The penultimate round of the 2026 Formula 3 season brought forth another twist in the championship fight. With Taito Kato and Nicola Lacorte both taking their maiden F3 wins, title contenders Freddie Slater and Ugo Ugochukwu are separated by just 15 points with three races remaining. Feeder Series tells you four things we learned from Monza.

By Daniele Spadi

MP Motorsport were the dominant force in free practice, putting all their cars in the top three, with Alessandro Giusti leading the way in front of Tuukka Taponen and Mattia Colnaghi. In qualifying, however, it was Slater who once again emerged as the fastest driver, scoring his third pole position in the last four races.

The two races, however, gave F3 two first-time winners. In the sprint, Taito Kato brought the Japanese flag back on top spot, triumphing for the first time in the series ahead of an impressive Slater and compatriot Hiyu Yamakoshi. In the feature, Slater failed to convert his pole into a race win after an issue with his rear-right tyre, and in the ensuing battle for victory, it was Lacorte who came out on top in surprising fashion, with Taponen and Kato rounding out the podium.

• Pre-weekend roundtable: What to know about F3’s tweaked qualifying formats for Monza and Madrid
• Qualifying report and quotes: Slater takes third F3 pole position in Monza as error fells Ugochukwu
• Sprint race report and quotes: Kato fends off Slater for ‘incredible’ maiden F3 win in Monza sprint
• Feature race report and quotes: Lacorte takes first F3 win, Slater retires in action-packed Monza feature

1. The title fight is still on

After Friday, the title fight seemed to have swung in Slater’s favour. The Briton had taken a convincing pole position, his third this season, while Ugochukwu found himself down in ninth in his group and 18th overall.

To make matters worse, the American had picked up a five-place grid penalty to be applied to both races for making contact with Slater’s teammate, Matteo De Palo, at the end of free practice – a penalty many believed to be too soft.

The music did not change on Saturday. Slater recovered all the way to second thanks to pinpoint-accurate racecraft to dance around his rivals, gaining nine points. Though Ugochukwu also made plenty of inroads, he ultimately finished in 13th, thus losing crucial ground in the championship.

With Ugochukwu seemingly off his game and Slater’s confidence riding high, Sunday could have proved fatal for the American’s title chances. And in fact, when Slater kept the lead at the start while Ugochukwu spun after contact with his teammate Théophile Naël on lap two, everything pointed towards a potential knockout blow.

Until it didn’t. In fact, it was Slater who, rather surprisingly, came away empty handed. After fighting at the top during the first half of the race, the Trident driver reported an issue with the rear-right corner of his car. He had fallen through the field for several laps before the tyre detached itself from the car on lap 13, putting him out of the race.

On the other hand, Ugochukwu rallied from 29th all the way up to eighth, scoring four vital points for his championship hopes. Ahead of the season finale, which will host one sprint and two feature races, Slater has a 15-point lead over the American, with both drivers still in the fight for the title.

2. Nicola Lacorte, prophet on home ground

From the start of his 2024 FRegional Europe campaign up to last week, Nicola Lacorte had finished  just four of his previous 51 single-seater races in the points-paying positions. Three of them came in his sophomore F3 campaign with DAMS, his 2026 points tally amounting to six points before Monza.

For that reason, few anticipated the spirited performance the 19-year-old would unleash in Monza. A superb qualifying effort saw him post the second-fastest lap time in the second group, thus setting him up for a third-place start in the feature race.

First, he racked up two points in the sprint, finishing in ninth place. On Sunday, he held on to third in the opening stages before dropping to fourth, emerging unscathed from contact with Campos Racing’s Ernesto Rivera. 

As he passed Slater for third on lap seven, however, Lacorte set his eyes on the top two. He dispatched Kato two laps later before taking the lead shortly after from Kanato Le, who had been leading the race.

Lacorte then kept his cool despite the raging battles behind him. Even as Taponen closed in during the latter stages, the Italian looked like a man on a mission – one he would accomplish after 22 grueling laps. The victory was Lacorte’s first since the 2024 FR Oceania season, when he won race number eight of the season at Hampton Downs, and a sign that the travails he faced in 2025 would not define his F3 career forever.

3. A fantastic weekend for Kato

Though Lacorte’s is likely to be the best story coming out of the eighth race weekend of the season, Taito Kato’s performance was by far the most outstanding considering all three days of competition.

The ART Grand Prix driver has been quietly impressive in his rookie F3 campaign, scoring a podium in the opening feature race of the season in Melbourne and six points finishes beyond that. In Monza, however, he looked set on changing that statistic, something he accomplished on both race days.

In the sprint, Kato started down in ninth, but as he stayed out of trouble throughout the chaos of it all, he found himself up to fourth by the start of lap seven. One after another, Kato picked up the three remaining places, eventually taking the lead at the end of lap 15. He then defended his position until the end of the race, claiming a much-deserved maiden F3 victory.

However, the Japanese talent was not done yet. On Sunday, he lined up for the feature race in fourth, and a good opening phase of the race saw him run as high as second. After being overtaken by soon-to-be race winner Lacorte as well as Taponen, he held on to third, thus claiming his third podium of the season and rounding out a fantastic weekend altogether.

Kato now sits in sixth place in the drivers’ standings with 71 points, just five fewer than third-placed Rivera and with a top-three finish in the championship well within reach.

4. David shows flashes of brilliance once more

In Silverstone, Yevan David became the first driver to bring the flag of Sri Lanka onto the F3 podium when he finished a brilliant second in the sprint. He had also scored crucial points on Sunday by taking seventh in the feature, though those two results remained his only two top-10 finishes of the season. That changed in Monza.

Taking the start of the sprint down in 17th, David found some stellar pace during the race, steadily climbing upwards after a positive race start. As he steered clear of contact and flying bodywork, the AIX driver worked his way well inside the top 10, making a last-lap pass on Alessandro Giusti to finish in a spectacular fourth.

Not satisfied with such an outstanding performance, he went and did it all over again on Sunday. David almost went unnoticed throughout both races but showed sheer grit and some brilliant overtakes – together with some newfound pace in his AIX, which boasted an updated livery for this round. In Sunday’s 22-lap affair, he was once again able to climb to fourth, this time from 16th on the grid, to score his best-ever finish in a feature race. 

These two results lifted him to 15th in the drivers’ standings with 34 points while also dragging AIX up to ninth in the teams’ classification, overtaking Hitech by a single point. His season tally thus far is the highest ever for any single F3 driver at AIX as well as for any racer at the team’s predecessor entity, Charouz Racing System, since Logan Sargeant in 2021. The question now lingers: has David done enough to secure a spot on the 2027 F3 grid, perhaps with a more competitive team?

Results and standings after round 8 at Monza

Results	P1	P2	P3
Qualifying, Group A	Kanato Le, 1:38.163	Taito Kato, +0.059s	Hiyu Yamakoshi, +0.098s
Qualifying, Group B	Freddie Slater, 1:38.114	Nicola Lacorte, +0.236s	Ernesto Rivera, +0.246s
Sprint race (18 laps)	Taito Kato, 35:37.873	Freddie Slater, +0.521s	Hiyu Yamakoshi, +0.968s
Feature race (22 laps)	Nicola Lacorte, 40:35:487	Tuukka Taponen, +0.723s	Taito Kato, +2.212s

Standings	Drivers	Teams
P1	Freddie Slater, 141	Campos Racing, 277
P2	Ugo Ugochukwu, 126	Trident, 213
P3	Ernesto Rivera, 76	ART Grand Prix, 155
P4	Théophile Naël, 75	Van Amersfoort Racing, 155
P5	Brando Badoer, 71	MP Motorsport, 131
P6	Taito Kato, 71	Rodin Motorsport, 121
P7	Hiyu Yamakoshi, 71	DAMS, 53
P8	Noah Strømsted, 65	Prema Racing, 51
P9	Tuukka Taponen, 64	AIX Racing, 42
P10	Maciej Gładysz, 54	Hitech, 41

Read our takeaways from the previous round here.

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency