DAMS’ Nicola Lacorte scored his first Formula 3 win and podium in Sunday’s feature race at his home circuit at the Autodromo Nazionale Monza, fending off MP Motorsport’s Tuukka Taponen and ART Grand Prix’s Taito Kato. Polesitter and points leader Freddie Slater retired after his car lost a wheel, with rival Ugo Ugochukwu scoring points despite running as far back as 29th.

By Tori Turner

Slater maintained the lead from pole position heading down to Turn 1 on the opening lap, though Le challenged him by attempting to go side by side on the outside. Lacorte held station in third, with Ernesto Rivera passing Kato for fourth at the end of the lap.

On lap two, Ugo Ugochukwu attempted a move on Campos Racing teammate Théophile Naël for 19th, with both drivers having made up several positions from 23rd and 28th on the grid respectively. Taking the inside line, Ugochukwu clipped Naël’s car and spun across Turn 2, which dropped him down to 29th. Naël later received a 10-second time penalty for causing a collision with his teammate.

The next lap, Nandhavud Bhirombhakdi and Fionn McLaughlin made contact at Turn 1, leaving the Hitech driver with damage to his front suspension as he stopped on the grass. The incident brought out the safety car briefly, though it only lasted for a lap before the restart at the end of lap four.

On lap five, Fernando Barrichello spun across the Roggia chicane while battling Badoer for ninth. He dropped to 23rd as Taponen narrowly avoided hitting him. 

One lap later, the lead of the race changed hands as Le passed Slater on the start-finish straight, keeping the position despite a lock-up into Turn 1. Kato passed Slater at Ascari to take second. Lacorte and Rivera would have been next, but the pair made contact directly behind Kato’s overtake, causing damage to the Mexican’s front-wing. That slowed him down immediately, and he tumbled down the order before being called to pit lane at the end of lap seven.

At the start of the lap, Lacorte passed Slater for third, with several drivers behind cutting across the first chicane. Taponen passed Giusti into the Variante Della Roggia to take fifth, then picked up fourth from a struggling Slater at Turn 1, though the Trident driver stayed close until lap 10.

Further back in the field, Naël clipped the back of Noah Strømsted’s Trident, also forcing him to make a trip to the pit lane with front wing damage. 

Lacorte had broken away from Slater and hunted down Kato, making the move into Ascari on lap nine. The DAMS driver finally snatched the lead down the start-finish straight on lap 10, one he would never relinquish despite the immense amount of battling behind him. Taponen slotted into second a lap later after going three-wide with Kato and Le into Turn 1.

Hiyu Yamakoshi passed Slater for sixth behind them as it became obvious that the Trident driver was nursing an issue. On lap 12, he dropped outside of the points-paying positions, with title rival Ugochukwu, who had made it up to 16th after being at the back of the field on lap two, passed him to take 15th on the run to Ascari. 

Slater reported on the radio that ‘there’s something broken on the rear right’ of his car on lap 13, shortly before his wheel detached itself from the car and shot into the wall at Turn 10. With only three wheels on his Dallara wagon, Slater retired from the race at the side of the track, which, combined with an issue for Rivera, brought out another safety car. 

Upon the restart on lap 17, Kato passed Le into Turn 1 to take third off his ART Grand Prix teammate, with Ugochukwu passing Bruno Del Pino for 11th through the Lesmos. That was to become 10th with Colnaghi carrying a penalty for spinning Pedro Clerot on lap 10, though the American was keen to make the pass on track anyways. An outstanding double overtake on lap 19 achieved by shooting the gap between Colnaghi and Enzo Deligny briefly promoted him to ninth, but running wide after braking late dropped him back to 11th.

On the same lap, Barrichello locked up at Turn 1 and tagged Michael Shin’s car, and the Brazilian stopped at the side of the track. This did not trigger a safety car but did bring out yellow flags that lasted until the end of the race, which affected drivers’ DRS activation and limited overtaking. 

With no further change in the top three until the end of the race, Lacorte crossed the finish line 0.723s ahead of Taponen to take his maiden victory and podium in front of a home crowd in Italy. He became the 13th different driver to win a race this season, a record in F3, whilst also delivering DAMS’ first feature race win across both their F3 and GP3 tenures.

Having endured a tough start to the season, Taponen delivered his first podium in 2026 at Ferrari’s home venue, beating his previous best result of fourth in the Barcelona sprint race. Sprint race winner Kato held onto third to finish on the podium in both races this weekend, while Yevan David repeated his fourth-place result after he passed Le on the final lap. 

Yamakoshi finished sixth and Strømsted in seventh, each one coming from sixth and 15th on the grid. Ugochukwu made it into the points to finish eighth after his early-race spin, with Deligny and James Wharton rounding out the points-paying positions. Deligny picked up a bonus point for setting the fastest lap among the top 10 finishers.

Ugochukwu’s finish critically gave him an extra four points in the drivers’ championship. With points leader Slater failing to score after his retirement, the gap between the top two is down to 15 points heading into the season finale in the Madring next weekend. Ernesto Rivera and Théophile Naël are 65 and 66 points back and only able to win the title if they execute near-perfect weekends and Slater and Ugochukwu endure torrid ones. 

Campos Racing remain first in the teams’ championship standings with 277 points, though Trident have closed the gap to 64 points as they now sit on 213 points. ART Grand Prix and Van Amersfoort Racing are tied for third in points with 155 each.

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency