Capitalising on potential: Van Amersfoort Racing Season Preview

2025 represented a positive season for Van Amersfoort Racing, with their peak results proving that the team is capable of fighting at the sharp end.

2026 then will be about making sure they can achieve the level of consistency that would put them in the points and podium places on a more regular basis.

With Bruno del Pino bringing experience following his rookie campaign last year and with the arrivals of rookies Jesse Carrasquedo and Hiyu Yamakoshi, VAR will be targeting a big season in FIA Formula 3 this year.

A TEAM ON THE UP

Last year, VAR achieved a fifth-place finish in the Teams’ Standings, their best result in FIA F3 to date since joining the Championship back in 2022.

With three race victories marking their best tally in a single F3 season and helping them on the way to their highest ever points total, the benchmark is there to match and beat in 2026.

The team earned their first ever Feature Race win, and seven podiums also represented the most top three results for VAR, showcasing that the team’s performances were improved last year. They were outside the points in just three of the 10 race weekends.

So there is a great platform for the Dutch squad from which to build from this time around. Charging up the order and aiming for a top four finish in the Teams’ Standings is the target this time around, as they continue to improve with more F3 experience.

A COMBINATION OF ROOKIES AND EXPERIENCE

Del Pino is the driver that will be able to fall back on a year’s worth of F3 racing this year, as he joins rookies Yamakoshi and Carrasquedo.

The former earned a maiden F3 podium during last season’s Imola Sprint Race and will carry all of the experiences into his new team, which could make a big difference.

Having sampled every circuit, barring one new addition to the calendar in Madrid, this will shorten the build-up time across a race weekend for the Spaniard, which many drivers point to being a huge performance factor in F3.

Joining him in the VAR garage, Carrasquedo will be learning but has two race weekends from 2025 to get him up to speed that little bit quicker.

The Mexican driver achieved a best of P13 in the Spielberg Feature Race, not a bad result by any means for a driver experiencing his second race weekend in a Championship mid-way through an active season.

Yamakoshi will be going from scratch effectively, with just post-season testing in 2025 and pre-season testing next month the time he will have in the car ahead of competitive racing getting underway.

The Japanese driver has been racing with VAR previously in his career, most notably finishing third in the 2024 Italian F4 Championship with the Dutch squad, earning two race wins and a further five podium results that season. He earned podium results with them last year in the Formula Regional European Championship also, so knows the team well already.

While he will be learning F3 for the first time and have new staff to work with in the VAR set-up, he too has a headstart in the learning process in relation to the team’s working environment.