Which nation has the most drivers who will line up on the Formula 3 grid for next week’s opening round in Bahrain? It’s the UK, with five set to battle it out among the 30-car field across the 10 events.
Of this quintet, Luke Browning is the only one to have race experience in the series. Meanwhile, Arvid Lindblad, Cian Shields, Callum Voisin and Joseph Loake (who like Browning is an Aston Martin Autosport BRDC Young Driver of the Year winner) are all embarking on rookie campaigns. Time to take a look at their prospects…
Luke Browning
All eyes are on Hitech GP’s 22-year-old from Cheshire, who is tipped as a contender for the title. That’s notwithstanding his rookie season of 2023 – just one podium finish and 15th in the points hardly sound like the ideal foundations from which to push on and top the order.
Instead, it’s the post-season Macau Grand Prix from last November that has triggered the excitement around Williams F1 protege Browning. He was utterly sublime on the Far East streets, qualifying on pole, winning the qualifying race and then the main race. And although little can be read into the times from pre-season testing, it was the Briton who ended the three days in Bahrain last week at the top of the pile.
Talking about the deficit from his rookie year, Browning explains: “In terms of actual experience, these guys have had two to three years of Formula Regional, racing on these circuits. Last year, I hadn’t been to a lot of the circuits that these guys had raced for years on.
“In terms of the actual experience of driving, you’ve got to think that last year I turned up with no testing. I’ve not really had any testing throughout my career and I’ve always been chucked in at the last minute, so this year has been one of the first years that I’ve been really well-prepared, and I think that shows in not only what we’ve done in Macau, but what we’ve done in testing.
“[I’m] the most well-prepared I can be. And with that comes the expectation of the championship. After winning Macau and the World Cup in this car, I think the team is going to be strong. It’s certainly what I want to do. I’d love to win the championship with the team but ultimately, the championship is very difficult and it’s early doors.
“I’m a different driver to what I was last year. I’m not turning up a week before I’m actually driving, being told I’m going to drive. It’s a bit different having four months to prepare, knowing that I’ll be doing it. I’m feeling really good and I’m excited.”
Aware of the pressure added by his Macau performance, Browning continues: “I’ve always had that in my career. I’ve never really had the money to do it the way I wanted to do it, nor to make the steps up that I wanted to take when I could. I’ve always had to prove myself to people to be able to move up, so it’s natural to me.
“We’ve handled these situations well in the past, winning British F4 and GB3. I’ve been in these title discussions before where you’ve got to be smart and race a little bit differently. I think I’m ready for it – well, I know I’m ready for it and I’m really looking forward to the challenge.”
Last season, Gabriel Bortoleto entered the final round needing just a single point to confirm himself as the champion. The previous year, Victor Martins came out on top but entered the final feature race of the year in a six-way battle for honours. So F3 is unpredictable…
“Obviously, Prema have been very strong in the past,” muses Browning. “How many championships they’ve won, they’ve been formidable. I don’t doubt that Prema will be there, I don’t doubt that last year’s drivers’ champion team – Trident – will be there.
“Ultimately, F3 is so tight. The champion last year won two races. When Piastri won it [in 2020] he didn’t have a pole position. It’s not necessarily one person that you’re battling with, it could be – like the Victor Martins year – five or six people for the championship going into Monza. You just don’t know how it’s going to work out.
“But my second-year experience should help a lot. It really was a massive learning year last year, not only with the tracks but in terms of it being a completely different driving style compared with what I was used to in the UK. It’s going to be good. I perform well under pressure – I always have done. If you look at the Autosport Award, when the pressure is on and you’ve just got to perform, usually it brings the best out in me.”
Hitech chief Oliver Oakes adds: “Last year Luke had an interesting season where he showed quite a lot of promise in F3. He probably didn’t quite put it together when it mattered – he wouldn’t mind me saying – and then he almost made up for that in a good way in Macau. So he’s now got to do it this year consistently, weekend after weekend.”
Arvid Lindblad
Browning labels those in the highly coveted Prema Racing seats as a primary threat for the title, and this is where 16-year-old Red Bull Junior Lindblad resides. But the Surrey lad is up against it – he’s entering only his second full season of car racing, and lines up alongside Dino Beganovic and Gabriele Mini, proteges of Ferrari and Alpine respectively and already established as forces in F3.
Lindblad finished in the top three in all the major karting competitions that he entered as a new Red Bull recruit in 2021, before his 2022 campaign was set back when he was forced out for a few weeks by a broken thumb sustained in a shunt at Franciacorta. That also truncated his F4 testing programme, but he performed respectably in his late-season races with Van Amersfoort Racing once he’d passed his 15th birthday and became eligible for the step into the Italian series.
Last year he moved to Prema, via a campaign with Hitech in the F4 UAE series where he accumulated one win. Lindblad was a clear mid-season leader in the Italian championship – with six victories in his first 12 races – before car problems stymied his progress and he dropped to third in the final rankings. He collected a further win on his way to fourth in the Euro 4 mini-series, and dominated the Macau GP F4 event.
“He has grown up with us after stepping from karting into Formula 4 and he had a great season with us last year,” says Prema team boss Rene Rosin. “So we decided together with Red Bull to put him in Formula 3. It will be a learning experience to jump from Formula 4 to Formula 3 – it’s quite important – but I’m sure that together with the two experienced team-mates that he has with Dino and Gabriele, he will have a great season there.”
Joseph Loake
It’s fair to say that the move to F3 for 2024 was not fully on 18-year-old Loake’s radar until very late last year, when he won the Aston Martin Autosport BRDC Award. His position on the grid with Rodin Motorsport puts him up against 2022 winner Luke Browning, and 2023 finalists Arvid Lindblad and Callum Voisin.
Whereas Browning has made clear his ambition for championship glory, Loake – who enters his fourth season in single-seaters after finishing third in GB3 last year – has less lofty targets for his maiden F3 campaign.
“I think with the situation that I’m in at the moment with the team [which was bottom of the teams’ table in 2023], it’s going to be quite tricky to be anywhere higher than the top 15,” he argues. “But if we get everything right and I put in a good job, I don’t see why we can’t be looking at that.
“I don’t know what to expect and I don’t want to put any pressure on myself, especially for the first round. It’s tricky to say. Of course, I’ve had three days in the car and I’m going to be thrown straight into round one, so I think it’s going to be quite a challenge to be at the pace that I want to be.
“I learned a lot in Bahrain testing and hopefully I can put that to good use come qualifying. I think if I’m just there or thereabouts with my team-mates and I’m showing the potential that we could have for the rest of the year, I’ll be quite satisfied with that. After we know where we are, we’ll try to build on that and build momentum for the year.”
Callum Voisin
One of two British drivers in the Rodin Motorsport line-up, Voisin is well known to the team. He has spent two seasons with the squad in GB3, culminating in championship success last year. Among those he beat was new team-mate Joseph Loake.
“First of all, we want to beat each other!” quips the 17-year-old. “But it’s important that we work well together. We will turn up in Bahrain and, wherever we are, we will have to deal with it and keep chipping away at it. I think we’ll get some good results.”
Voisin has pinpointed Monaco as the event he is most looking forward to: “Just looking at it from an F1 perspective, qualifying day there is going to be pretty special. Being so close to the walls, going through the tunnel.
“I actually used to live there when I was younger so it’s almost like going home and being on the streets that I kind of grew up on. I’m really looking forward to it, it’s the most prestigious race in all of motorsport.”
Cian Shields
The 18-year-old Scot raced on a fair few of the F3 circuits on his way to runner-up spot – with four wins – in last year’s Euroformula Open series. But Shields, who joins Luke Browning in the Hitech GP line-up, is making a big jump in terms of competition from that thinly supported contest to the throng on the F1 support grid.
“It’s quite hard to tell right now with the testing because people do a lot of different things,” concedes Shields. “So the first time that you really know where you are is qualifying at the first round. The pace is the main thing. As long as we’re up with the front guys, I’m going to be pretty happy. I can’t really focus on results because, obviously, there’s a lot more factors that come into it.”
Of Browning, he adds: “He’s good to learn from and, analysing the data and the videos after each session, he’s probably one of the best people to be able to compare to because I’d definitely say he’s one of the fastest on the grid this year.”
“With Cian, it’s slightly different,” says Hitech boss Oliver Oakes. “He’s going into his third ever season of car racing. The ladder, they seem to jump up quite quickly now. So from our side, it’s a case of just building up to it as the year goes on.”
Who else is lining up on the F3 grid?
With last year’s top five in the final standings all graduating to Formula 2, Dino Beganovic and Gabriele Mini – sixth and seventh respectively in 2023 – are the highest-placed to remain on the F3 grid. And, what do you know, both of them are lining up with traditional F3 conqueror Prema Racing.
Swedish Ferrari junior Beganovic somehow didn’t pick up a race win with Prema in his rookie F3 season as the reigning Formula Regional European champion. Sicilian Alpine protege Mini was sublime on his way to victory in Monaco, and also won the sprint race clash at the Hungaroring, but was less consistent elsewhere with Hitech. He returns to the team with which he became the 2020 Italian F4 champion.
It was Trident, however, that fielded 2023 F3 champion Gabriel Bortoleto, although fellow Italian squad Prema scooped the teams’ crown. Leonardo Fornaroli, a three-time podium finisher and Silverstone polewinner as a rookie, is joined here by FRegional graduates Sami Meguetounif and Santiago Ramos, and the Italian knows he must challenge at the front more consistently this season.
Oliver Goethe is the only other race winner continuing into 2024. After ending the 2023 campaign in eighth spot, he has been newly recruited as a Red Bull Junior for his switch from Trident to Campos Racing, where he is partnered by fellow second-year drivers Sebastian Montoya and Mari Boya.
Apart from the British newcomers, there are some intriguing rookies in the line-up. Norwegian Martinius Stenshorne and German Tim Tramnitz were the closest opposition to F2 new boy Andrea Kimi Antonelli in last year’s FRegional European season, and join the F3 grid with Hitech GP and MP Motorsport respectively.
Polish talent Kacper Sztuka beat Arvid Lindblad and the rest with astonishing late-season form to claim the Italian F4 crown – he and new MP team-mate Tramnitz have both been rewarded with selection to the Red Bull Junior programme. Completing a potent MP line-up is GB3 runner-up Alex Dunne, after the Irishman starred on his category debut in last November’s Macau GP.
Mexican Noel Leon didn’t have the deepest competition to beat in Euroformula Open last year, but was convincing on his way to the crown with seven race wins. He now steps up with Van Amersfoort Racing. It all adds up to the usual mix of rookies and experienced heads in F3, which looks set to provide some entertaining action on grand prix weekends in 2024.
