Santiago Ramos won the opening Formula 3 race of 2025, in an incident-packed race which ended under the Safety Car.
The Van Amersfoort Racing driver led from pole position and held off the challenge of Hitech’s Martinius Stenshorne to claim victory, as a frantic battle for victory truncated by the Safety Car appearing after a shunt between Javiar Sagrera and Bruno Del Pinto.
Rodin’s Roman Bilinski took third in his first-ever F3 race, with Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak fourth for Campos.
Magias Zagazeta fifth in his DAMS Lucas Oil, with AIX’s Nikita Bedrin sixth, followed by Ramos’ team-mate Theophile Nael in seventh.
Nikola Tsolov was eighth, with Britain’s Callum Voisin ninth, and Noel Leon 10th.
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How the first F3 race of 2025 unfolded
At lights out, Ramos held on to his lead despite Zagazeta’s fast start. At Turn 2, Bilinski got up to third, as Charlie Wurz found himself in problems, and off onto the grass into Turn 5, the Austrian having touched Tim Tramnitz and coming off worse and immediately parking on the run off.
As Ramos opened-up a big gap already, a bottleneck appeared on the exit of Turn 13, with Stenshorne having moving from fifth to first in two corners, with Inthraphuvasak outbreaking himself. Behind, Josh Dufek and Louis Sharp touched, sending both men in for repairs.
A virtual safety car was signalled and after going green a lap later, there would be further chaos at the same corner to trigger a full Safety Car this time around.
James Wharton appeared to enter the corner a bit too deep, and in turn, touched Rafael Camara and Laurens Van Hoepen, the latter two out on the spot, with Wharton able to return to the pits but would go no further.
As Dufek was given a time penalty for his role in the incident with Sharp, Tramnitz seemed to be out, crawling to a halt in his MP Motorsport on the pit entrance, but then got going again, drove through the pit lane and back onto the circuit, but now in last.
With the race now in the eighth lap and still under the Safety Car, Tramnitz’s problems finally appeared to condemn him to retirement, coasting around and managing to bring his stricken car back to the pits.
The Safety Car would return to the pits at the start of Lap 9, and Ramos timed his restart perfectly, opening a half-second lead into the lap, with Bedrin and Nael jostling for sixth, giving the top five a chance to pull ahead.
Noel Leon made his way into the top 10, as Ugo Ugochukwu, who had started fifth, finding himself struggling to gain any momentum, as he would slip down the pecking order to 13th, having dropped five places on the first lap alone.
Now at half-distance, Ramos was now ahead by nearly a second, but with DRS now open, Stenshorne’s Hitech was suddenly all over the back of the Ramos’ Van Amersfoort, but the Mexican would keep himself ahead.
The top five were well clear of the rest, with Inthraphuvasak, Zagazeta and Bilinski keeping tabs on the Ramos-Stenshorne battle.
Lap 13, and Ramos was beginning to feel the heat from Stenshorne, going deep into T13 as he defended, but just stayed ahead of the Norwegian and continued to do so even when he tried to sell a dummy into T3 on the next lap.
Inthraphuvasak took Zagazeta for fourth, as the status quo remained at the front, but Bilinski was now the only one of the rest of the top five to keep himself close to Ramos and Stenshorne, and was beginning to sniff at victory himself.
Just as the rhythm seemed to be unerring, the Safety Car was back out, as two Spaniards in the shape of Sagrera and Del Pinto coming together, the former’s AIX in the gravel at T6, and the latter’s MP nose-first in the barrier, the pair seemingly having tangled into the braking zone.
The Safety Car’s appearance was welcome news for Ramos, as gravel strewn over the track at the exit of T7 needing to be cleared by marshals, frantically sweeping it back into the run-off area.
With the Safety Car’s lights staying on at the end of Lap 19, it meant that the final lap was now going to be run under it, ensuring Ramos would take the win in the first F3 action of the year.
The top of the grid will now be reverted back to the fastest time taking pole for the feature, with Rafael Camara starting from first.
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