Making progress: AIX Racing Pre-Season Round-Up

With three rookie drivers in the car for testing, AIX Racing had plenty to work on throughout the three days of pre-season testing.

Adverse weather might have affected run plans, but the team were more or less satisfied with their undertakings across the event.

The test was a relatively smooth one for the team, with AIX one of the outfits that didn’t trigger a Red Flag throughout testing. They were able to maximise their time on track without losing out to a trip into the gravel or stoppage.

Team Manager Kenny Kirwan said that he was pleased with how the team had worked to accumulate as much data as possible, always vital at this stage of a campaign.

He added that there were no major issues they ran into, enabling them to go through their test programme with minimal fuss or rescheduling of planned running.

That was crucial, with the three drivers needing to get to grips with the 2025 F3 car as soon as possible in order to maximise the one and only pre-season test ahead of Round 1 in Melbourne.

Javier Sagrera wound up with the 13th-fastest time across the test, logging a 1:27.440 on the second morning of running, a solid starting point for the 21-year-old.

Considering his relative lack of experience compared to those around him, it was a promising opening foray into life in F3, and he will have found positives in the early phase of this year.

He accumulated 187 laps, the fewest of the AIX trio though he lagged behind Jonas Ried by just five tours of the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.

Combined with his teammates for the event, the team achieved 581 laps, a healthy number considering the Red Flag stoppages of Day 3, as a wet track impacted many and resulted in off track excursions.

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Nicola Marinangeli was in the cockpit of a Formula 3 car for the first time during the pre-season test, and he was able to accumulate the highest mileage of the three drivers across the event with 202 tours.

Team Manager Kirwan said that his sports car experience had helped his adaptation process, with that bank of knowledge allowing him to better communicate with the engineers and mechanics, both in terms of what was needed from driver and the car.

It’s all vital as they look to get up to speed as quickly as possible ahead of the opening round of the campaign in Australia, a venue which will be new to him as well as his teammates.

Ried stepped up to make his Formula 3 debut, in the AIX car for the pre-season test. He worked well within the team's setup as he got to grips with how they operate as well as the F3 machinery for the first time.

Like Marinangeli, he had sports car experience to fall back on as he learned how the team worked throughout the test.

Ried logged the second most laps of all three AIX drivers during the test, amassing 192 laps in total. The German outfit will be diving through all of the data collected as they aim to take another step forward in 2025.

After the team’s first full campaign in the Championship last season, AIX will now be looking to make another step in performance this season after the progress made last year.

With Sagrera and Marinangeli, they will hope the testing experiences for both have enabled them to jump up to speed with how each other operates, and how they can work within the team to maximise things in 2025.