Mattia Colnaghi on F3 prep and taking inspiration from Max Verstappen

Stepping up to FIA Formula 3 in 2026, Mattia Colnaghi has been busy preparing for the next phase of his single-seater career.

He will be racing with MP Motorsport, a team he is already very familiar with after achieving success with the Dutch outfit at various stages of his career already, winning the 2024 Spanish and 2025 Eurocup 3 Championships with them.

So, ahead of his FIA F3 debut in 2026, the Red Bull Junior Team driver spoke about how he has been working with the team, and at home, to ensure that Colnaghi/MP remains a successful partnership.

“It's been a mix of obviously training by myself, training in the sim in The Netherlands at MP, and obviously a bit also relaxing time with family,” he explained.

“I was in Argentina for two weeks over December and the start of January spending time with the family and obviously getting to know Argentina a bit more. Apart from that, it was more just training and lots of laps on the sim.

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“I do know the team very well. I've been racing with them already for two years. Now, this will be the third. So, I know everyone in the team quite well, and it was an easy step to go to F3 with them, so it's been very good.

“They are very methodical in how they work, doing things the right way. We are working hard to get the results that we know we can get with the potential we showed in the test.

“So even though the F4 and Eurocup teams are different personnel versus F3 and it still takes some adapting. It does take less because you do know the direction that the team will want to go, the strategy that they use because it's quite similar through all categories.”

It has been some time since Colnaghi and a lot of the F3 grid will have raced but that doesn’t mean they have been resting at home just waiting around.

He says that sim racing has been a big focus of his as he aims to be as prepared as possible, taking inspiration from four-time Formula 1 World Champion Max Verstappen.

Colnaghi says that the Dutchman’s example is one he follows, as he aims to maximise every possible advantage he can in pursuit of speed and success when he gets back onto the real racetrack later this year.

“During the winter, we've worked a lot on my weak points that we've discovered during the post-season testing last year. So, in Barcelona, it will be about putting the things we've worked on in the sim into action. That and the things we know that were not the best last year during the test.

“The car is very nice, to be honest. It is much bigger than I expected, and from the Barcelona test, for me, it's about getting more experience with the car. I have now done three tests in an F3 car. So, every kilometre counts.

“I do a lot of stuff on my sim setup at home. I do think it is quite an essential now. It's obviously been proven to work with Max in Formula 1, he's a big sim guy as well. So, I do think it is something that helps a lot also when racing in real life.”