Adapting and keeping the balance right: How I Race with Noel León

In his second FIA Formula 3 campaign, PREMA Racing’s Noel León has slowly built into the season, and things are beginning to go his way in 2025.

Fresh from his Silverstone podium, the Mexican driver detailed how he goes about his racing, what he’s learned from the start of his career and the specifics of adapting to racing in F3.

“It's actually quite difficult to describe, but I’d say overall it’s quite smooth but sometimes aggressive. Sometimes that is not good for the races and for the degradation of tyres, but overall, I go up step-by-step when we push, we're pushing, when we need to learn, we learn. So yeah, overall, quite a smooth driving style.

“I’d say my biggest strength as a driver is being able to adapt quickly to the tracks. I learn quickly and it’s normally in the first laps – they’re quite strong for me. It’s always been like that, straight on it.

“Over the years, the biggest thing I've learned is that you need to build your fastest on the first lap. Obviously, you do want to be fast from the first lap. But you need to build your weekend, your session.

“That way, you will learn more from it, and you will extract the pace of the car and of the overall package during the run, because if you start to push too early, by the end of the day, you don't learn, you are just pushing as much as you can.

“Then for the race, it’s difficult to improve. And that's what was happening to me at the beginning, when I was little in karting, I was pushing super early, so then to improve from where I was ending up in practice, it was difficult because I was already just pushing as much as I could.

“F3 is a different story. In FP, you want to be quick straight away, because you don't do a lot of laps. You do more or less four laps in FP. So you don't want to be so far off at the beginning, but still, you need to build your session, because if you destroy the grip of the tyres at the beginning, then again, you don't have more grip available to go faster.

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“It's always a compromise. So how much you push at the beginning to still have good grip in the tyres when the track gets better, it's always a compromise.

“I think last year, I was really, really good adapting to the tracks, because obviously I was racing in other championships, so most of the tracks I didn't know. And the ones I did know, I didn't have a lot of experience on it.

“Prep was really important with the team to really arrive and be on it on the first laps. And I was quite good last year on that. So I'm trying to keep that but now I have a bit more experience on the tracks and with an F3 car.

“When you have been driving in Europe your whole career, you have already completed so many laps on the tracks and in different cars. So you know more or less where you need to find time and where the big lap time gain or loss is.

“You know where you can risk a bit more to gain that couple of tenths. And you know where you just need to do basic stuff, and it will be fine. You will probably lose half a tenth, and it's okay, but there are some places that you can risk.

“Also driving techniques. It's different cars, different tyres, different everything. But at the end of the day, the philosophy, the layout of the track and your style doesn’t change.

“It's difficult because you don't want to be too smooth, because then you probably, you will end up in the midfield. Sometimes in F3, you’ll end up with a Red Flag or Yellow Flag and get caught out because then you don't have a lap time, so obviously that first push needs to be at the 95% of the package you have.

“You start to take a bit more risk every lap, and then you build from there.”