DAMS Lucas Oil Season Review: Putting pieces in place for year two

It was a tricky debut campaign in FIA Formula 3 for DAMS Lucas Oil, as the French squad finished up 10th in their maiden season.

The team was able to learn plenty in their first go around, as they had a brand new car to tackle, something that took some time to get to grips with.

Reflecting on 2025, Team Principal Yannick Hubert was honest in his assessments of where the team hit difficulty, and explained why those areas took time to fix.

“Our line-up was made up predominantly of rookies, so we thought we could have some decent performance whilst working with them, racing on tracks they were familiar with,” he said.

“Unfortunately, from the very beginning of the year, we started off badly in the Barcelona test. We were quickly increasing our technical understanding of the car, but found plenty of issues. It meant that run plan wasn’t as efficient as we’d hoped for.

“We arrived in Melbourne and we got a top 12, but the overall performance wasn’t great. In Bahrain with the three days of testing, it allowed us to optimise things, and I think we did. But Bahrain is a circuit that’s quite unique in terms of requirements, so when we came back to Europe, it was tough, and we were making mistakes.

“It was a big step for us. If you don’t qualify well, you could have great race pace, but the result will not come to you. That is where we struggled."

DAMS have already begun their preparations for next season, with the three post-season tests already in the books with plenty of data gathered for the team to work through.

Ahead of 2026, Hubert says that there has been a restructuring of the team in order to gain better performance based on their learnings from this year.

READ MORE: PREMA Racing season review: A year of lessons

The target is to achieve better results, with top 12 appearances the benchmark DAMS is aiming for in 2026.

“We always learn from the mistakes, that’s for sure. We won’t replicate the mistakes we made in the past, we are a stronger team for them, and we have reorganised the team based off our learnings this year.

“I think that we didn’t have the correct organisation this year, we have changed things in the engineering side, and I think we can expect to have a stronger team for next year.

“We are aiming to reach the top 12 and achieve more consistency. We are capable of it, and we have already made the changes in order to do so.”