The 5 biggest surprises of the 2023 Formula 3 season
As always, FIA Formula 3 delivered a phenomenal 2023 season full of twists and turns that kept spectators on the edge of their seats all year long. From the Arabian deserts in Bahrain to the Temple of Speed in Monza, we witnessed some amazing races that crowned first-time winners and a rookie champion, Trident Racing’s Gabriel Bortoleto, for the first time since Oscar Piastri in 2020. After an unpredictable season, it’s time to look back on 2023 and see who stood out the most, be it as a championship contender, a team leader or an outright surprise.
By Daniele Spadi
Fresh off his second year in the Formula Regional European Championship by Alpine, where he took home a win and two additional podiums en route to sixth in the drivers’ standing, Gabriel Bortoleto stepped up to F3 with Trident for the 2023 season. The Brazilian knew that he had good pace right from the beginning, but very few people would have predicted that the 19-year-old would almost dominate the championship.
Bortoleto started off with two feature race wins in Bahrain and Melbourne, showing tremendous pace in qualifying and converting that speed into big results on Sunday. What followed was an astonishing streak of positive results: ten consecutive top-10 finishes in the following five rounds, including three trips to the podium, saw the Brazilian head into the summer break with a tangible lead over his rivals.
The penultimate round in Spa, however, threw a spanner in the works. After a tough qualifying session, the Brazilian retired in race one, failing to score points for the first time since the opening sprint race of the season, and only managed to climb up to eleventh in the feature race. However, his championship rivals also struggled throughout the weekend, especially on Sunday, and his lead was left intact. The Brazilian only needed one point to seal the title in Monza, and after Paul Aron failed to claim pole on Friday, the title went the Trident driver’s way.
Bortoleto had a terrific display throughout his maiden F3 season. The 19-year-old showed composure unlike any other driver on the grid, and even on those occasions when he seemed to lack some pace, he always ended up in the top positions in the race, something very rare to see in such a closely contested series, even more so for a rookie.
For next year, Bortoleto is heavily rumoured to step up to FIA Formula 2, and he would do so as an official McLaren Development Driver, with the Brazilian joining the British team’s academy over the winter break. A calm and collected driver like Bortoleto would be an extremely tough competitor to deal with over the course of a full F2 season, and if his adaptability in F3 is anything to go by, we could expect him to be on the front foot once more as the lights go out in Bahrain next year.
As is the case in every championship of the feeder series ladder they partake in, Prema Racing came into 2023 looking to win both the drivers’ and the constructors’ titles. The Italian outfit opted to field one of their strongest driver line-ups yet: championship hopeful Zak O’Sullivan, reigning FRECA champion Dino Beganovic and multiple FRECA race-winner Paul Aron. Despite proving his worth numerous times in 2022, the Estonian was not everyone’s pick when thinking about which Prema driver would be in the title hunt, but he was one of the main protagonists of the 2023 season.
Aron began the season strongly, scoring points in three of the four opening races and claiming his maiden podium on Saturday in Australia. After the mid-season break, Aron came back well-rested and dialled in, as he explained to Feeder Series after his feature race podium in Monaco.
The Estonian was able to use the extra time in the car during mid-season testing to further understand how to extract its full potential, and this showed in the following round: after claiming two top-five finishes in Spain, Aron was the star of the show at the Red Bull Ring on Saturday, claiming the win in the sprint race in changing conditions. Despite not scoring in the next two races, the Prema driver was back at it right before the summer break, showing good levels of consistency and presenting himself as one of Bortoleto’s main rivals.
However, it all slipped away in Spa, as what looked like a certain win in the feature race came undone after Prema made a wrong strategy call, pitting Aron on the wrong set of tyres in mixed conditions. Ultimately, the 19-year-old ended the season in third, scoring only six points in Monza and getting overtaken in the standings by teammate Zak O’Sullivan right at the end.
However, one might argue that his main target ahead of the 2023 F3 season was to keep up with former FRECA teammate Dino Beganovic, who had the better of him last year in the same car. Aron outscored the Swedish driver by 16 points, arguably showing better pace than his teammate as the season went on, something not many people were willing to bet on at the start of the year.
Although the Estonian has not announced his 2024 plans yet, he is widely rumoured to be among the drivers making the step up to F2 next year —some of whom have already been announced, such as Zak O’Sullivan and Franco Colapinto — especially as he does not appear in the 2024 F3 line-up that Prema announced right after post-season testing.
Before that, Aron will race in F3 machinery one more time at the Macau Grand Prix, competing with SJM Theodore Prema Racing in one of the most prestigious races in the junior single-seater world. If he were to make the jump in 2024, he would have to work hard to quickly adapt to the new F2 car, but if the raw pace shown throughout the 2023 season is anything to go by, he will be one to watch wherever he goes.
After what can only be described as a tough rookie season in FIA Formula 3, Pepe Martí decided to stay with Campos Racing in 2023 after announcing that he would join A14, Fernando Alonso’s management team. The Spaniard looked like a completely different driver compared to the year before, as he got off to a brilliant start in Bahrain, winning the sprint race and recovering to a brilliant sixth on Sunday.
He followed that result with a second sprint race win in Monaco, but his one-lap pace was still lacking compared to the other championship hopefuls. That changed at his home race in Barcelona, where he took pole and converted it in a dominant win on Sunday. Campos had rarely shown this kind of pace before in F3, but Martí was able to show the kind of consistency that the Spanish team had never seen from one of their drivers.
The Campos driver headed to Spa as a title contender, and after claiming his second pole position on Friday, he was in the prime position to blow the championship wide open. However, an incident in the sprint race and a wrong strategy call on Sunday saw him score only two additional points in the penultimate race weekend of the season. A double retirement in Monza meant that Martí finished down in fifth in the standings after being Bortoleto’s main challenger throughout most of the season, with the gap from him to second place being only 14 points.
Nevertheless, the Spaniard was at times the fastest driver on the entire grid, and he brought home Campos’ best finish in both the drivers’ and constructors’ standing.; These results gave the Spaniard the huge opportunity to join one of the best driver academies there is, the Red Bull Junior Team.
Like Aron, Martí has not announced his plans for 2024 yet, but he will be on the starting grid of the Macau Grand Prix with Campos. However, the talented Spaniard is rumoured to make the step up to F2 with the Spanish outfit next year. Could his raw pace and gutsy race craft make him an outside threat in the vastly improved Spanish team next year?
When Jenzer Motorsport announced that 2022 ADAC Formula 4 runner-up Taylor Barnard would join the Swiss team for his rookie F3 campaign, many thought of him as one of the possible dark horses for the lower part of the top 10 every other race, while others believed that the jump from F4 machinery straight to F3 would not help his chances. The Brit also took part in the Formula Regional Middle East Championship during the winter, showing great promise and finishing second in the final standings behind Italian superstar Andrea Kimi Antonelli.
Barnard’s opening two rounds of the season looked pretty promising, as he showed good pace in Bahrain and picked up his first points of the season in a chaotic feature race in Melbourne. However, thanks to a big update to the brakes that Jenzer managed to bring during mid-season testing, the 19-year-old was confident that he had the pace to score at least one podium during the rest of the season, as he told Feeder Series in an exclusive interview in Imola.
This meant that Jenzer was suddenly up there in the midfield. Barnard scored points in the next four races, with Barcelona being a season highlight as he finished a brilliant second in qualifying. A month later, the Brit was fighting for the sprint race win in Silverstone with Sebastian Montoya, before a costly mistake due to a lack of experience by the Jenzer driver took both of them out of contention.
However, the best was yet to come: a fortunate yet deserved result came in Spa, as Barnard claimed his long-awaited podium finish in the sprint race behind Van Amersfoort Racing’s Caio Collet. On Sunday, he managed to do the unthinkable and go one step further, clinching his maiden win in mixed conditions thanks to an almighty strategy by his team and some clinical defensive driving against Christian Mansell in the final stages of the race. Barnard proved in the season finale in Monza that Spa wasn’t just a stroke of luck. Some amazing overtakes combined with great racecraft saw the Brit finishing in the top four in both races, claiming a third podium of the season in the final feature race of 2023.
In 2024, Barnard is believed to switch to PHM Racing for a second full season in F3. The 19-year-old has a long history with the German team, having raced with them in both the Italian and ADAC F4 championships in 2022 and competed with them in FRMEC earlier this year. Racing in such a familiar environment could be very beneficial for him, and if PHM can provide a better car than the one they came up with this year, he could be a dark horse for podiums and race wins all season long.
It is very unusual to find two drivers of the same team in this kind of list. However, given the standout result that Campos achieved at the end of the 2023 season, it would be a mistake to not talk about the other driver that heavily contributed to the Spanish outfit’s success together with Pepe Martí. 18-year-old Christian Mansell showed some promising signs in his first few years of single-seater racing, finishing third as a multiple race-winner in both the 2021 GB3 Championship and the 2022 Euroformula Open Championship.
The start of his maiden F3 campaign was not the best, claiming only four points in the first eight races of the season, Mansell was struggling to find those two or three-tenths that were separating him from the upper end of the top ten, and despite finishing in the points-paying positions on three occasions, he was far from Martí’s pace. However, he established himself as the second-fasted Campos driver, consistently beating Hugh Barter throughout the first four race weekends.
Mansell seemed to find some pace at the Red Bull ring, before showing his vast improvements in Silverstone. On the legendary British racetrack, the Australian finished third in the sprint race after a great drive in tricky conditions, thus claiming his maiden podium in the series. After two other top-six finishes, his best result came in Spa’s feature race, where he had to settle for second after fighting for the win with Taylor Barnard in one of the most iconic races in F3’s recent history.
Despite putting in these performances, some believed that the Australian was able to claim such results thanks to unforeseen circumstances that took others out of contention for the podium places, However, he proved his ability to fight through the field in Monza, finishing both races in the top eight. Mansell ultimately finished 12th in the drivers’ standings, the team’s third-best result since the championship’s rebrand in 2019.
Mansell’s 2024 season looks uncertain, as the Australian is trying to find a seat on next year’s F3 grid. He will be racing in the Macau Grand Prix later this November with ART, the same team he was with during post-season testing one month ago. A good performance around the perilous streets of Macau could be the final step that the Australian needs to be signed by the French team for next year.
Header Photo Credit: Red Bull Content Pool
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