Academy Report: Championship Lead for Luke

Luke Browning took another Monaco trophy and became the F2 championship leader in a busy weekend for the Williams Racing Driver Academy.

Victor Martins and Alessandro Giusti also had reasons to smile in Monaco, while our Italian F4 entrant Aleksandr Bondarev took more points racing around Vallelunga.

Read on below to see how each of our Academy racers handled the latest races of their 2025 campaign.

Luke was the fifth-fastest driver in his qualifying group in Monaco, meaning he'd start from the front row for the Sprint Race and P9 in the Feature Race.

However, Luke suffered from bad starts in both races, tumbling from P2 to P5 on the first lap. A collision ahead opened a narrow gap before the hairpin, which he deftly slotted through to reclaim P4.

With Arvid Lindblad receiving a 10-second penalty for an incident with Jak Crawford, Browning was in contention for the podium, should he remain close to the teenage Campos driver.

Four seconds separated the two over the line, meaning a P3 trophy came Luke's way – his second in Monaco after last year's F3 Feature Race.

The Feature Race had more points, but only after a lengthy delay due to a multi-car pile-up at Turn 1 that took out seven drivers.

Luke was P5 for the restart with 30 minutes on the clock, and two Safety Cars interrupted the race to restrict any progress. Yet P4 beckoned after another penalty for Lindblad promoted our British hopeful up the order after a red flag was waved to shorten the race.

Luke will end his tripleheader as the F2 championship leader by a three-point margin over fellow GB3 alumni Alex Dunne.

Barcelona was the race where he first took an F3 podium trip back in 2023. Could the Spanish rostrum be his sixth top-three finish in 2025?

Another super Friday for Victor had our Frenchman right at the front in Monaco, taking the fastest time in Qualifying Group A to be on the front row.

However, that meant a mid-pack start for the Sprint Race, and Victor's weekend followed a downhill trajectory from Saturday onwards.

A Safety Car slowdown led to a tight restart where Ollie Goethe passed Victor and damaged the ART car's front wing.

Requiring a pit stop in a Sprint Race at Monaco will never end well, and Victor finished in P17, one minute down, albeit with the fastest lap of the race.

Unfortunately, things got worse in the Feature Race. Although a perfect launch saw Victor charge into the lead, contact with Dunne at Sainte Devote ended both drivers' races at Turn 1.

The collision brought out a lengthy red flag delay as almost half the field got caught up in the chaos. Dunne received a 10-place drop for F2's next race, but this offered little comfort to Victor, who previously won Monaco in his 2019 Formula Renault Eurocup campaign.

There is much-needed good news for Victor. Spain is the next race for F2, and the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya is a happy hunting ground.

Victor won last year's Sprint Race, did the podium double one year earlier, and won the Feature Race in his title-winning 2022 F3 season. Formula 3

A maiden Monaco visit for Sandro will be one to remember for our 18-year-old F3 hopeful.

Qualifying P6 in Group B meant he began his first Monte Carlo race from pole position in Saturday's reverse-grid Sprint.

Sandro's slow start dropped him down to P4, but he avoided the incidents at Mirabeau that triggered a lengthy Safety Car.

Frustratingly, that early slowdown also prevented any chance to fight back into the podium positions when the cars were closest, and Sandro crossed the line in P4.

Although passing at Monaco is notoriously challenging, the Feature Race had Sandro continue his point-scoring ways from a P13 start.

After cutting Turn 1 and dropping to P13, the MP Motorsport racer returned to the top-12 when Noel Leon retired to cause a Safety Car.

The second Safety Car restart brought more action for Sandro, with Charlie Wurz's broken front wing seeing a sizeable squabble behind the Austrian.

A tap of the rear from James Wharton thankfully didn't result in damage, and Sandro navigated the craziness to take P11 when Wurz inevitably retired.

He then secured P10 when Rafael Câmara's wheel fell off the Brazilian's car, in a crazy 27 laps of Formula 3 racing.

Sandro joins Luke and Victor in support of the Spanish GP next weekend. He has raced at the Barcelona circuit before, back in 2023, but it wasn't a fruitful trip.

This time, though, Sandro is entering the weekend on the back of six consecutive top-10 finishes and will be brimming with confidence.

It was a new challenge for Sasha Bondarev in his second Italian F4 outing of 2025, with a trip to the 4 km Vallelunga track near Rome.

He began his first race of three in P14 under the Italian sunshine, but a mid-race incident that damaged his front wing ended any hopes of points. A pit stop returned him to the track in P21 under the Safety Car, and Bondi climbed to P17 by the chequered flag.

Sasha's second race fared better, even with another midfield grid slot, as he transformed a P16 start to P14 by a mid-race Safety Car after a large incident.

Bondi climbed to P10, battling VAR's Dante Vinci for ninth before running out of laps to score another point.

A P20 start in the final race meant it was always going to be a long shot for points, but Bondi used his growing experience to make progress through the 25 minutes, in particular on the opening lap.

Navigating a frantic Lap 1, Bondi reached P12 with debris flying everywhere as others collided and spun over the grass before the Safety Car's appearance.

Sasha had to settle for that P12 finish after fighting with Kean Nakamura-Berta over the final laps for P11, and he leaves Vallelunga with one more point for his rookie campaign.

There is now a one-month break for Sasha before he jumps in the cockpit again when Italian F4 heads to Monza.

Sasha can use his trip to Temple of Speed last year to lean on when he returns to action over the 20-22 June weekend.