How a winless F3 racer produced a moment of championship-winning quality

Without fail, every driver and every team in any motorsport category you could care to mention will tell you every year that consistency is their number one target. Yes, there will also be the usual spiel about title aspirations, but all know that bagging points at every round is crucial to having any hope of challenging for that top spot.

It is, however, beyond rare for a driver to take it to the extreme that Leonardo Fornaroli did in Formula 3 this term. The Trident driver clinched the title with an overtake on the last corner of the last lap at Monza, to score his seventh podium of the season, before a post-race stewards decision gave him a more comfortable margin in the final standings.

Fornaroli ascended to the third step of the podium on five occasions in 2024 and twice – including at the Monza finale – reached the second step. But remarkably, and in a first for F3, he did not climb to the top step once.

Enter the consistency tag, which is how Fornaroli toppled a field that produced 12 different winners in 20 races. Zero retirements and only two failures to score points meant he added to his tally on more occasions than any driver. The next closest to this record was Campos driver Oliver Goethe, who missed the final weekend after stepping in to replace Williams-bound Franco Colapinto in F2, with five (including Monza) nil points returns.

Having been asked when a race win would come his way with growing frequency as the season progressed, Fornaroli grins when telling Motorsport.com: “Now that I’ve won the championship, I don’t care if I didn’t win any races. But it would have been even better with one or two wins.

“Actually, there were some chances but we were very unlucky. The first one was in Melbourne because one set of tyres in qualifying wasn’t working well and was vibrating quite a lot, so we had to take another set and started the feature race on used tyres compared to the others. Maybe with new tyres, we could have taken the win.

Fornaroli was never on the top step, but took home the ultimate prize at the end of the season

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

“Also, in Imola there was a very good chance to take the win, but we all know what happened there; the car shut down on the straight because of a bump and we lost a lot of time. But we still finished P3.

“The last one was Monza. I think without the thing that happened in Ascari [when he made a mistake and ran though the gravel, dropping positions], there was also a good chance to take the win. But anyway, we took the most important win so right now, I don’t care.”

Arriving in Monza for the season-ending weekend, any one of six drivers could have taken the title. But Fornaroli, Gabriele Mini (Prema) and Luke Browning (Hitech), split by just six points pre-weekend, were the only contenders who had more than simply a mathematical hope of attaining glory.

“We took the most important win so right now, I don’t care”
Leonardo Fornaroli

This threw up a peculiar stat from modern era F3 seasons gone by, with no championship-winning driver having ever claimed a race victory at the season-ending weekend. This record extends through to the GP3 era, which pre-dated the formation of current F3 in 2019, all the way back to 2013 when champion Daniil Kvyat topped the podium in race one in Abu Dhabi.

Fornaroli’s hopes of ending that run appeared bright after qualifying, where he secured pole for the feature race. That meant he would start 12th for the earlier sprint outing on the partially reversed grid, but he was among a raft of drivers penalised for driving unnecessarily slowly in qualifying and shuffled back to 16th.

What followed was a champion’s drive, as he recovered to eighth with the fastest lap. Having started two places ahead, Mini was only ninth. Browning took sixth, but would only start 13th for the feature race and spun out early, setting up an all-Italian duel for the crown.

However things appeared to be slipping away from Fornaroli, who was struggling with tyre wear and heavy flat spots in his bid to recover from the off at Ascari. This all set up a thrilling final lap to the year, the 19-year-old recalls: “Before the last lap, I asked my engineer if I was still P1 in the standings with P4, and they said ‘no, right now you are one point behind Gabriele, so you absolutely have to overtake Chris (Mansell) in front of you’.

Fornaroli battled Alex Dunne for the lead in the early stages of the Monza finale before dropping back and having to fight back to third – which became second with Mini’s disqualification

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

“It was like a cold shower because from a very good position, I was going to lose the championship in a very bad way. So I said ‘OK, I’ll have to invent something’.

“They started to fight a bit in T1, so I recovered a bit of the gap that I’d lost in the penultimate lap. I tried the first move in the second chicane, but my front tyres were completely destroyed. I locked up, we both cut the chicane, and I gave back the position.

“The main focus was to have a very good exit from Lesmo 2 and I had a good exit. But, in the Ascari chicane, I knew it was the last chance because at the last corner, it is very difficult to overtake.

“He defended very well, so I couldn’t get it. And then, going into the last corner, I said: ‘I cannot lose it, I’m losing the championship, it cannot be real’. A lot of things went through my mind – the image of me losing the championship.

“So I said, ‘OK, I have to do something’. I prayed that they were not going to cover the inside but luckily, they went back onto the ideal line before the braking point. I knew it was the last chance, all or nothing.

“I send it on the inside. Luckily, Chris saw me, so he left the space. He was very fair and correct, and we managed to take back the title and the podium on the last corner of the last lap. When I crossed the finish line, all of the pressures that I had went down and I was the happiest man in the world.”

That it was ultimately not necessary, as Mini was disqualified for running tyre pressures below the minimum prescribed limits, and Fornaroli was boosted to second behind winner Sami Meguetounif, was moot. Asked how loud his release of emotion was on the team radio, Fornaroli adds: “I thought I was going to have a heart attack!

“We were all screaming so loudly and when I got out of the car, we were all jumping together. I was like, ‘I’m going to die!’ but it was a special moment for all of us. Also, Trident had back-to-back drivers’ champions, so it was amazing. I think also from outside, it was amazing to watch. I think it was the best race of the season.”

Fornaroli thought he was “going to have a heart attack” when celebrating his triumph

Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

An inspirational figure in Fornaroli’s rise has been the outgoing F3 champion, current F2 points leader and 2025 Sauber F1 driver, Gabriel Bortoleto. The Brazilian won the 2023 F3 crown with Trident, just like Fornaroli, and his Invicta F2 seat will be filled by Fornaroli when he graduates at the end of the campaign.

“The target was to be consistently in the points because, watching his season last year, he won the first two races and then just finished in the points at almost every race and won the title with a lot of gap [45 points] compared to second,” explains Fornaroli. “The goal was to always stay there without over-pushing or doing stupid mistakes or crashing into other drivers in the race.”

He adds: “We are very good friends. I’m very happy when he does well and he’s very happy when I’m doing well. I took him as an inspiration this year to achieve this result and he spoke very well about Invicta to me this season, so we worked a lot to try and join them and eventually, we did it. Now, I will try to do like him next year because he is doing an amazing season.”

“I thought I was going to have a heart attack. We were all screaming so loudly and when I got out of the car, we were all jumping together. I was like, ‘I’m going to die'”
Leonardo Fornaroli

Unlike many of his peers in the junior categories, Fornaroli is not yet linked to an F1 young driver scheme, although his champion status has led to early discussions beginning with more than one team.

Looking ahead to his rookie F2 season, Fornaroli hopes to deliver more of the same consistency that paid off so well in F3 and has taken confidence from the performances of peers who made an early graduation before F2’s autumn hiatus in Baku.

“For me, consistency is the most important part if you want to achieve good results in terms of drivers’ standings,” he assesses. “Watching this year’s results, I will try to arrive there and be competitive from the start. But we will see.

“Also, watching what the other F3 drivers – Chris, Luke and Gabriele – what they did in Baku, they were very quick from the start. So now I have more motivation going into next year.”