F3 Explained: What happens between the final race and post-season testing?

The chequered flag has fallen for the final time in 2023. The traditional curtail-closer at Monza brings the latest Formula 3 campaign to an end, with PREMA Racing crowned Teams’ Champions on home soil, joining Gabriel Bortoleto as a winner in ’23 after the Brazilian claimed the Drivers’ Champion on the Friday.

The teams are packing up, the press conferences are in the books and the final media commitments of the season are finished, so what happens now?

“Well, we have some moments to settle down,” says Frits Van Amersfoort, Team Principal of the eponymous outfit. “But soon afterwards, we start over again. We rebuild the cars and are preparing for Jerez (the first of three two-day post-season test sessions), talk to new drivers, talk to prospective new team members, those kinds of things, that’s normally how it goes.”

The short break between the final round of the season and the first of three post-season tests this year means that team personnel will be working hard away from the track before a return to it.

Van Amersfoort Racing are in a common position in junior motorsports in having several teams competing in multiple series below FIA Formula 3. It means that the team is always finding, hiring, training and headhunting talent outside of just drivers for their cars.

Mechanics, engineers and other critical staff from VAR teams in other categories are given the opportunity to become involved with the F3 effort. The team’s culture looks to promote from within and embed existing talent within their ranks.

They will be far from the only team doing so on the F3 grid, with rivals doing the same thing, and looking to find the best from elsewhere.

“We are running four teams and there are always people inside the other teams that wish to go up the ladder and they will certainly get the chance to do that during these tests. We’ll see if they can cope with the stress or the pressure.

READ MORE: Melbourne Rewind: Bortoleto makes his mark on Championship’s debut Down Under

“As a team, you’re faced with the fact that we have to do the schooling ourselves. Racing is a hard world, but people come because people look at Formula 1 and it’s hot here in Holland. People might think racing is all about computers and laptops and fancy and nice, but of course the reality is different.”

Of course, those that surround the car in the garage can only do so much and at some point, a driver has to get into the cockpit and behind the wheel. The work in finding drivers that will drive for the team in the tests is extensive.

Testing is crucial for not just the prospective drivers but the teams also. Having gathered a season’s worth of data, teams are immediately looking to analyse and validate their findings from the preceding nine-round campaign.

That means that working relationships are important and established as soon as possible, and work on the team’s simulator is crucial in order to maximise every single lap that the field completes across each of the post-season tests.

“We have a rule that the drivers have to come here (the factory) first to meet all of the people within the team and to start that relationship. It’s absolutely necessary.

“At the moment, pretty much everything has already been shipped off. We have to be at the circuit in Jerez on the third of October, so we’re pretty much ready to go. Of course, there has been some time available to get everything ready, so it’s all been packed up, the truck is ready and only some last few things still need to be done.

“The drivers will arrive next week to come and start their sessions in the simulator before we go to the circuit. We are really happy that there are six test days this year. We’re going to be working hard to find the answers to find better setups and ways to deal with a whole series of things.”

The first post-season test of 2023 begins on 5 October at the Circuito de Jerez. Keep up to date with the latest from the two-day event across FIA F3 social media and official website.