Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd
After 10 rounds and 20 races, the FIA F3 title was decided in the final corner. Who were the fastest drivers?
Trident’s Leonardo Fornaroli remarkably managed to become FIA Formula 3 champion this year without winning a race, a massive statistical rarity for contemporary junior single-seater racing.
He was one of four title contenders going into the final race of the season at Monza, and in the preceding 19 races he had been outscored by at least one of those title rivals 13 times. On six occasions he was outscored by two, and in the Red Bull Ring feature race picked up two points while Hitech GP’s Luke Browning and Prema’s Gabriele Mini took 25 and 18 respectively by finishing second and third.
That ninth place was Fornaroli’s worst feature race result of the year, scoring seventh or higher in the other nine.
Mini and team-mate Arvid Lindblad each failed to score in four feature races, and Browning was out of the points on a Sunday twice. Notably, the Prema duo reached their feature race points tally for the year with three rounds to spare.
And those tallies were: Fornaroli on 121, Browning on 113, Mini on 93 and Lindblad on 78. Although Browning can point to only taking 11 points in sprint races (a conversion rate of 10%) as the key factor in his title loss, he still didn’t do enough in feature races to be ahead.
Despite being consistently bettered by his rivals in the higher-scoring races set by qualifying order, Fornaroli was also consistently bettering them in those. A paradoxical approach to winning the title.
But the points are not the not only numbers that determine a title challenge, and there are other statistical quirks.
The first is Fornaroli’s absolute pace, a measure of his fastest lap each weekend against the quickest anyone achieved.
Single-lap pace
| Pos | Driver | Team | Pace | Pos | Driver | Team | Pace |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Leonardo Fornaroli | Trident | 100.297% | 18 | Nikita Bedrin | AIX | 100.952% |
| 2 | Luke Browning | Hitech | 100.346% | 19 | Matias Zagazeta | Jenzer | 100.953% |
| 3 | Gabriele Mini | Prema | 100.350% | 20 | Max Esterson | Jenzer | 101.040% |
| 4 | Tuukka Taponen | ART GP | 100.352% | 21 | Callum Voisin | Rodin | 101.064% |
| 5 | Dino Beganovic | Prema | 100.557% | 22 | Sebastian Montoya | Campos | 101.074% |
| 6 | Christian Mansell | ART GP | 100.616% | 23 | Charlie Wurz | Jenzer | 101.183% |
| 7 | Oliver Goethe | Campos | 100.621% | 24 | Joseph Loake | Rodin | 101.287% |
| 8 | Sami Meguetounif | Trident | 100.623% | 25 | Noah Stromsted | Campos | 101.314% |
| 9 | Laurens van Hoepen | ART GP | 100.641% | 26 | Sophia Floersch | VAR | 101.397% |
| 10 | Nikola Tsolov | ART GP | 100.643% | 27 | Joshua Dufek | AIX | 101.436% |
| 11 | Noel Leon | VAR | 100.685% | 28 | Kacper Sztuka | MP | 101.453% |
| 12 | Arvid Lindblad | Prema | 100.698% | 29 | Cian Shields | Hitech | 101.514% |
| 13 | Santiago Ramos | Trident | 100.708% | 30 | Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak | AIX | 101.563% |
| 14 | Mari Boya | Campos | 100.727% | 31 | James Wharton | Hitech | 101.696% |
| 15 | Tim Tramnitz | MP | 100.832% | 32 | Tommy Smith | VAR | 101.756% |
| 16 | Martinius Stenshorne | Hitech | 100.843% | 33 | Piotr Wisnicki | Rodin | 101.800% |
| 17 | Alex Dunne | MP | 100.914% | 34 | James Hedley | Jenzer | 104.100% |
Fornaroli was only the benchmark driver once, in Melbourne, was the fourth-quickest of the title contenders at two tracks, third-quickest twice, and second to Browning at Silverstone – a track which Browning had a big experience advantage at but where Fornaroli took pole and set the sprint race fastest lap in F3 last year.
At half of the rounds this season, Fornaroli was the quickest of the title contenders over a lap and he was on average lapping at 100.297% of the absolute pace. Browning and Mini were very closely matched on 100.346% and 100.350% respectively, with Prema’s Dino Beganovic (who only exited title contention after the penultimate race) the next best regular driver on 100.557%.
This was an impressive level of consistency from all, since the fastest F3 driver last year was Paul Aron on 100.465% and the champion Gabriel Bortoleto was only fifth-best on 100.823%. This year there were 14 drivers who were closer to the absolute pace than Bortoleto was, but he did have the highest average starting position on the grid in 2023.
Fornaroli’s average starting position for feature races was 5.5 this year, better than Bortoleto’s 5.9, and in 2023 he was actually fourth best with 8.1. What makes Fornaroli’s qualifying averages over the last two years is the huge standard deviation of position.
Last season it was 8.78, and his 24th place starting spot at the Red Bull Ring made his 2024 figure 6.75. Omit that result, in which he was still within a second of the pace, and it would have been a stunningly consistent 1.94. Instead he was technically less consistent in qualifying than his title rivals, Beganovic and ART Grand Prix’s Christian Mansell and Nikola Tsolov – all on average qualifying inside the top 10 and therefore regularly getting to benefit from reversed grids.
The average race position takes into account the Saturday and Sunday action, and therefore a sweeping measure of if a driver usually gained or lost spots against where they qualified (unless they never made it into the top 10) does not apply.
Fornaroli again comes out on top, on average finishing two places higher than anyone else. The next-best driver was Campos Racing’s Oliver Goethe, who was in title contention until he decided to skip the finale to make his Formula 2 debut.
The dire end to the season for Mini and Lindblad had a big impact on their averages, and the latter’s six consecutive non-scores meant he went from 8.1 to 11.3. The pair would have sandwiched Goethe had the season ended three rounds early.
Beganovic and MP Motorsport’s Tim Tramnitz were among the five drivers who on average ended up in a points-scoring position every race. They both took a win and three other podiums, yet ended the season 44 and 72 points behind Fornaroli.
The trio were joined by Browning, Tsolov and Trident’s Santiago Ramos as regular drivers who were classified finishers in every race they contested. Browning maintained a title challenge to the very end despite on average finishing outside of the points.
Strong race results need strong race pace, but before analysing that, there’s another statistical element of Fornaroli’s season that can be scrutinised as a driver who did all 412 racing laps of 2024: laps spent in each position.
Although he never won a race, Fornaroli did spend 16 laps in the lead, across the Melbourne and Imola feature races. Almost a third of them were behind the safety car, and almost two thirds of the 29 laps he spent in second place were also while racing was neutralised. However his 34 laps in third were all while green flags waved, and as the graph below shows he spent over a quarter of the season in either fourth or fifth place and usually in actual fights for position.
Tsolov spent the most time in front during 2024, 75 laps in total, with Browning and Lindblad next best on 58 and 43. The average race duration was 20.6 laps, and the only others to surpass that in time spent leading were Mini and Rodin Motorsport’s Callum Voisin – who failed to score in the first six rounds, then a run of six consecutive top-seven finishes that included winning the Spa-Francorchamps feature race lifted him from 24th to 12th in the standings.
Fornaroli’s 16 laps in the lead were less than 11 other drivers achieved, but notably Bortoleto managed 34 in 2023 (the fifth best) and he also drove for Trident.
As for the race pace average over the season, Fornaroli was not the best driver. Instead it was Browning, which contrasts heavily with his average finishing position.
Rolling race pace is calculated using the 10 fastest consecutive representative laptimes within a stint. Those laps have to have been completed within track limits, cannot include laps featuring full-course yellow flags, and cannot include laps where drivers passed through the pitlane. That left a sample size of 13 of this year’s 18 races that could be used to assess long-run pace thanks to having enough green flag running (an increase on 2023), and Fornaroli was one of eight drivers with 13 races to build an average from as retirements, pitstops and most frequently track limits abuse led to races not being suitable for inclusion in the dataset for many drivers.
Beganovic, Lindblad, Campos’s Mari Boya and Trident’s Sami Meguetounif were each quickest on race pace two times, while Browning, Goethe, Ramos, Hitech’s Martinius Stenshorne and Van Amersfoort Racing’s Noel Leon each were once.
Over the course of the season, Stenshorne had the second-best average and this came despite an average starting position of 17.6 (worse than 18 others) and an average finishing position of 14.6. That would suggest he spent most of his time mired in the midfield pack, which he did, but in the Monaco feature race he had clear air at the very back of the pack and was able to post laptimes nobody else could match. Browning’s fastest lap was 0.4s slower than his, and the only others who got within a second his pace were Fornaroli and Lindblad.
Omit that race and Stenshorne’s average drops to 100.643%, remarkably still enough to be fourth-fastest before other averages are recalculated against PHM Racing’s Nikita Bedrin (who was also in clear air at the back) being fastest in Monaco.
Consistency was clearly the key to success in F3 this year, and while analysis of Trident’s last two champions by rival teams will lead to some useful conclusions on how to approach 2025, all of that learning may also have limited relevance as the championship introduces a new car.
Rolling race pace average
| Pos | Driver | Pace | Pos | Driver | Pace | Pos | Driver | Pace |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Browning | 100.549% | 12 | Meguetounif | 100.844% | 23 | Sztuka | 101.337% |
| 2 | Stenshorne | 100.590% | 13 | Montoya | 100.903% | 24 | Zagazeta | 101.370% |
| 3 | Fornaroli | 100.594% | 14 | Tramnitz | 100.918% | 25 | Esterson | 101.383% |
| 4 | Mini | 100.597% | 15 | Dunne | 100.922% | 26 | Wurz | 101.385% |
| 5 | Lindblad | 100.660% | 16 | Stromsted | 101.026% | 27 | Loake | 101.521% |
| 6 | Beganovic | 100.688% | 17 | Tsolov | 101.048% | 28 | Shields | 101.564% |
| 7 | Boya | 100.777% | 18 | Leon | 101.058% | 29 | Dufek | 101.651% |
| 8 | Goethe | 100.796% | 19 | Bedrin | 101.203% | 30 | Smith | 101.784% |
| 9 | Mansell | 100.797% | 20 | Inthraphuvasak | 101.250% | 31 | Wisnicki | 101.811% |
| 10 | van Hoepen | 100.798% | 21 | Voisin | 101.318% | 32 | Hedley | 102.199% |
| 11 | Ramos | 100.828% | 22 | Floersch | 101.332% |