Brando Badoer endured a lacklustre rookie Formula 3 season in 2025, his tally yielding just 13 points and leaving him down in 25th in the drivers’ standings. But the Italian turned over a new leaf this year with Rodin Motorsport, scoring four podiums, including a stellar feature race win in Monaco. Feeder Series spoke with the 19-year-old at the Hungaroring round about his sophomore season and his future prospects.

By Daniele Spadi

Badoer’s future has been deeply tied with motorsport since the very beginning. The son of former Formula 1 driver Luca Badoer, the now 19-year-old grew up surrounded by race cars, even getting to see his father achieve a lifelong dream of racing for Ferrari in two rounds of the 2009 F1 season.

Born in 2006, the younger Badoer began his own racing journey in karting back in 2017 and rose through the ranks steadily. He eventually stepped up to F3 in 2025 after two years in F4 and a solid FRegional Europe campaign in which he finished fifth – fighting against the lights of reigning F3 champion Rafael Câmara and current F3 title chasers Ugo Ugochukwu and Théophile Naël.

He therefore joined F3 with plenty of eyes on him, having taken his maiden single-seater victory in FR Middle East two months before his F3 debut. He had also just joined the McLaren Driver Development Programme, becoming the first Italian-licensed driver to do so.

As he partnered up with F3 powerhouse Prema Racing, however, things went south, the Italian team struggling mightily to get up to speed with the new Dallara F3 car that made its debut that season. The five-time champions scored just eight points in the first 10 races, with Badoer failing to finish in the top 15 in any of them.

For Badoer, it was challenging to keep his head level during that time.

“It wasn’t easy, because obviously I knew I had it, but it went wrong for reasons that were also outside of my control,” he told Feeder Series.

“It was important to always be aware of my potential. We changed teams, and in Rodin I found a very good environment because the team is like a family to me. We all push in the same direction. I think [the key was] not forgetting I got it and, you know, going across a hard time. Tough times never last, don’t they?”

Indeed they didn’t. A livery change to strip his car of excessive weight helped Badoer  get faster towards the end of the season. He scored points in three consecutive races between Spa-Francorchamps and Budapest, a sixth-place finish in the sprint at the Hungaroring being his best result of the year.

Though Badoer lost the McLaren support after a shaky season, he still found his way onto the 2026 F3 grid, jumping ship to the British-based, New Zealand–registered Rodin team for his sophomore campaign. The Italian swiftly scored his first podium in the series at Melbourne with third in the opening sprint race.

After the unusually long break between rounds one and two, Badoer came out of the blocks in emphatic fashion in Monaco.

He qualified a brilliant second before overtaking polesitter Naël at the start of the feature – never looking back from that point and dominating the remainder of the race to claim his maiden F3 win by 0.527 seconds.

“It’s definitely always a boost of confidence to win on grand prix Sunday on such a special track like Monaco,” Badoer said on reflection.

Another strong weekend in Barcelona, where he finished 10th on Saturday and fourth the day after, lifted him to just 17 points from the top of the drivers’ standings. A rough patch of results then followed, Badoer unable to score points in the following four races.

“In Red Bull Ring, we were just unlucky with traffic,” he explained. “We were for a top-eight lap, which in F3 is still valuable for a good weekend, and I just got traffic in the last corner. Then in Silverstone, the pace was not bad, but I did a mistake on my last push.

I would say in summary, [it’s] circumstances. We never lacked the pace. Sometimes it went our way and sometimes not, but the important thing is to work hard and be quick, and then the results come.”

The 19-year-old was able to turn things around in Spa, finishing second in the sprint race. The upwards momentum continued in Hungary, where he finished both races in the top five for the first time in his F3 career – taking home his fourth podium of the season with third place in the feature. 

“It’s where we were expecting to be. We knew we were going to be on the fight, and on the fight we are,” he said. “It’s a very close championship and from now on we need to maximise every opportunity, which we haven’t always done.”

With two rounds left, Badoer sits fifth in the drivers’ standings, four points behind Naël in third. He has two special rounds – his home race weekend in Monza and the unique three-race season finale in Madrid – to try to climb even further and secure the best-ever finish for a Rodin driver in the standings.

“Monza is coming up. Home race – I’m super excited,” Badoer told Feeder Series. “The last round will be very worthy in Madrid with two future races and a new track for everybody, so that’s also exciting.”

The final race weekend of the season is set to feature an unusual format with a second qualifying session as well as a second feature race on top of the original schedule. For Badoer, the extra sessions don’t change how he will approach that weekend.

“We prep hard for every round, so there’s not really much more we can do apart from working with the team and doing some prep,” he said. “But obviously, there will be a big focus on that [round] because we know it’s [important].”

A strong second F3 season is exactly what Badoer needed after a lacklustre performance in his rookie campaign. Has it been enough? 

“It is definitely a very important season for the future,” he told Feeder Series.

”Every season is important in this sport. It’s even more in my case because as a second-year driver, you need to prove yourself, and so it’s important to keep pushing and keep maximising opportunities. But definitely doing well this year is important for my future.”

He added: “I’m going to just stay grounded, keep pushing always and try to maximise every opportunity from here to the end of the season, and then we’ll see where we end up.”

Additional reporting by Michael McClure

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency