“I have waited for this moment for a long time”: Ramos’s road to F3 win

Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd

Santiago Ramos finally became a winner in single-seater racing on Saturday in Melbourne, sealing victory in the FIA Formula 3 Championship season opener.

It felt “good”, it came on his 21st F3 start and 95th car race in total, and was an unexpected triumph despite the Van Amersfoort Racing driver starting on reversed-grid pole.

Of the 10 F3 races in 2024 in which he had maintained or improved upon his grid position, he had started four in the top 10. And of the 10 previous times he had started in the top 10 in F3, he had a net loss of 74 positions in races.

“I have waited for this moment for a long time. Last year we were close in Barcelona, we were close in Imola [races he started from pole], but never quite there,” said Ramos after his breakthrough victory, which puts him in the points lead.

“Super happy to start the year like this. It’s a big confidence boost not only for me, also for the team. So it’s great to start like this. Also with a new car, it’s the way to go.”

He continued: “I had it clear what I wanted to do for this race. So the strategy was to try to pull out of the DRS range from the guys behind. So after I managed the situation, not to get overtaken in the first and the second corner, I said, ‘okay, now I will go’. So I started pushing more and more and more, and obviously using more of tyres.”

Within a lap, Ramos was 4.296 seconds clear of the field, but his advantage was removed by a safety car period.

“I knew that once I pulled out of them, it was going to be really hard for them to catch me. So I just kept pushing. I made a good gap. Then I was really hoping not to have any safety cars. Unfortunately, we did. But anyways, it was still I think a good strategy.”

Hitech GP’s Martinius Stenshorne pressured Ramos when racing resumed, but then another safety car period that ran to the finish secured Ramos the win.

“I think at that stage I was struggling a bit with the tyres. Because I pushed so much in the beginning, so at the end I was struggling a bit more. So definitely helped me a bit that last safety car. Otherwise, I think the racing would have been really hard towards the end.”

Ramos admitted pre-season testing had been a mixed bag, so “we were expecting to struggle a bit more here in Melbourne” and victory “definitely was a bit of a surprise”. He topes to take “learning how to manage the tyres in especially the high-speed corner section” from the sprint race into the longer feature race.

The win was Ramos’s fourth podium in single-seaters, following third places in Spanish Formula 4 and Formula Regional European Championship and then a second place in F3’s last sprint race of 2024 at Monza.

Santiago Ramos’s best results progression