps the most important qualifying session of the year.

“My patience has been tested a lot in 2026,” Wharton said. “I know that I’ve had the pace and I’ve shown it in Barcelona, shown it in Silverstone. I nearly had a double podium in Silverstone and walked away with one point.

“Patience is key in this sport, and right now, it’s a tough part of my career. We have ups and downs in sports, but at the same time it’s come at the worst time. But we still need to push through and try to get better every weekend.”

For the first three years of his junior single-seater career, Wharton was a mainstay at Prema Racing. He competed with the Italian outfit – or teams with close partnerships with them – in six championships from 2022 to 2024.

In his first year, Wharton competed in the national F4 series of Italy, Germany and the United Arab Emirates, placing fifth in every championship. In 2023, Wharton won his first championship in F4 UAE before going on to finish fourth in Italian F4 and second in Euro 4.

In their third season together, they entered FRegional Europe, and Wharton excelled in the second half of the season in particular to finish second on 234 points with four wins and six podiums.

Despite their success, their partnership came to a close at the end of that 2024 season. He had signed with ART Grand Prix for F3 in 2025, entering the Macau Grand Prix ahead of his rookie campaign with the French team.

His year away from Prema was, relative to his previous seasons, suboptimal. In his F3 campaign, the Australian scored points on just four occasions, which included his maiden victory in the Austria sprint race. He ended up 18th in the standings with just 25 points, being the lowest-scoring member of ART. 

After a difficult season, he made the choice to return to the team that had laid the foundations for his career for his sophomore season. The Prema he found, however, looked different.

While personnel changes happen from time to time in motorsport, rarely does an organisation’s entire leadership cadre depart. Yet at Prema, the founding Rosin family, including team principal René Rosin, abruptly left the team at the start of 2026.

“The Prema I started with has definitely changed quite a lot,” Wharton told Feeder Series. “New owners, obviously, in 2026, but overall, I’ve been super happy with the team. The mechanics, the engineers have all stayed the same, and I’m very comfortable in this team. There’s a reason I came back – to feel like a second family, like I’ve said many, many times. It just feels good to be back in the red car.”

Heading into 2026 with a fresh mindset and a familiar team close to his home in Milan to back him, Wharton believed he could challenge for the title. 

With that in mind, Wharton is evidently not satisfied with the outcome of his efforts so far in 2026 – though he has learned.

“It’s not been the easiest,” he said. “I’ve learned a lot about myself this year. I turned 20 a couple of weeks ago and I feel a lot older. I feel a lot more mature and I’m able to do a good job. I just haven’t been able to quite get the results.”

For a driver in his position, in their second year of F3 and fifth in single-seaters, producing strong results and placing inside the top 10 is critical for career progression.

“There was a lot riding on this season,” he said on the eve of the Budapest round. “I had to do a good job. I felt there’s been a lot of incidents that have really changed my year. I should be sitting here in Budapest in the top six, top seven of the championship, and at the same time, we’re P17 just because of our crash in Melbourne and then Monaco. We basically didn’t do the weekend either with the crash in FP.

“Going into the year, I was fighting for the championship and fighting for a top five, and I felt we had the package to do that. It feels like another year of getting lost in incidents and not being able to show our full potential.”

After the seventh round in Budapest, Wharton now sits 15th in the standings on 28 points, three more than he had scored throughout the 2025 season. Prema – who were five-time teams’ champions under Rosin’s leadership – have struggled as a whole, and Wharton is their highest-scoring driver, sitting ahead of Sharp in 17th and José Garfias in 28th. He has also taken on somewhat of a leading role within the line-up internally, building on his experience of being de facto team leader over the winter at new FR Oceania squad HMD Motorsports with TJ Speed.

With two race weekends left after the summer break, hopes of a top-five finish overall are all but extinguished, with fifth-placed Brando Badoer 43 points ahead. So Wharton has another focus. 

“It’s now just about developing as a driver more and more,” he said. “At the end of the day, I feel I’m one of the best here and I haven’t been able to show it in F3 at any point. For me, the goal is just to be the best I can in the next couple of weekends. The championship’s gone now, but at the same time we can still fight for wins, for podiums.”

Wharton identified consistency as his biggest weakness across his two seasons in F3. 

“Right now, it’s just about being consistently at my best,” he said. “I’d say my FRECA season definitely showed that. That’s the one time I really showed my full potential over the whole season. You can see those weekends when I’m at my best, there’s not many people that can beat me. At the end of the day, Rafa Câmara’s fighting for wins in Formula 2 and I beat him in the second part of the FRECA season.

“Those are the things I have to take on board – just try to get better every week and hopefully those gaps between good and bad aren’t as big.”

With the 2026 season nearing its close, many F3 drivers are actively negotiating seats for 2027. For someone in Wharton’s position, the natural courses of action would be to graduate to F2 or search for a seat outside of the junior single-seater pathway – but the 20-year-old does not let anything about his own future slip.

“For me, it’s just about getting ready for the next couple of rounds and [taking] 2027 out of my head. You can very easily get lost walking up and in the future. We have no idea right now where I’m going to be, but I know wherever I’m going to be, I’m going to try to do a good job,” he said.

“I’m the same driver I was in FRECA in 2024, and I just need people to understand that. I feel like if I can get into a car that’s competing at the front, I can do a good job. That’s all I can say at the moment until the results come.”

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency