Photos: Dutch Photo Agency via AIX Racing
Nikita Bedrin excelled in his FIA Formula 3 cameo with AIX Racing at 2025 season-opening Australian Grand Prix. However, it will not be repeated in Bahrain
AIX Racing is yet to finalise its 2025 FIA F3 line-up, so the team therefore trusted a familiar face for the first race weekend of the year after Jonas Ried drove in the pre-season testing at Barcelona in February. Having not signed a full-time driver the week before the event, AIX called Nikita Bedrin, who competed with the team in 2024, to fill the seat of the #28 in Melbourne.
The Russian had no time to visit the workshop and landed in Australia without any preparation. Nevertheless, he scored a good haul of points. He qualified fourth and went on to finish sixth in the sprint race and fourth in the feature race, leaving him fourth in the standings after the opening round, only two points off second place.
Speaking to Formula Scout, Bedrin explained why he was initially not considering to be AIX’s stand-in driver, gave his impression of the new Dallara F3 2025 and discussed his performance while revealing that more FIA F3 outings are not on the cards for now.
“I obviously knew that there was one seat free, but I was not sure if they had found somebody or not. And I didn’t really want to ask because that would be just a bit, let’s say desperate or like rude to ask directly,” he says.
“From what I heard from other people, they still didn’t find the driver. So, of course, I had some thoughts in my head that I could be a last-minute call, but I didn’t have much expectations, much hopes for that.
“Lately, there has been quite a lot of changes happening in winter telling me one thing that I will do, and then ending up doing another thing. So I didn’t want to expect anything. I was just kind of living my life day by day and seeing what will come because it’s worse when you expect something and it doesn’t happen, and it’s better if you don’t expect it and it happens.”
Racing in FIA F3 in 2025 had been “out of discussion for the whole winter”, Bedrin says. However, his desire to continue in single-seaters materialised in the form of a deal to compete in Formula Regional. He first competed in the last two events of the 2025 Middle East championship with Sainteloc, and then he was announced to stay with the team for the full European campaign. At this point, he was “mainly just waiting for my FREC season to start” when everything changed for one weekend.
Photo: Topspeed
“My manager [Petr Aleshin] told me that there can be a chance that I am racing in Melbourne. ‘We just need to wait and see.’ And at first he said there was like 10, 20% chance. But then on Thursday, the week before, everything was confirmed.
“It was a bit unexpected because I still had to do a visa and I had to fly there, and it takes about two days to fly. So on Thursday, they told me. On Friday, I had to fly. I got my visa done in one day luckily. So it was very last minute everything.”
Bedrin had no time to visit AIX’s workshop and do the usual pre race weekend preparation in the simulator. And the last time he drove a F3 car — the Dallara F3 2019 — was at Monza in the last round of the 2024 FIA F3 championship over seven months ago. That made his feat even more impressive.
“I was not really sure what to expect going there because it was quite a surprise,” he confesses. “[During the winter] I was focusing on trying to improve my FRegional driving, and it’s a bit different from F3, the driving styles. So putting all my focus on FRegional, I kind of forgot the speed of a F3. Let’s say it was not so natural as you would expect after being driving it for two years.
“My main goal was to just try and focus on my driving and focus on myself to try to adjust as quick as possible, and then go from there, go by feeling. And it worked pretty well. In free practice, I collected all the data that I wanted, that I had to test before qualifying to be sure what to do. And then I saw that I had to work on my brake shape quite a lot. And it was a bit of, not an easy task to do for qualifying, but I’ve done pretty well to adapt.”
In spite of the circumstances, Bedrin had headed to Australia with the goal of scoring points, but he “was definitely not expecting to leave Melbourne in P4 in the championship and being two points away from P2”.
“Everybody was telling me ‘don’t stress about it. You had no prep, just enjoy, try to do your best.’ So there was not so much pressure going on, but from myself, I didn’t really want to just enjoy. I wanted to work on myself, basically on trying to adapt as quickly as possible.
Photo: Dutch Photo Agency via AIX Racing
“Honestly, going into the weekend it was a new car as well. I had never driven it. And I don’t know how the team was in testing as well, because a new car is new for everybody. So I didn’t know what to expect from the team as well. I was definitely not expecting to be P4, but I was expecting to be somewhere around top 10.”
Bedrin was on it from the first timed lap in qualifying. He was second fastest once everyone had completed their flying laps on the first set of tyres, then he dropped to fourth place in a red flag-disrupted second half of the session. Meanwhile, in the races he focused on himself rather than getting carried away by the lure of a potential podium finish. Thus, he secured the points he aimed for.
“In race one, in the first laps, I felt that the balance was not exactly as I wanted it to be,” he explains. “It was a bit difficult to manage it. If I tried to keep up with people in front, I was never going to be able to pass them, that’s for sure. And if I would try to keep up with them, I would just kill the tyres. So, at that point, I just decided to do my race to try to save tyres and see where that takes me.”
Bedrin spent the first half of the sprint race holding off Van Amersfoort Racing’s Theophile Nael, but when it was neutralised on lap 16 of 20, the AIX driver had closed on DAMS’ Matias Zagazeta in the battle for fifth place.
“Most likely, I was going to get P5, maybe even P4. That was a bit more difficult. But after the race, I was like 100% sure I was going to get at least one,” he states before discussing the wet feature race, where he held on to the fourth place he started from.
“It was impossible to pass because of the spray. In the beginning, I felt like I was a bit quicker than the guy in front. But then I saw that they were using the tyres quite a lot, so I decided to back off again. Knowing the tyres and how the track is, I was expecting them to start going off quite a lot, but once again we didn’t complete the full race.
The strategy? “It was more about me trying to manage the tyres because I don’t think I had the pace to go for an attack mode. I felt like I can try to stay with them and struggle together with them after, or I can try a different strategy. But, you know, safety cars were not in my favour in that case.”
Photo: Dutch Photo Agency via Aix Racing
Bedrin believes that the new F3 car and its predecessor are “actually very similar”. However, he recognised his impression of it could be distorted because of the time it had passed since Monza 2024 and his subsequent FRegional outings.
“Of course, I had a big break of seven months. So for me, I cannot really say that I felt much of a difference,” he says. “It just felt fast coming from FRegional. But what I noticed, I felt like it was a bit more heavier for what it felt like.
“The combining, usually when you brake and steer at the same time with bigger tyres, you would expect it to be quite difficult to manage the lock-ups. But on the wet, I could combine quite a lot. And I was actually surprised by that because I was not expecting it.”
The current F3 car features 16-inches tyres, and the wet compound looks now more like Formula 1’s intermediate after the reprofiling of its grooves. Bedrin praised the AIX team for the work they did over the winter, getting on top of the new package.
“They’ve done a very good job because you can see in the testing in Bahrain now, also, they were quite competitive. And in Melbourne, the car was for sure good enough for a battle for pole in qualifying. So that’s for sure an improvement for them. Also helps, of course, that it’s a new car. Last year, they started with a massive disadvantage compared to others. Now everybody is on the same page and we can see that they’re quite competitive. So they’ve done a good job.
“In the case for me to adapt the team, it was pretty easy because everything that I already knew. It’s more hard for the rookies. But for me, I know everything about the championship. The only thing that had different was the engineer that I didn’t work with before. And it took us a few days to get to the same page, but then at the end everything was fine and in a smooth flow, let’s say. So it was pretty easy to adapt back.”
The tally of 17 points scored around Albert Park placed Bedrin in fourth in the FIA F3 drivers’ standings, two points off second-classified Nael. In spite of that, he reveals that he is not going to continue filling AIX’s vacant seat even though he has been offered it.
Photo: Dutch Photo Agency via AIX Racing
“It’s a bit disappointing being P4 in the championship and not being able to continue,” he admits. “I was also supposed to do Bahrain now. I was supposed to do testing and race, but I was not able to.”
Other commitments relating to Bedrin’s main program in FREC with Sainteloc have prevented him from being in the F3 cockpit at Sakhir. Freddie Slater took over the car for last week’s test, although he already has a busy racing schedule planned across FREC and GB3, and a driver for next weekend’s races is still to be announced.
Nonetheless, Bedrin does not rule out future appearances should AIX still need a driver and the schedules align.
“Racing is racing, you know, and F3 is a high championship. Of course, I wouldn’t say no.”