Kiwi Formula 3 talent Louis Sharp bounced back spectacularly at Imola, delivering his strongest performance of the 2025 season so far in a chaotic and drama-filled Sprint Race that saw the Rodin Motorsport driver finish a hard-fought fourth after a series of fierce on-track battles and two safety car interruptions.
While Formula 3 returned to the iconic Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari for Round 3 of the 2025 Championship, it marked Sharp’s debut at the historic circuit.
Sharp came into the weekend looking to rebound after a tough pair of opening rounds in Melbourne and Bahrain. A strong showing in qualifying saw the 18-year-old secure P5 for Sunday’s Feature Race.
That meant a P8 starting position for Saturday’s Sprint Race, with the grid for the Top 12 reversed under F3’s format.
As the lights went out under blue skies in northern Italy, pole-sitter Bruno Del Pino led the field into Turn 1, with Tim Tramnitz, Mari Boya, and Nikola Tsolov tucked in behind. Sharp got a clean launch and made immediate progress, muscling his way up to seventh on the opening lap.
It didn’t take long for the Kiwi to get elbows out. He went wheel-to-wheel with Ugo Ugochukwu in a tight scrap for sixth, eventually emerging ahead.
The move was textbook Sharp—aggressive but clean—and it set up an opportunity to capitalise on the chaos ahead. When Noel León tangled with Ugochukwu while defending his position, Sharp pounced again, jumping into fifth with a smart piece of opportunistic driving.
Tramnitz, meanwhile, surged past Del Pino on Lap 4 to take the lead, while Boya came under fire from Tsolov for the final podium position.
Sharp, showing race-winning pace, set the fastest lap of the race before a mechanical issue for Nicola Marinangeli brought out the first safety car after the Italian lost a wheel and came to a stop off-track.
Racing resumed with nine laps to go, but the drama wasn’t over. Boya suddenly slowed with a mechanical failure and plummeted down the order before retiring—another podium contender out of the picture.
Moments later, a collision between Matias Zagazeta and Callum Voisin at Turn 2 brought out a second safety car.
Zagazeta was beached in the gravel, while Voisin limped back to the pits. The stewards ruled Voisin at fault and handed down a 10-second penalty.
With six laps left on the restart, the fight for the podium reignited. Now running fourth, Sharp had his sights set on Tsolov and wasn’t holding back.
As DRS was re-enabled, the Rodin driver began to pile on the pressure, closing the gap with every sector. But it was a tightly packed train behind the MP Motorsport pair of Tramnitz and Del Pino, and there was no margin for error.
Tramnitz would go on to take the win, his first of the season, in a commanding MP Motorsport 1-2 finish ahead of Del Pino.
Tsolov held off the late charge to claim third, while Sharp crossed the line in a well-earned fourth, just behind his Rodin Motorsport teammate Roman Bilinski, who snatched the race’s fastest lap in the closing stages.
This result would have lifted Sharp’s confidence and signalled a potential turning point in his 2025 campaign.
Noah Strømsted, Tuukka Taponen, Ugo Ugochukwu, Noel León, and Alessandro Giusti rounded out the final points positions.
With the Feature Race still to come on Sunday—and Sharp starting from a promising P5 on the grid—the Kiwi will be aiming to carry his Imola momentum forward and fight for even more in Round 3 of the championship.
Header Image: James Gasperotti Photography
