Kanato Le’s rookie FIA Formula 3 campaign developed considerably after a difficult introduction in Melbourne. The ART Grand Prix driver struggled throughout the opening weekend and openly acknowledged the mental challenge of adapting to F3, but he gradually found his footing as the 2026 season progressed.
A first points finish in Monaco provided a modest beginning before stronger performances emerged during the second half of the year. Le eventually claimed his maiden podium in Budapest and followed it with an impressive Monza weekend, helping him finish 20th in the Drivers’ Championship with 30 points. While teammates Taito Kato and Maciej Gładysz both finished comfortably ahead, Le showed enough progression to earn another opportunity in 2027, when he will switch to Hitech for his second F3 campaign.
Familiarity with ART gives Le a strong foundation for 2026 F3 campaign
Le stepped up to F3 after building experience across British F4, GB3 and Formula Regional competition. Importantly, he remained with ART Grand Prix after racing for the French team in Formula Regional during 2025. The pair had already achieved success together, including a victory in the 2025 Formula Regional Middle East Championship, giving Le valuable continuity as he moved into a faster and more demanding category.
The Japanese driver entered the season determined to turn that familiarity into consistent results. During Pit Debrief’s pre-season look at Le’s rookie F3 campaign, he identified consistency and qualifying execution as important targets after extensive winter preparation. His confidence also grew through the Formula Regional Oceania Trophy, where he reunited with Hitech before returning to ART for his F3 debut. However, the first race weekend quickly demonstrated how much work remained.
Melbourne exposes the difficulty of the step up
Le endured one of the most difficult starts among ART’s three rookies in Melbourne. He qualified 27th and struggled throughout a weekend where Kato immediately demonstrated ART’s potential by fighting near the front. Rather than hiding from the contrast, Le acknowledged how much the occasion had affected him and identified his mental approach as an area that required improvement.
Monaco offered the first signs of a response as Le opened his championship account with points. Although the result did not immediately trigger a sustained run inside the top 10, it gave him something tangible to build on after Melbourne and allowed him to settle into the demands of F3. His challenge now involved finding that level more regularly, particularly as Kato and Gładysz established themselves as demanding benchmarks within ART’s all-rookie line-up.
Lost points complicate Le’s progress
Spielberg produced one of the more frustrating moments of Le’s season. He initially finished the Sprint Race inside the points, but post-race scrutineering found his car three kilograms below the required minimum weight. The stewards consequently excluded Le from the Spielberg Sprint Race results, removing an opportunity to add to his championship tally through no driving infringement of his own.
Silverstone finally produced a stronger return. Le moved into the points in the Feature Race and added eight to his total after the final classification, giving him one of his best results of the campaign to that stage. Spa then interrupted that progress as track-limit infringements contributed to another difficult weekend. The contrasting results highlighted the main weakness of Le’s rookie year: his competitive weekends remained too isolated to generate sustained momentum.
The comparison within ART reinforced that problem. Kato and Gładysz both found ways to regularly convert the team’s pace into significant points, while Le continued to alternate between encouraging performances and weekends spent outside the top 10. Nevertheless, his strongest phase of the campaign still lay ahead.
Budapest delivers Le’s breakthrough podium
Budapest produced the clearest evidence of Le’s development. He qualified 12th, securing reverse-grid pole for the Sprint Race alongside teammate Gładysz. After surviving a chaotic opening lap, Le controlled the early stages and maintained the lead ahead of Théophile Naël.
Naël eventually overtook him on Lap 9, but Le remained composed and brought the car home in second. His maiden F3 podium in the Budapest Sprint Race added nine points to his total and provided a significant contrast to the driver who had struggled so badly during the Melbourne opener.
The result also demonstrated stronger execution. Earlier weekends had frequently unravelled through poor starting positions or setbacks, but Budapest saw Le maximise the opportunity created by qualifying 12th. He could not hold off Naël for the victory, yet second place finally gave his gradual improvement a result that reflected it.
Monza confirms Le’s stronger second half
Le carried that progress into Monza and produced one of his strongest qualifying performances of the season. A front-row start for the Feature Race placed him among the championship’s leading drivers on outright pace rather than through the reverse-grid format, providing another indication of how far his one-lap performance had developed since Melbourne.
He remained among the leading group during a chaotic Feature Race and eventually finished fifth, adding another significant haul to his season total. The result helped take Le to 30 points before Madrid brought his rookie campaign to a close. He ultimately finished 20th in the Drivers’ Championship, while ART placed fourth in the Teams’ standings with 189 points.
Those numbers still placed Le well behind Kato, who finished fourth with 105 points, and Gładysz. However, the championship standings do not fully capture the improvement Le made between the beginning and end of the season. His strongest performances increasingly came through competitive qualifying and controlled races rather than circumstance alone.
Hitech move gives Le the chance to build on his 2026 F3 progress
Le did not have to wait long for another opportunity after completing his rookie campaign. He returned to GB3 with Hitech at Brands Hatch in September, rejoining an organisation he already knew from British F4 and the Formula Regional Oceania Trophy. That reunion produced further competitive running and strengthened an existing relationship before the next step became official.
Hitech subsequently confirmed Le for the 2027 FIA Formula 3 season, where he will join Woohyun Shin and rookie Keanu Al Azhari. The move gives Le continuity with a team that already understands him while allowing him to approach F3 with a full season of experience behind him.
That opportunity makes the progression he showed during 2026 particularly important. Le entered Melbourne struggling to manage the demands of his first F3 weekend, but later led in Budapest, stood on the podium and qualified on the front row at Monza. At the same time, his 20th-place championship finish showed that isolated strong weekends will not prove enough during a second campaign.
His move to Hitech therefore gives him a clear opportunity to address the main weakness of his rookie year. Le already demonstrated that he can compete near the front when everything comes together. In 2027, he must turn those flashes of performance into the consistency that remained missing throughout much of his first F3 season.
