Matteo De Palo’s final position in the 2026 FIA Formula 3 standings tells only part of the story of his rookie campaign. The TRIDENT driver finished 24th with seven points, far behind teammates Freddie Slater and Noah Strømsted, but his season also included a weekend where he demonstrated genuine race-winning pace.
Silverstone provided that high point as De Palo scored his first F3 points before crossing the line first in the Feature Race. However, a technical infringement erased that victory, while another technical disqualification at Monza later removed one of his strongest qualifying performances. Those setbacks added to a campaign in which De Palo also made enough mistakes of his own to prevent his underlying speed from producing consistent results.
Familiar surroundings create high expectations
De Palo entered F3 after finishing runner-up in the 2025 Formula Regional European Championship, where he took four victories and 11 podiums. He also remained with the same organisation for his step up after TRIDENT confirmed him for the 2026 F3 season, giving him continuity as he adapted to a substantially faster car.
The McLaren Driver Development Programme member entered the season alongside Slater and Strømsted and recognised that TRIDENT gave him a competitive package. Before Melbourne, De Palo spoke about his confidence in the team and the value of having Slater as a reference, while also acknowledging the size of his jump from Formula Regional. His previous success and familiarity with TRIDENT consequently created reason to expect a competitive rookie campaign, even if F3 required another adjustment.
Early mistakes prevent De Palo from opening his account
Melbourne immediately demonstrated that potential alone would not guarantee results. De Palo showed encouraging pace in Free Practice and sat fifth during the first part of Qualifying, but a crash on his second run triggered the red flag and left him at the back. As he later explained while reflecting on his difficult F3 debut, the mistake transformed a promising session into a weekend focused primarily on recovery and learning.
The problems continued once F3 returned to Europe. De Palo received a 10-second penalty in Monaco after leaving the circuit and gaining an advantage, while another procedural mistake hurt him in Barcelona. He lined up in the wrong vacant grid position before the Sprint Race, prompting the stewards to add 20 seconds to his race time. After four rounds, including Spielberg, De Palo still had no championship points despite TRIDENT regularly showing front-running performance elsewhere.
Those early weekends left him with a sizeable deficit to his teammates and highlighted a recurring issue. De Palo occasionally produced competitive pace, but mistakes and execution prevented him from putting together a complete weekend.
Silverstone reveals De Palo’s true potential
Silverstone dramatically changed the picture. De Palo qualified fifth and then started eighth for the reverse-grid Sprint Race, where he fought his way into podium contention. Théophile Naël passed him at the final corner, but fourth place finally gave De Palo his first seven F3 points. More importantly, the performance gave him renewed confidence after his difficult opening rounds, as he explained following his first points-scoring finish of the season.
The Feature Race offered an even stronger demonstration of his potential. De Palo quickly moved forward from fifth, passed Louis Sharp and Naël and then fought teammate Slater for the lead. He repeatedly showed strong pace at the front and eventually survived a frantic final-lap battle with Slater to cross the line first.
However, post-race scrutineering found that De Palo’s diffuser failed to meet the required minimum height, and the stewards excluded him from the classification. The decision stripped away what would have become his maiden F3 victory and left Silverstone as both the strongest and most frustrating weekend of his year. De Palo nevertheless viewed the performance as confirmation that he could compete at the front after a difficult start. His reflections after the Silverstone Feature Race captured that mixture of renewed confidence and disappointment.
Momentum disappears after Silverstone
Rather than launching a sustained second-half improvement, Silverstone became an isolated high point. Spa brought further difficulties as the stewards handed De Palo two separate penalties during the Sprint Race. They penalised him for forcing Gerrard Xie off the circuit and again after he left the track and retained an advantage over Fernando Barrichello. Those incidents once again turned a difficult race into an even poorer result.
Budapest proved equally unproductive, with De Palo finishing 27th in the Sprint Race and 21st in the Feature Race. By this stage, Silverstone had shown what he could achieve when he combined competitive pace with a stronger starting position, but he could not reproduce that level consistently enough to climb the championship standings.
The contrast within TRIDENT also became increasingly difficult to ignore. Slater fought for the title throughout the year, while Strømsted regularly scored and claimed a victory. De Palo had demonstrated enough outright pace to compete with them on his strongest weekend, but he rarely matched their ability to turn that speed into points.
Monza brings another costly technical setback
De Palo appeared ready to deliver another breakthrough at TRIDENT’s home event. He topped his qualifying group at Monza and initially secured a front-row starting position alongside Slater, producing one of his strongest qualifying performances of the season.
Once again, however, a technical infringement erased the result. Post-session checks found De Palo’s diffuser 3mm below the required minimum height on the left-hand side, prompting the stewards to disqualify him from Monza Qualifying. Although De Palo could not control the technical failure, losing a front-row start removed another opportunity to translate his pace into a major points haul.
Madrid then brought an understated end to the campaign. De Palo qualified 13th and 20th for the two Feature Races and failed to add to the seven points he had scored at Silverstone.
Seven points fail to reflect De Palo’s highest level
De Palo ultimately finished 24th in the final 2026 F3 standings with seven points. Slater scored 145 and Strømsted added 65, helping TRIDENT finish second in the Teams’ Championship. That comparison makes De Palo’s season difficult to describe as anything other than disappointing in terms of results.
However, his campaign requires more nuance than the standings provide. De Palo himself contributed to his difficult start through mistakes and penalties in Melbourne, Monaco and Barcelona, and further incidents at Spa showed that he still lacked consistency. At the same time, technical infringements outside his direct control erased a Feature Race victory at Silverstone and a front-row start at Monza.
Silverstone therefore remains the most revealing weekend of De Palo’s rookie season. It showed that he possessed the speed and racecraft to fight at the front of an F3 field, but the rest of 2026 showed how rarely he brought every element together. His seven points dramatically undersell his best performance, yet his challenge moving forward will involve making that level the foundation of his season rather than an isolated glimpse of what he can produce.
