The British trio hunting for F3 title glory

The FIA Formula 3 Championship returns to action this weekend in Bahrain, and for 2022 it’s back racing alongside Formula 2 at the same events, with a nine-round calendar set for the season.

Last year, honours were split among two Italian teams. Red Bull Junior Dennis Hauger clinched the drivers’ title for Prema Racing, leading from the off in supreme style to beat Jack Doohan. But it was Doohan’s Trident squad that snatched the teams’ championship away from the previously dominant Prema squad by just four points. With Hauger and Doohan among those moving up to Formula 2, new challengers will emerge this season. Among them are three Britons who all made the finals of the Aston Martin Autosport BRDC Young Driver of the Year Award in 2021.

With a brilliant season on the UK scene in 2021 behind him, Zak O’Sullivan looks set to be one of F3’s most promising rookies this year. The 17-year-old claimed seven wins on his way to the GB3 title last year and, since making his car racing debut in 2019, has never ended a season lower than second in the overall standings – he finished as runner-up in the 2019 Ginetta Junior Championship and the 2020 British Formula 4 Championship.

Days after being named as a member of the Williams Driver Academy, he was announced as the Aston Martin Autosport BRDC winner. Not a bad way to celebrate your birthday… And in between, he was confirmed as remaining with Carlin for a third year for his graduation to F3.

While Carlin has been the place to be in other categories, the British operation has struggled in F3. It finished last in the F3 teams’ standings in 2021, without a single point in the second half of the season, and 2020 wasn’t much better – Carlin was eighth out of the 10 teams. But O’Sullivan remains positive that the team’s fortunes can change. Although he is reluctant to set any goals for the season, he is excited about his prospects.

“It’s a good test of team and driver,” he reckons. “To be honest, like most other years, it’d be very difficult to put a number on it, especially due to Carlin’s form last year. We’ll see how we do this year, but I think as long as I work on myself and really improve all aspects, I can make the most out of the package. We have got round one coming up and I can say more from there, and I think hopefully the results should follow.”

Staying with a team does bring its benefits. O’Sullivan is still working with the same engineer – Anthony Grenier – he’s had since his British F4 days, while other members of the squad moving up alongside him bring “familiarity and the trust factor”. In the meantime, he is feeling “as confident as I can be, obviously I’m quite confident in my own ability”. With such a strong track record, why wouldn’t he be?

Williams junior O'Sullivan was crowned as the latest winner of the Aston Martin Autosport BRDC Young Driver of the Year Award

Photo by: Carl Bingham / Motorsport Images

At Prema, Ollie Bearman joins the F3 paddock as a new member of the Ferrari Driver Academy, after defeating the squad to win the Italian and German Formula 4 championships last season. As you might expect, Prema has assembled a strong line-up, with 16-year-old Bearman partnering Ferrari stablemate Arthur Leclerc and Red Bull Junior Jak Crawford. Both are second-year F3 drivers, with Leclerc remaining at Prema after two reversed-grid wins in 2021, and Crawford moving over from Hitech, where he scored one podium.

Bearman says he felt at home “straight away” at Prema, and that he’s moved to Italy to be closer to its base. But he admits that from F4 it’s a “big, big step and a lot of pressure,” and adds: “Everyone has super-high expectations of me, I’m sure. So, obviously to fulfil them, it’s not easy. And, yeah, in that sense, there is some pressure.

“I think it’s important to be realistic. It’s tough to really make predictions, but the first half of the season, I think I need to really take it more as a learning curve, especially at least the first two or three races, take it as just keep learning. And then the second half of the season is where it really starts to count, and that’s where the difference can be made, I think.”

"Like most other years, it’d be very difficult to put a number on it, especially due to Carlin’s form last year. We’ll see how we do this year, but I think as long as I work on myself and really improve all aspects, I can make the most out of the package" Zak O'Sullivan

A key difference to Bearman’s campaign this year will be a lack of testing. F3 has far stricter regulations around running than F4, and this is something that can catch out those who make the same leap. Hauger, for example, claimed 17th place in the 2020 F3 rankings on his graduation as Italian F4 champion. But Essex racer Bearman says this can be remedied with additional time on Prema’s “super-advanced” simulator and relying on the team’s “really good references from the past three years” – it has, after all, run all three FIA F3 drivers’ champions, with Robert Shwartzman in 2019 and Alpine F1 reserve Oscar Piastri in 2020 coming before Hauger.

In order to deal with the pressure that comes with such high expectations, Bearman is open about his work with a sports psychologist as part of Ferrari’s junior programme, and says it has been “quite helpful just to kind of look at everything. It’s tough to really see gains in your mental state – you go to the gym, and you can see yourself getting stronger, but you can’t see your brain getting stronger. You have to really wait until the time comes where you struggle, and then you’re just making sure that these things don’t go wrong. You can’t really tell until that happens, but we’ve worked hard at it, so I think should it happen, I have the resources and the provisions to overcome it.”

Jonny Edgar, who is about to embark on his second season in the series, finds himself in a different predicament. The 2020 German F4 champion ran with Carlin last year and finished down in 18th in the standings. Now he’s joined reigning champion team Trident, and the 18-year-old is looking to bounce back in 2022 after a “difficult year, struggled all year really”, although he admits that “some weekends were better than others”.

The Cumbrian, who adds that this is “most likely the last year I’ll be doing F3”, is impressed with what he’s seen of Trident so far. “Compared to any team I’ve been in they definitely do more with the drivers to prepare us, which I think especially with F3, with how limited the track time is, it’s helpful,” he points out.

Bearman steps up with Prema after sweeping the Italian and French F4 titles in 2021 - with Ferrari backing, much is expected of him

Photo by: Ferrari

Edgar has been a Red Bull Junior since 2017, before his move from karting to single-seaters. It was Red Bull that chose his seat at Trident, while he also takes advantage of the racing simulator at its Austrian headquarters. His aim is to be “in the top three at least” this year, before hoping for a move up to FIA Formula 2 in 2023.

“Obviously, the second year, there’s a few things – being on the pace quicker, with more confidence in the car, and just knowing that the car’s gonna be getting closer to the limit sooner,” he states. “Everyone has the same perception, it’s always gonna be easier and returning to some tracks will help.

“And also just the whole format of the weekend, going from practice to quali, kind of improving on the things you have to improve without many laps. You need to focus on the weekend, but that will be a lot easier to do in the second year.”

The young Brits might all look like promising contenders, but they’ll have other drivers to look out for. Reigning Formula Regional European champion Gregoire Saucy enters the fold off the back of a brilliant 2021, and remains with ART Grand Prix, while a fourth Briton, Ayrton Simmons, is keen to make his mark at Charouz Racing System after finishing as 2021 GB3 runner-up to O’Sullivan.

Isack Hadjar has joined the Red Bull stable fresh from his race-winning rookie FRegional campaign, and topped two days of the Bahrain pre-season test for Hitech Grand Prix. Barbadian Zane Maloney, who was Hadjar’s FRegional team-mate last year and was also a race winner, lines up alongside Edgar at Trident and headed the first day of testing.

Meanwhile, there are established talents such as Victor Martins, who finished fifth last year with MP Motorsport and is the highest-placed returning driver – and has reverted to his spiritual home of ART. To him, you can add his 2021 team-mate, the Nicolas Todt-managed Caio Collet who remains at MP, as well as Leclerc. Anyone fancy predicting a poleman or race winner for this weekend?

Edgar had a difficult first year in FIA F3 with Carlin, finishing 18th overall, but is thriving at Trident

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

Leclerc’s second charge

Arthur Leclerc has a lot of expectation upon his shoulders entering the 2022 FIA Formula 3 season.

The younger brother of Ferrari Formula 1 driver Charles Leclerc will race for Prema Racing this year as the team’s only returning driver, alongside fellow second-year F3 racer Jak Crawford and rookie Ollie Bearman. Last season he finished 10th in the points, with two reversed-grid race wins and a best feature race result of second in Hungary. That was below expectations for a Ferrari Driver Academy prospect.

Searching for a breakthrough, the Monegasque competed in the Formula Regional Asian Championship over the winter break in a bid to hone his racecraft. And it worked, with Leclerc claiming the title thanks to four wins and five further podiums across the 15 races held in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Although that was with the Mumbai Falcons team, that squad was very much operated by Prema.

It’s clear that the title has put a spring back in Leclerc’s step, giving him a much-needed confidence boost ahead of his return to F3

“We did a really good job,” he smiles. “It was really the goal of this championship to get ready for Formula 3, to work on our weaknesses last year. So yeah, it was a really good season to train, and now we need to reset our mind because now it’s a new championship.”

Reflecting on 2021, he says he lacked consistency and made too many mistakes, something it’s clear he overcame in the winter break. “I don’t think it was a good season, definitely,” he admits. “At the end, it’s not reflecting what we… I will not say it’s not what we deserved, we finished 10th and you deserve what you get, but it’s not reflecting our pace or speed during the championship. I think we were a lot faster than this. But yeah, I did some mistakes in the season. The luck has not been every time on my side as well.”

It’s clear that the title has put a spring back in Leclerc’s step, giving him a much-needed confidence boost ahead of his return to F3. With new team-mates and a year of experience behind him, he hopes to “just continue the good work, keep doing what we did this winter season”.

Arthur Leclerc endured a tricky 2021 F3 campaign but will be one to watch this year

Photo by: Ferrari