Written by Trisha Lynnette, Edited by Vyas Ponnuri
It's lights out and away we go for the 2025 Formula 3 season! The season opener at Melbourne showed a lot of track action from overtakes to constant collisions — giving us a glance at what is to come in 2025.
The opening sprint race of the year saw Santiago Ramos convert pole to his maiden F3 win alongside Martinius Stenshorne and Roman Bilinski. The race began with Ramos, Matias Zagazeta and Stenshorne leading the pack.
While most of the drivers manoeuvred their way up the order, Charlie Wurz and Tim Tramnitz collided. Wurz had to retire while the virtual safety car was brought out.
Louis Sharp and Joshua Dufek collided, causing the Kiwi to be spun around. Neither retired, but Dufek had to change his front wing - something the stewards noted.
Another collision takes place between Laurens van Hoepen, Rafael Câmara and James Wharton, resulting in the former two retiring from the race, while Wharton was forced to pit for repairs. This collision was mainly caused due to Wharton’s late braking into turn 11 — causing the collision. Wharton was given a ten-second penalty as a result, to be served in tomorrow’s feature race.
Tim Tramnitz had a spin behind the deployed safety car, causing him to go through the pits and rejoin the grid. However, he had to retire from the race too, following issues with his MP Motorsport car.
In the meantime, the top five of Ramos, Zagazeta, Bilinski, Stenshorne and Inthraphuvasak were separated from the rest of the grid, having their separate battle of overtakes.
Inthraphuvasak tried to take over Zagazeta who was now fourth and managed to make a move. There was now a three-second gap from the Top 3 and the battling duo.
Another collision took place between Javier Sagrera and Bruno Del Pino, causing them to retire from the race. The race eventually ended with Ramos, Stenshorne and Bilinski on the podium.
“I was struggling a bit with the tires because I pushed so much in the beginning so at the end I was struggling a bit more, so that definitely helped me a bit - that last safety car. Otherwise I think the race would have been really hard to watch the end of the race.” Ramos mentioned after the sprint race.
“It was a good race, I started in P4 and got into P2 after lap 1 so had a good start. Obviously with the safety cars we got up again. I had my tyres in a pretty good window throughout the whole race so I was a bit uh — I wished the safety car didn’t come but yeah, P2 is a pretty good result so I'm happy with that.” 2024 sprint winner Stenshorne mentioned.
It was all smiles down at Rodin Motorsport, with Roman Bilinski achieving his maiden Formula 3 podium in his debut race weekend.
“It’s a good start. For sure it could’ve been better - made a couple mistakes, but for a first race in Formula 3 to be on the podium I think is all that myself and the team could ask for. We will try to keep building on this and see what happens.” Bilinski spoke after the race.
When asked about the dilemma between pushing to finish higher up the order or maintain his position, Bilinski replied “Ideally I’d want to get the other two but I was trying to manage on the laps before the safety car. Just try and stay in the DRS train, not use the tyres too much and hopefully in the end go for the move, but unfortunately the safety car made it difficult.
“Either way they are both two great drivers so getting past them isn't going to be easy but that was the idea anyway.”
The drivers certainly got a taste of an action-packed F3 race, and this is only set to continue tomorrow in the feature race, kicking off at 9 am local time on Sunday (10 pm GMT, Saturday).
Comments