Ahead of his second race of the 2025 F3 season with ART Grand Prix, Tuukka Taponen reflected on his challenges during the 2025 season as he prepares for the Sakhir Round. Despite a strong pre-season testing in Barcelona, where he set the second fastest time on opening day, Taponen’s Melbourne performance did not impress. However, after redeeming himself during the recent Bahrain in-season testing, Taponen insisted that “massive changes” had improved his runs.
Start of 2025 season a learning curve for F3 rookies
Since F3 recently introduced a new car that allegedly aligns more closely with the machines used in F2 and F1, Taponen believes the teams—and especially the rookie drivers—face a steep learning curve, particularly at unfamiliar tracks.
“Yeah, I think it’s quite a brand new thing for everyone,” Taponen replied when asked by Pit Debrief about the learning curve that he and his colleagues faced, “Because we all have new cars, and also, for the rookies, we are going to the tracks that we have never been so I think we are learning quite a lot, even the drivers that are doing the second year, with the new car.”
In addition to being a learning opportunity for the drivers, Taponen deemed the start to the 2025 season as one for the teams as well, highlighting that teams had had to work on understanding the operation and behaviour of their new cars.
“And also, the teams are learning how to set up the cars for each new track and for how the car is behaving, so I think that’s the biggest thing we have learned so far.”
ART’s Taponen: Preparation is crucial ahead of Sakhir Round
Reflecting on the challenges the drivers might face at the upcoming round at the Sakhir International Circuit, ART’s Taponent lamented the lack of practice time allocated to drivers before the race.
“Yeah, I think it’s quite tough, to be honest. You need to put a lot of effort before you come to a weekend because you don’t have so much time in the practice to get used to everything.”
He consequently emphasized the importance of properly preparing for races as this would allow teams to maximise their results, even in challenging circumstances.
“So the preparation is quite a key point for coming to the weekend and be on it straight away.
“You don’t have many laps time to learn the track, learn the car. So you must be as well prepared as possible.”
FDA driver Taponen grateful for critical Ferrari support
The 18-year-old ART Grand Prix driver also discussed the support that he receives from Ferrari, both on and off the track. He explained that the Ferrari Driver Academy provided him with insights from past F3, F2, and F1 drivers. This information, and the Italian team’s experience, Taponen said, has been crucial to developing his comfort behind the wheel of the car, especially on the unfamiliar tracks.
“I think they have been giving a lot of support on the things that happen outside of the track.
“So, as I said, to prepare me for the weekend, that’s really important. And also, now when I stepped up to F3, they have been giving me some advice, what has happened before with the other drivers in F3, in F2 and even in F1.
“It’s really important to get some advice, what could happen during the weekend, which direction the car could go and what kind of evolution you get to the track.”
Raing alongside F1 championship a positive for Taponen
With each of the 10 F3 rounds support the F1 Grands Prix, Taponen believes that this provides young drivers like himself with an opportunity to demonstrate their skills as the compete to reach the pinnacle of single-seater motorsport.
“I mean, it’s quite cool, you know, we are at the same panel with F1 and to be honest, at least for me, it doesn’t give too much extra pressure” stated ART Grand Prix’s Taponen, when asked whether being in the F1 paddock heightened expectations.
“It might give, you know, some boost that they are looking to you and if you perform well, they can actually think about that: I could someday go to F1 […]”
However, despite the external pressure, Taponen has chosen to focus on himself and his own performance. He said, “[…] to be honest, you are doing the thing for you and not for the others.”
He added, “You just forget what the others are thinking and looking and you focus on yourself.”
ART’s Taponen on tyre management around Sakhir International Circuit
The in-season testing in Bahrain provided both drivers and teams with an opportunity to collect data on race runs. With poor weather in Barcelona and the opening round in Melbourne affecting dry-weather running, the Finn now has a better understanding of how tyre degradation will affect his overall season.
“I think at some point we were doing a bit less laps and at some point we were doing a bit more laps, and I think there is a big difference if you do 22 laps or if you do 17 laps.”
“In the end, you start to really get that tyre deg and you start to struggle overall with the grip overall,” detailed the Finnish ART Grand Prix driver, emphasizing the lack of grip on longer stints.
With high tyre degradation typically affecting race runs in Sakhir, Taponen understands that the recent data collected on race simulations will be vital to his performance in the second round of the F2 championship.
“I think it was important for the driver as well as for the teams to learn a bit more about the race runs because in Barcelona, I think most of the teams didn’t do a race run because [on] day three, [it] was raining and same thing in Melbourne. We just did a sprint race with a few push laps because of safety cars.“
Taponen explained how Bahrain in-season testing provided the teams and, more importantly, the drivers with extra information about tyre management.
“I think it was really important to get proper race runs and to learn about the tyre deg and to set [it up], to manage the tyres as much as possible and also for you to get the feeling to try to get the tyres alive as long as possible.”
Finnish rookie focused on preparing for this weekend’s challenge
As he turns his eyes towards the upcoming race weekend, Taponen acknowledged that there is high pressure for him to perform.
“I think for me it is that you are really on it straight away, when you leave the pit lane, you know what exactly you are doing.”
However, though concerned with the fact that “most of the teams won’t have many push laps in their free practice because we don’t have the tyres […]“, Taponen anticipates his qualifying to be impacted by how quickly he will get a grip on the car: “[…] so I think that’s the main thing for me, to be on it from pit lane exit and it will affect the qualifying a little bit as well.”
Taponen: New Dallara-built F3 car sensitive to sliding
With the introduction of the newly developed Dallara chassis, new tyres, and a new engine in 2025, Taponen acknowledged that the team had to make some set-up changes. Although these changes have not affected him much, he noted that the car demands better control from the drivers, especially due to the more sensitive tyres.
“Also, for me to be honest, for a driver, there was no big difference, I think to set up the car you had to do some changes because obviously the car is completely new.”
“And also I felt like these tyres are a bit more sensitive for sliding, so if you slide once, you actually struggle a bit the rest of the lap, so you need to be quite smooth on driving.“
Taponen concluded that last year’s car was more forgiving compared to this season’s machine.
“On the other hand, with the old car, you could maybe push a little bit more without it penalising you afterwards.”
