Santiago Ramos made a lot of progress throughout his debut season in Formula 3, culminating in taking second place in the Sprint Race at Monza.
The Mexican driver stepped up from the FRECA championship to race for Trident and was quick from the outset, taking fifth place in the Feature Race in Bahrain.
FIA Formula 3 is a very difficult championship with 30 drivers desperately trying to make an impression and progress to Formula 1, but Ramos adjusted well.
He had a couple of very impressive teammates, Frenchman Sami Meguetounif and Leonardo Fornaroli, who won the F3 title on the last lap of the last race of the season.
When speaking to Formula Latina, Ramos explained that he enjoyed the challenge of having such competitive teammates over the season.
Santiago Ramos was ‘shocked’ by the level of competition within the Trident F3 team
Formula 3 is a sizeable jump from other championships, as every round supports F1 race weekends, increasing the attention on the series.
The racing and wheel-to-wheel combat are much more chaotic on track, with DRS making passing easier and the tyres being much more fragile than in other series.
Having strong teammates can elevate drivers and push them to another level in their driving and consistency to maintain their highest level.
Ramos believes it’s important to be among competitive teammates, and the speed of Fornaroli and Meguetounif were among the highest he’d experienced in his career.
He said: “The truth is that I think it is something very important to have competitive and fast teammates, I think that many may see it as a bad thing.
“Maybe there are drivers who take it as a threat, on the contrary I think that it has been one of the first times in my career in all these years that I have had two drivers who are equally fast, they are extremely competitive and they are Fornaroli, drivers with experience, Sami was also in his first year.
“But the truth is this year I was shocked not because I think both drivers were very fast and between the three of us, the competition was extreme.”
The Trident drivers were a formidable lineup and finished second in the Teams’ Championship
Trident were very successful in FIA F3 this season, finishing second in the Teams’ Championship behind PREMA, who have been superb in the series.
Ramos just missed out on the podium but finished in fifth place twice, in the Feature Races in Bahrain and Hungary.
Trident was a consistent frontrunner in FIA F3, taking two victories. They were in and around the top five, building a strong campaign.