PREMA Racing had another solid race at Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya as the Spanish weekend of the FIA Formula 3 Championship drew to a close. Starting from a more compromised position than on Saturday's Sprint race, in which he delivered his first win of the year, James Wharton had a consistent drive and was in the fight for the top 10. The Australian navigated multiple Virtual Safety Car situations to post a 12th-place finish in an extremely competitive pack.
Louis Sharp and José Garfias were compromised by their starting positions. In a crowded field, tyre management came into play, and running too aggressively or too close to the car in front made the difference.
Once they found a good rhythm, solid pace followed, with consistent showings and mistake avoidance, although the pack situation was never going to allow for many position changes.
In the end, Sharp wrapped up the day in P19, while Garfias finished close to the top 20 in P21. The team will now move on to the Red Bull Ring, coming off a promising collective test at the Austrian venue.
#20 - LOUIS SHARP
"Today was a difficult day for us. The pace wasn't quite as good as in yesterday's race. There was a lot of battling going on, and I lost out a little on the Virtual Safety Car restart, which hurt our pace, as I had to push hard to get back into clean air, and it was a bit tricky with the tyres. There are a few things we need to work on, and we learned some things today, which is good. We need to put that into action. I'm really looking forward to the Red Bull Ring, as we were really strong in testing a couple of weeks ago, so we can go in quite confident."
#21 - JAMES WHARTON
"Overall, it was a positive weekend — the best so far in 2026 after quite an up-and-down season. I can't thank the team enough for their hard work during this period, and at the same time, there's still a lot of work to do to get to the front in the Feature Race. We showed that, starting from the front, we have the pace to win races. We need to take this on board and continue pushing in the coming races."
#22 - JOSE GARFIAS
"I think the weekend was quite compromised, starting from Qualifying, which didn't go well. We've had some issues that we think we're finding the solution for. Both races were quite challenging. In Race 1, I think we had a really good car to move forward, and it showed, with James winning the race and Louis gaining positions as well. Unfortunately, we were involved in an incident early in the race, which put us out of contention. Race 2 was a bit trickier in finding speed — I think we struggled in the first half, and then in the second half we were quite fast and started to move forward, but it was too late to finish in a higher position. Once again, we showed ourselves that we can be fighting a lot more at the front. I think there's potential to do well. I'm looking forward to the next Qualifying session, because I think we can be very strong."