Campos Racing’s Mari Boya took P3 in Qualifying at the FIA F3 Monaco GP. After a great session with Group A, where he finished P2 behind his teammate, Nikola Tsolov, Boya lost second place to Roman Bilinski, who secured pole during Group B’s time. Unfortunately, this broke up the Campos Racing 1-2, however, both drivers showed incredible potential ahead of Sunday’s feature.
Campos is actively battling MP Motorsport for second place in the standings. Nevertheless, Van Amersfoort Racing and Rodin Motorsport are extremely close to Campos, at only a 6-point difference. Therefore, the Monte Carlo race puts pressure on the top 3 drivers to bring important points for their respective teams.
Mental preparations for qualifying
Whether it’s F1, F2 or F3, Qualifying in Monaco is crucial. The street circuit is very narrow, with minimal run-off areas and hardly any overtaking possibilities. During a post-qualifying press conference attended by Pit Debrief, Mari Boya shared the extent of his preparations ahead of the F3 Monaco GP:
“Yeah, I think for me, the most important thing is to build up the confidence slowly, especially don’t touch too early, the walls, and leave some margin to step by step build up and finish, especially the last push. You have to deliver everything because then it’s the races, and it’s really hard to overtake. And I think it’s the most crucial thing about the street laps, and especially here in Monaco.”
This qualifying session was different from what the drivers and teams usually expect. The drivers were separated into two groups, A and B, based on their car’s number, and they only got 16 minutes to put out their best flying lap time. For this reason, there has been some discourse on whether or not this system is fair.
Answering a question from Pit Debrief in regards to this qualifying format, the Spaniard reflected on his experience. Boya took into account his run in yesterday’s F3 Monaco GP Free Practice, when 30 cars were out on the track:
“For me, I think it’s quite fair. We saw yesterday in free practice with 30 cars on track, you can be really fast, but if you arrive to the last sector and you are not in sequence with the other guys, you cannot finish and you cannot show any of your potential.
“Maybe today I can be the one that is a bit more frustrated because I have the second fastest lap time. But I know if we go 30 cars together in a qualifying, this would be even harder. 30 minutes, if many teams are on two different strategies with new tyres, it’s hard to bring the tyres and require quite many laps to warm up. So I feel it’s the most fair thing to do here.”
The Campos Racing driver also went on to explain his way of dealing with the new format. Mari Boya described how his focus was on being the fastest, no matter the group he was put in:
“Yeah, for me, to be honest, I just wait for the briefing when they said which group we were in. And once I knew I was Group A, I just forget about everything. I just wanted to be in the front of my group, which is the only thing you can manage and control yourself. And I think we did good and we can be happy.”
The pressure on his shoulders
Since his start in the FIA F3 Championship in 2023, Boya has been chasing such a good result as today’s. Nonetheless, to achieve it now at the F3 Monaco GP would give anyone some confidence for the rest of the weekend. The Spaniard agreed, and he even gave a small rundown of his season with Campos:
“Clearly, it was one of the things I had to work on this year. I am 100% sure in Australia, the things were different, but it was a super difficult qualifying for everyone. And in Bahrain, we showed a really strong pace on testing. Then that qualifying was really hard for me. We didn’t adapt properly to it.
“But I knew that we learned many things, and we are focusing a lot on qualifying. And I think we found a way to build my confidence and to just do a 90% lap without issues. And I think already in Imola, without a clean lap, I was already top ten two times off from P2, which clearly was more than possible.
“And today we show again, all the time in qualifying, we were one and two together with Nikola. So I think it’s still a long championship and I have a really good confidence. Then for sure races, we show a good potential and a really good pace.”
After the topic of the Monte Carlo race came up, the questions turned their focus on the timing of it all. Both Campos drivers were extremely happy with their Qualifying times. Especially at such an exclusive and historic track. Boya talked about the satisfaction of such a great F3 Monaco GP qualifying result for his team:
“Yeah, really similar to him [Tsolov]. I think we can be really proud as a team, together with all the engineers and mechanics. I think it was just a matter of time because we were working really hard and just the results in qualifying were not coming […].
According to the Spaniard, “The dynamic is really good.”
Race expectations
In response to another question from Pit Debrief, Mari Boya revealed his point of view on the possible difficulties Campos will take into consideration for the race. The Spaniard believes both tyre degradation and management could become an issue due to the high temperatures:
“Well, we will see on Sunday, to be honest. I don’t really know what to expect about this soft tyre in here. I know that the temperatures are quite high and the soft tyre, even today with doing push-cool consecutive, I could feel some deck on the tyre. So for sure the race will be long and I expect a bit of drop on the tyres and let’s see how we can deal with it and stay where we are and we’ll be fine.”
