 Picture of Mari Boya during day 1 of the post-season test at Barcelona. Credit: James Sutton FIA Formula 3 on-track action concluded for the 2024 season after the second and final day of post-season testing at Barcelona on Wednesday. This is the last piece of post-season testing to take place in the current era of machinery before a change sees an entirely new race car be brought forward for the 2025 season and beyond. The current machinery has been in use since the very start of the FIA Formula 3 Championship all the way back in 2019. It is the second two-day test of post-season testing with the first one having concluded at Jerez just one week ago. In day one, Campos ran the show with Nikola Tsolov topping both the morning and afternoon sessions and they would continue their form by holding a 1-2 in the overall classification. However, it would be Tsolov's teammate Mari Boya who would head the times and the overall classification with the best lap across the two days. Boya's lap of 1:27.209 was an extremely impressive lap and it did enough to narrowly beat Tsolov's time of 1:27.236. It was an extremely close morning session with the top four being separated by less than a tenth, with Martinius Stenshorne of Hitech third and Trident's Rafael Camara placing fourth. This would reflect the overall classification as all 30 drivers competing saw their best lap times completed in the morning session - just like Tuesday's running. Camara would be the highest placed rookie in fourth position in the overall classification. Wednesday's testing would see a change to the lineup for the day over at Trident with Charlie Wurz being replaced by Chinese racer Ruiqi Liu, who has been competing in the Formula Regional European Championship by Alpine (FRECA) during the 2024. This would be Liu's first taste of Formula 3 machinery. As for the afternoon session, Hitech's Martinius Stenshorne would be the driver to top the session with a 1:28.337 that was over 1.5 seconds clear of the field in the final three hours. Stenshorne was top in a Hitech Pulse-Eight 1-2 as Joshua Dufek would take second position. In the afternoon session there would be eight rookies in the top 10 with Theophile Nael the highest placed of them in third. Nael was ahead of Liu who put an impressive session together to end up in fourth. Prema's Ugo Ugochukwu completed the most laps out of anyone across the day with 100 in total. Morning Session
Drivers would be ready for the final day of track action for the 2024 FIA Formula 3 season with day two of the final post-season test at Barcelona-Catalunya. There would be a change of driver lienup that would be running across the 30 cars from day one to day two and the change would take place over at the Trident team. Austrian driver Charlie Wurz who competed in day one would be vacating his seat for day two for Formula Regional European Championship driver Ruiqi Liu. Liu so far in 2024 has scored three points across 12 races and sits 21st in the drivers standings. Drivers would waste no time in heading out onto the circuit and would go for some early flying lap times to try and get a feel for the circuit with the day's track temperature and winds. The lap times would chop and change a lot as many drivers were improving. Campos' Nikola Tsolov started off in the best possible way by sitting top after the first 15 minutes of the session. The Bulgarian driver part of the Alpine Academy dominated the first day as he topped both the morning and afternoon sessions. Therefore Tsolov was hoping to pick up from where he left off on day 1. However, Tsolov with his early lap would not stay top for very long as Trident's Rafael Camara would set a new fastest lap of the session so far. Camara, who would have happy recent memories of the circuit as just a few weeks prior to this test, he claimed the Formula Regional European Championship by Alpine (FRECA) with a round to spare at the Circuit Barcelona-Catalunya. Camara's lap would be a 1:27.306, and this would be a lap time that would be good enough to be the best lap time across both the current day's and Tuesday's tests. However, Camara's lap would be beaten and in a fairly short space of time. Nikola Tsolov would be the driver to beat it with a 1:27.236. Having only participated in day two test at Jerez and the first day at Barcelona in comparison to many drivers who would have done three days worth of testing, Tsolov had finished top overall on both days he had participate in. A great record for Tsolov and with the fastest time he would be hoping to make it a third day to top overall. The Bulgarian driver would be beaten though by his Campos teammate Mari Boya but it would be through the narrowest of margins. Boya's lap time of 1:27.209 would be good enough to see him top of the time sheets by 0.029 of a second. At the end of the first hour of running, the top five would be Boya and Tsolov first and second respectively, as it would be a Campos 1-2. Following on from them it would be Martinius Stenshorne in third for Hitech, while his Hitech teammate Joshua Dufek was fifth. Rafael Camara was fourth for Trident. However, things could all change still in the morning session as there were two hours of running remaining. The top were though were all within a tenth of one another. Very closely contested at the top of the times with all 30 talents having the fastest lap times. Drivers would continue to complete lap times and practice different setups, to help them get to grips with the Formula 3 machinery ahead of next season for the majority of the field. Boya's time though remained unchallenged heading into the final half an hour. In the final 15 minutes, running would be halted as the red flag would be brought out due to Noel Leon encountering difficulties for Prema. Leon, who had been running in 10th signed for the team for the 2025 season on Monday. Him causing a red flag would have been the last thing he would have been hoping for in order to try and please his new employers. He would have been hoping for a better end to morning proceedings as opposed to this. The session would resume but no further lap times would be set for the morning session and before long the chequered flag would be out for the few cars that had gone back out onto the circuit. Therefore, Mari Boya had the top time in the morning session with a 1:27.209 ahead of his teammate Nikola Tsolov, who was second in another great showing across post-season testing. Martinius Stenshorne was third for Hitech with Rafael Camara in fourth for Trident. The top four (Boya, Tsolov, Stenshorne and Camara) were separated by just less than a tenth giving extremely close representation. Joshua Dufek completed the top five for Hitech Pulse-Eight. Teams and drivers would pause for an hour for lunch before returning for the final three hours of track time in the 2024 Formula 3 season. Afternoon Session
After an hour lunch break, it was time to return to on track action for the final track action of the 2024 season and the final track action for this spec of Formula 3 car as there will be a new era of machinery starting from 2025. Mari Boya had managed to set the quickest time of the two-day test provisionally, in the day's earlier session, which saw Campos take control of proceedings once again. The Spanish team were really showing their expertise around the Spanish circuits. At 13:00 local time, the session begun with a group of cars heading out onto the circuit. Would it be another Campos flurry of dominance between Boya and Nikola Tsolov or would another driver and team take the top spot for the final Formula 3 session of 2024. It would be a slow start with only a selection of drivers going for laps early on. Hitech's Martinius Stenshorne, who topped day one overall at Jerez would set the benchmark lap time. The Norwegian driver would go quickest overall with a 1:28.337. The lap time from Stenshorne would be over a second off the best lap time from Boya in the morning session, which followed a similar path to how the timings went across the Tuesday test sessions. Stenshorne would have a 1.5 second gap to his Hitech teammate Joshua Dufek who would be siting second as more drivers began to set lap times but they were not getting close to the time set by Stenshorne. Theophile Nael would sit third for Van Amersfoort Racing ahead of debut driver Ruiqi Liu who was in a comofrtbale fourth position as the session time kept on ticking. Therefore, when the session reached the halfway point the top five were: Stenshorne, Dufek, Nael, Liu and John Bennett. A few drivers would venture out on to the circuit but there lap times would not trouble those at the front. With half of the session completed in the afternoon, only 28 of the 30 drivers had set a representative lap with Jesse Carrasquedo and Javier Sagrera of AIX Racing without a lap time. This would remain the case even as the clock would run down to one hour to go and there would be little to no action on the circuit with some drivers heading in and out of the pit lane after doing some laps. Eventually, Sagrera and Carraquedo would set a representative lap time in the session and their lap times would impress and both drivers would take spaces inside the top 10. The two rookies would end up 10th and 11th, with Sagrera in 10th. Time was ticking down and more drivers were out there setting laps as just 45 minutes of the 2024 Formula 3 post-season testing remained. Some drivers were improving on their personal best laps but sadly for them they were still short of Stenshorne's time of 1:28.337. Some drivers would be improving but it was mainly just getting laps completed for the drivers and teams in the final half an hour of post-season testing for the 2024 Formula 3 season. Stenshorne was still leading the way as the majority of drivers were on circuit. Soon enough time ended up running out and the chequered flag being waved from the race control tower signalled the end of Formula 3 for 2024 and the end of post-season testing in Barcelona. As for the afternoon session, it was Hitech who made it a 1-2 as Martinius Stenshorne finished top and 1.5 seconds clear of his teammate Joshua Dufek in what was a good end to the post-season testing for the team. Theophile Nael would take third for Van Amersfoort Racing in the afternoon running ahead of Trident debutant Ruiqi Liu and AIX Racing's Javier Sagrera who completed the top five. However, with their times being vastly slower than the ones set in the morning session, this would affect the overall classification at the end of day 2. Overall, it was the morning times for every driver that were their best laps and therefore the morning classification is taken and used as the overall classification finishing order. Therefore, it would be a Campos 1-2 with Mari Boya finishing top of the overall order with his mroning lap of 1:27.209. Boya, who won at the Circuit Barcelona-Catalunya in the racing season of FIA Formula 3 in 2024, managed to get his car to be the fastest at the end of day 2 and he has set the fastest time across the two-day test. Overall on Wednesday it was Boya and Nikola Tsolov that were first and second for Campos in another splendid day of testing on home soil for the Spanish outfit. Hitech's Martinius Stenshorne, who topped the afternoon session, would end third with his morning time in the day's overall leaderboard. Rafael Camara, the highest placed rookie, was fourth for Trident while Joshua Dufek of Hitech completed the top five. All three Campos drivers would make the top six as Thai driver Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak would make it in sixth place ahead of MP Motorsport duo Bruno Del Pino and Tim Tramnitz, who were seventh and eighth respectively. Noah Stromsted of Trident and Noel Leon of Prema would complete the top 10 as 15th place Ugo Ugochukwu would complete the most laps throughout the day with 100 in total. The end of post-season testing signals the end of the 2024 season for FIA Formula 3 and what a season it has been in terms of the action that has been produced, the title fight that we have had with Leonardo Fornaroli taking the title with that final corner last lap overtake at Monza. Now we have had the post-season testing where the next crop of rising talents will be preparing themselves for a future drive in FIA Formula 3. For a lot of the drivers this will be the their first experience of Formula 3 and for those who already have got seats for the 2025 season, this has been a glimmer of what they can produce and a vital learning experience alongside it too. After all, that is the whole point of feeder series racing, to prepare the drivers for the top categories in motorsport such as Formula 1. Formula 3 will return to an entirely new era for 2025 and that is exciting for all involved and with a handful of new rookies already confirmed to be on the grid, next year promises to be one you will not want to miss. Formula 3 also says goodbye to a long-serving team at GP3 and FIA F3 level. After 15 years in both GP3 and FIA Formula 3, Jenzer Motorsport will depart the series after a great service to both championships. In their time in the category, they have seen the likes of Taylor Barnard and most notably Yuki Tsunoda race for them and go onto Formula E and Formula 1 respectively. The first round of the 2025 Formula 3 season will be at Albert Park, Melbourne as the championship begins in Australia for the very first time. The round will take place between March 14-16. Pre-season venues and dates are still to be confirmed. 2024 FIA Formula 3 Championship: post-season testing - Barcelona Day 2 classification
 Brandon Whiteside
Writer - F1 Journal
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