The line-up of Trident for 2019 FIA Formula 3 (F3) Championship is complete with the retention of Pedro Piquet and signing of Devlin DeFrancesco.
After racing with Trident in the 2018 GP3 Series, where Piquet ended up sixth overall with two wins to his name in his rookie season, the Brazilian will stay on with the Italian outfit for another year with the outfit in the newly formed F3 series.
This will be Piquet’s fifth year in the F3 level after starting out in Brazilian F3 in 2015 and then racing in the European F3, before his GP3 move in 2018. “I am really motivated for the season ahead, which will see me race with Trident in the FIA F3 Championship.
“I experienced a great 2018 season with them, scoring two wins and several podium finishes. For 2019 I am sure that we have everything we need to do even better and challenge for the title,” he summed up.
Team manager Giacomo Ricci added: “Pedro’’ talent and potential are out of question. I am delighted to see him continue in his quest for Formula 1 wearing the Team Trident colours. The team will put up its best effort to support him and enable him to achieve his career goals.
“He will be part of an extremely competitive line-up that has the potential to write a new chapter of our successful history in this championship.” Piquet will be joined by DeFrancesco in the team for 2019 and the already confirmed Niko Kari.
The Canadian has had a rocky 2018 after a steady 2017 where he raced full-time in the Euroformula Open along with few rounds of European F3. He made the graduation full-time to European F3 in 2018 but switched to GP3 mid-way.
He raced for MP Motorsport in the 12 races and has now switched to Trident to compete in the new F3 series. “I’m super looking forward to this year,” he said. “I started to work with Giacomo and everybody from Trident at the tail end of last year.
“These guys are pretty unbelievable, I have a great engineer, Andrea Mancini, and the mechanics are really switched on as well. The new car feels quite a bit different from last year.
“We learned a fair few things at the shakedown and I look forward to making more progress at the official test at Paul Ricard. It’s going to be a hard year it’s such a competitive field but I’m ready to bounce back from a difficult 2018.”
Ricci added: “We are delighted to welcome DeFrancesco. He really impressed us for the skills and consistency he showed last season. We also had the chance to evaluate him first-hand in postseason testing at Abu Dhabi, and he really impressed the technical staff of Team Trident so we quickly found the right chemistry together. I am sure that all the best conditions are now in place for a high-quality season.”
2019 F3 line-up so far:
Prema – Marcus Armstrong, Jehan Daruvala & Robert Shwartzman
Jenzer – Yuki Tsunoda, Artem Petrov
HitechGP – Juri Vips, Leonardo Pulcini
ART – David Beckmann, Christian Lundgaard & Max Fewtrell
Campos Racing – Sebastian Fernandez, Alex Peroni & Alessio Deledda
Carlin – Teppei Natori, Felipe Drugovich & Logan Sargeant
HWA Racelab: Keyvan Andres, Bent Viscaal & Jake Hughes
Charouz Racing System – Fabio Schrer, Lirim Zendeli & Raoul Hyman
Trident – Niko Kari, Pedro Piquet & Devlin Defrancesco