Rafaël Pérard has gone under the radar since his karting debut, but he has made steady progress in his maiden Eurocup-3 campaign with Palou Motorsport. The Monaco resident who got into motorsport with the help of Charles Leclerc’s family is now knocking on the door of Formula 3 for next year. He explained more about the unlikely start to his motorsport career and where it’s taken him since.

By Perceval Wolff-Taffus

“At the halfway point, what is positive is my speed,” Pérard told me on Twitch in August. “Notably, since the first race weekend at Le Castellet – where I qualified sixth, my best result until then – I have put in some very strong performances. At Portimão and over the last two race weekends, I’ve consistently been in the top four during qualifying sessions. So speed is definitely my strength, and that’s a good thing.”

Rafaël Pérard has two podiums in the last three races and a median qualifying position of fourth across the season. So why does that leave the Palou Motorsport driver only eighth in the overall standings?

“As for the overall picture, regarding points, it’s a different story. I’m actually a bit frustrated,” he explained. “I didn’t finish the races as I wanted to. That’s motorsport. Whether because of mechanical issues or other race incidents, I didn’t score the points I should have. So sitting eighth in the championship right now, I’m a bit frustrated. I don’t feel it’s truly representative of my performance level.”

Pérard was involved in several incidents while in frontrunning positions this season. The latest was in the second race at Monza, where he was fighting for the win against Christopher El Feghali and teammate Heitor Dall’Agnol. Entering Turn 1 three-wide, he made contact with Dall’Agnol, spun into the grass and had to retire with a broken suspension.

“It’s just a matter of being patient. Obviously, I need to learn from every situation, whether it’s on my side or by analysing others’ mistakes,” he said.  “I also need to learn how to weigh the risks against the rewards because right now, given that I’m only in my second year of single-seater racing, I’m behind on mileage and track time compared with others.”

“But looking at recent performances, you could say the championship is really starting now. This is the time to start putting it all together,” he added. “So my number-one priority is to focus on finishing races and scoring as many points as possible.”

It’s been a year of discovery for the 18-year-old Frenchman, a rookie in Eurocup-3 this year. In the championship’s winter series, he finished 10th overall, with a second place at Jarama and two further points finishes in the races and a best qualifying finish of seventh. That last statistic, when compared against his main season result, already illustrates great progress. 

“I’m following my progression plan. I’ve taken a big step forward and I’ve improved very quickly over the last few weekends,” he said. “I started out in the top 15, or even the top 10, during the winter series. Then I got closer to the top 10 and top five, and in the last race, I was fighting for the win. So, naturally, the ideal scenario is to go for that first victory at Silverstone. That’s why my main goal now is to focus on that and score as many championship points as possible.”

Pérard finished seventh in his debut season in single-seaters last year in French F4. Coming off that campaign, he explained, he wasn’t sure whether to step up in the feeder series ladder.

“Doing another season in F4 was certainly an option, but I had the chance to do some testing in Eurocup-3, which went really well, and I then received a contract offer from Palou Motorsport. Plus, with Prema coming on board to handle the technical side, the engineers, and so on, it was a really attractive offer. Honestly, I didn’t want to miss out on that opportunity.”

Joining Palou Motorsport meant he would receive advice from team co-owner Álex Palou, who recently took his fifth IndyCar title.“I have never had the chance to meet him yet because he’s in IndyCar and racing every weekend in America, so he has a pretty packed schedule,” he said. “I think he’s planning to attend a race towards the end of this year. I’m not sure which one, but he’s coming. 

“Still, we’re in close contact. We message each other during race weekends, and we even spoke on the phone after Monza. He has a wealth of experience, of course, so he shares whatever advice he can, and I’m all ears because I have so much to learn from someone like that.”

At Palou, Pérard is teammates with F1 Academy alumna Bianca Bustamante, reigning Brazilian F4 champion Heitor Dall’Agnol and runaway championship leader James Egozi. Both Pérard and Egozi battled fiercely for the win last time out in Monza – yet their relation off track remains strong.“He has done two years in F4, two in Eurocup,” he said. “It’s his fourth season, whereas this is only my second. So there’s definitely a significant deficit, a significant gap there, but we have a pretty healthy relationship.

“He knows full well that helping his teammates pushes the team to score well, so we’re quite open with each other. He shares all his data, and if I have a question, I can just ask him, and he answers honestly because he obviously wants the best for the team.”

In the moments that set up that Monza masterclass, Pérard made use of intra-team strategies at Palou to help him and his teammates gain the best starting positions. 

“We help each other out. For instance, at Monza, we used a team strategy for qualifying one, which paid off. I secured pole position. And then we swapped places [with Heitor Dall’Agnol] in the second qualifying run, I was the one who paid the price for it a bit, but despite that, we all put in a good qualifying performance.”

For his first season in Eurocup-3, the Marseille-born driver has had to discover all the tracks.

“I’ve always been playing a bit of catch-up in my career since I started quite late, so I’ve always had to learn faster than the others. Honestly, yes, it is a challenge, but at Imola, it was my first time on the track. I got up to speed immediately and finished second and fourth in qualifying. At Monza, it was my first time, and in my first qualifying session, I took pole position. It’s a challenge, but it’s not something that stops me from performing.”

To be racing internationally would have come as a surprise to Pérard a decade ago. While many of his peers were already racing karts at that time, he was enjoying a diverse childhood, living in three countries before age 12 and cultivating his talent on the piano. Along the way, Pérard found an unusual, and accidental, vocation: being a child model at the age of seven. 

“I remember it very well! It was quite fun doing that at that age, because it was back when I was still living in Marseille,” he reminisced. “We were at a restaurant one evening with some friends of my parents and some friends of mine. They approached my parents to ask who the kid playing table foosball at the back of the room was. It was for a brand photoshoot, so it was a great experience. I loved it. It was pretty fun doing that at that age.”

He left Marseille shortly after. “I grew up [in Marseille] until I was seven, then spent four years in Luxembourg attending an international school,” he explained. “After that, I moved to Monaco. I’ve been here for six years now, and I was fortunate enough to enroll at the International School of Monaco to take the International Baccalaureate programme, the IB.”

This was very much not the usual pathway to single-seaters, so how did he eventually find his way there?

“It all started when I arrived in Monaco. I was lucky enough to have Charles Leclerc’s uncle as a neighbor, and his children, Charles’s cousins, were into competitive karting. I’ve always loved karting,” he said. “Every birthday meant karting. I really loved it. Anything involving driving, having a steering wheel in my hands, whether it was a kart, a tractor, or whatever, I just loved it.

“So when I got to Monaco… I ended up going along with them one day to try out competitive karting. I hadn’t even realised that existed. I only knew about rental karts. I had my first session at Brignoles, one of the most known circuits in France in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region. And right from the start, from the very first laps, I absolutely loved it.

“I was with T3M Sport, and my team boss was Jean-Claude Nato, the father of Norman [Nato, F2 race winner and Formula E driver]. He went to see my father and asked if I’d ever driven a go-kart, but I had never actually done anything like that. It turned out to be a bit of a revelation, really, because I was genuinely fast. Right from the start, I had good racing lines and real pace. That’s how it all began.

“I started at 13, which is pretty late for this sport considering most people begin at five or six. That’s a significant gap to make up. Also, my family didn’t come from a racing background at all, so we didn’t really know much about it.”

“Given my lack of seat time and experience, the only solution was to go to Italy,” he continued. “It was the ultimate test, really, because that’s where you could go up against the best in a pretty tough environment. On top of that, because of my size, I had to move straight into the X30 Senior class at 14. So I arrived in Italy at 14 as the only Frenchman, battling against highly experienced drivers who averaged around 20 years old.

“It was a huge challenge, but it was the only way to really get thrown into the deep end and learn faster than everyone else. Above all, especially in Italy, I used to call it a hostile environment because it’s a world where you have to know how to make yourself respected. I arrived there as a complete unknown and the only Frenchman, so everyone was watching me, a bit looking down on me.

“We had set a goal of finishing the season in the top 10, which would have been a great result since it was my first real season and there were about 100 drivers in the championship. Yet, right from the start, I was hitting the top 10. I even ended up winning races and contending for the title.”

Having to step up to X30 Senior at 14 years old – a year younger than most – wouldn’t be the final time that Pérard’s size would be an issue. Even now, in stark contrast to his teammates’ red liveries, Pérard’s car is bare carbon to save weight. 

“Last year, it really held me back because I raced the whole season carrying an extra eight kilos in Formula 4 cars which are quite light and not very powerful, so it had a major impact,” he said. “That’s actually the main reason I couldn’t be competitive in every race weekend. At a track like Spa, for instance, I was at a huge disadvantage, making it difficult to perform well.

“Ultimately, that’s why I finished seventh in the championship. It was a real challenge. Things are different now, though. I’m driving much more powerful cars and racing for a private team rather than in a series like French F4, which is run by an academy. Palou managed to make the car as light as possible and I’m actually the only one driving a bare carbon car with no livery to save weight.

“On my end, I’ve worked hard to lose weight. I shifted my focus from bodybuilding to cardio to become as lean as I could. Now, I have a margin of just a kilo or two. It’s a challenge, but I’m managing it. I put a lot of work into my diet all year round.”

Given his promising campaign in Eurocup-3 and his upward trajectory of late, questions are swirling over where Pérard might race in 2027, especially given Prema and Palou’s technical alliance. Is F3 his next step?

“The most important thing for me right now is to focus on this second half of the season, since it’s upon us,” he said. “That’s the period that will determine my future. That’s why my only goal right now isn’t to think about the future. I have a support system around me, like Renaud Derlot and others, to handle that side of things. My role right now is simply to drive as fast as possible, score as many points as I can, and focus on the four remaining race weekends, especially Silverstone.”

Eurocup-3 returns to the track this weekend for its fifth round of eight at Silverstone, marking the series’ first trip outside continental Europe.

Header photo credit: Fotocar13