The Ferrari junior who romped to the F3 title – but didn’t expect to dominate

On Sunday, Rafael Camara took the Formula 3 title in emphatic fashion.

The Brazilian clinched the crown in a lights-to-flag victory on a wet Hungaroring track, with his championship lead proving unassailable ahead of the Monza round with a 48-point advantage over Mari Boya in the drivers’ standings.

This shouldn’t come as a massive surprise given Camara has been a member of the Ferrari Driver Academy for the past four years, climbing the junior formulae ladder with the support of the prancing horse.

Camara has consistently been successful in single-seaters. In 2022, he was runner-up in the competitive Italian F4 championship behind a youngster you may have heard about, Andrea Kimi Antonelli. His first campaign in the Formula Regional European Championship by Alpine then yielded fifth position, as Antonelli triumphed once again, then he won that series comprehensively as a sophomore last year.

Still, when asked in F3’s post-title Q&A if he was expecting to be this strong ahead of his rookie campaign at this level, Camara admitted: “Obviously no. I mean, it was a big surprise. I think after all the preparation we did, obviously you always want to win, you always go into a championship thinking that you can win the championship, thinking that you’re going to fight for what you can. But I was never expecting to start how we started in Australia.”

In Melbourne, the Trident driver retired from the sprint race in a three-car collision before taking a lights-to-flag victory in the feature contest.

This was his 2025 campaign in a nutshell. Camara is the joint-13th best performer on Saturdays, scoring just 18 points when the likes of Martinius Stenshorne, Nikola Tsolov and Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak collected respectively 45, 44 and 42.

But there’s a simple reason to this. Camara has been amazingly consistent in qualifying, with a 2.8 average position and no fewer than five pole positions in nine rounds.

Ever since F3’s forerunner GP3 was created in 2010, only one driver ever was so dominant in qualifying: Luca Ghiotto, also with five poles out of nine and a 2.7 average qualifying position, in 2015. The Italian driver then narrowly missed out on the title against Esteban Ocon, in what perhaps was the most competitive campaign ever in the series.

“The only thing that is a bit different in Formula 3 compared to the other categories is that you are very limited in [track] time,” Camara pointed out, with just a 45-minute free practice session before qualifying. “Sometimes you are not even fully on the limit in quali, especially in some races where we had a different compound from free practice to quali, where you don’t even know where the grip is.

“But understanding where the limit is and being fast straight away is a strong point on my side, as every time on the first runs we already had good pace – and when you start already with good pace, it is much easier to set up what the car needs to improve. I also feel as the driver, it’s just more simple for what you need to do each run, and I think that’s why quali has been so strong.”

What this meant was that Camara often started sprint races in the midfield – 10.2 on average – due to the top 12 qualifiers being reversed on the grid, hence his lacklustre Saturday results.

F3 Drivers champion and race winner Rafael Camara, Trident

Photo by: Formula Motorsport Ltd

On Sundays however, he scored a whopping 138 points out of 226 possible (including pole position bonuses), far more than second- and third-best performers Boya (83) and Tim Tramnitz (67). This was mostly down to four emphatic victories from pole in Australia, Bahrain, Spain and Hungary; the lowlights were a retirement from ninth in Monaco due to a loose wheel and 22nd position at Silverstone after he unsuccessfully gambled on slicks on a damp track.

In other words, there is no question that Camara was the best performer over the 2025 campaign, and the 20-year-old will now set his sights on F2, attempting to emulate the likes of Ferrari golden boy Charles Leclerc, George Russell, Oscar Piastri and fellow countryman Gabriel Bortoleto – all four took back-to-back GP3/F3 and F2 titles as rookies. That’s no mean feat – but it is the best way to be fast-tracked to F1.