ART Grand Prix 2025 Season Review: Some positives but a few difficulties

24 September 2025

ART Grand Prix did not have the season they envisioned and for their Team Principal Sébastien Philippe, there are positives, but also a few areas to work on going into 2026.

Following a 2024 campaign in which they finished third in the Teams’ Standings with three wins and 11 podiums in total, the French outfit achieved just one Sprint Race victory, and five further trips to the rostrum.

While they still finished fourth in the Championship, there 152 points was 93 less than their 2024 total, and looking back on it, Philippe says it was all about putting things together consistently.

“A bit difficult,” reflected Philippe. “For sure the expectations were higher than what we delivered due to a lot of different things. In F3, the competition is hard, with a lot of cars and very close battles.

“Globally we had some good performances sometimes, sometimes struggling a bit more, but we didn't optimise what we could have done on occasions.

“It's just the fact that we started quite strong with Tuukka Taponen after three rounds, he was P3 in the Drivers' Championship, but we struggled on some occasions.

Philippe celebrates with Wharton after his victory in the Spielberg Sprint Race

“Melbourne was a disaster, but we didn't optimise what we could have done because if you get it wrong in quali on the push lap, you start very far back, and I think many times, we should have been able to deliver better performances, but for different reasons it didn't happen.

“So we could have done a much better job globally. We haven't been able to be very good in all details and sometimes we could have done a better job unfortunately.”

That Sprint Race win came in Spielberg through James Wharton, who ended the year 18th in the Drivers’ Championship with 25 points.

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“A bit of frustration with how James’ season went,” acknowledged Philippe. “We didn't find the key to help him perform at the level he deserved to be.

“We haven't been able to optimise the package for James, and clearly, he should have been, with his talent, in a much better position. Clearly, we didn't succeed with him.

The Australian’s teammates Tuukka Taponen and Laurens van Hoepen fared slightly better, with the former achieving three podiums on his way to finishing ninth in the Standings, while the latter was 12th.

Philippe admitted he was disappointed with how the season went for all three of his drivers

“With Tuukka, we had a very strong start of the season and after we had three or four races in a row where we missed Qualifying,” explained Philippe. “We had some issues in Barcelona and from there on we had three difficult qualifyings.

“So we did four rounds without scoring the points we should have been able to score. After he went back a bit, but I think in terms of performance, globally as a rookie it was not that bad, and he should have done a much better job.

“When I was talking about optimising everything, I think with Tuukka at some point, we should have done the normal push laps in quali, and for different reasons this completely killed a few rounds.

“With Laurens, I think we had a difficult start of the season to adapt everything for him with this new car, and after it was getting better. But between succeeding and not, sometimes the line is very narrow.

“This especially true in F3 when you have a field with 30 cars and over 20 cars at least that can fight for good points, you can see that consistency has not been there for many drivers. It's important to fight to be consistent and this for sure we struggled a bit.”

Taponen and van Hoepen finished on the podium a total of five times this season

All in all, Philippe acknowledges that still finishing inside the top five of the Standings after a mixed campaign is still positive. However, he wants to use 2025 as a learning experience to get better for 2026.

“I think you always learn from what happened during a season,” he concluded. “It will be the second year of this car, so with more experience, we know what is good and what is not good, so for sure it will definitely help with the consistency.

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“But saying that it will be the same for everyone, it's going to be a tough competition, but we learn from everything so we start next year by trying to perform at a better level.

“Much like all our competitors, I think the field has a lot of good drivers and good teams. So we need to make sure that each weekend we are capable of delivering hundred percent of the package we have.

“There are two things, to optimise the package, and to do the best we can with the package we have, because already this is something to work on and after it's to improve the package. This is two different topics, and on both we need to work hard to make it happen.”