Gerrard Xie on ‘clicking’ in F3 and hopes with DAMS Lucas Oil in 2026

Gerrard Xie moved to DAMS Lucas Oil for the 2026 FIA Formula 3 season, a team that like him, is entering a second year in the Championship.

Their past experiences will prove vital to their chances this year, as a season’s worth of knowledge is hugely important and an advantage Xie hopes to make full use of throughout 2026.

Ahead of Melbourne, he sat down to talk about his preparations with DAMS and at home, and why he’s feeling positive about his season going.

“From post-season tests we were quite strong overall,” he surmised. “The only thing we can do to stay active is using the simulator. Fortunately, I have one in my apartment, so I did quite a lot of sim work during off-season.

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“I would say it's been very positive off season overall and the team is very professional. They are a team that has achieved a lot of success in F2 and I think they are able to bring the success into F3 as well, so I’m looking forward to this season with DAMS.”

Xie’s experiences in 2025 during what was his rookie campaign were up and down, but the Chinese driver says that every weekend brought valuable lessons he’s carrying into this new campaign.

The DAMS driver says that it is the experience of F3 Qualifying that will be most beneficial, with session management in particular a tough aspect to fully understand and exploit from the cockpit.

“There’s definitely more of an advantage with the experience because in F3 you don't have too much track time. So that's definitely a good advantage to take into the race weekend compared to the others.

“I think the biggest thing I learned last year was just how to manage Qualifying. That will be the key. Other than that, it will just come when it comes, but managing all of these things at once is a big learning curve. Once everything clicks, you're good.”