Formula 3 Race Cancelled After Monster Crashes

The FIA European F3 Championship is one of the best junior racing series going. As the '3' suggests, it's basically the third level of international motorsport. Drivers traditionally use it as a platform to Formula 1 feeder categories such as GP2, though this year teenager Max Verstappen has made the leap directly to F1.

As such the driving standards tend to be pretty high — after all, these are some of the best young talents around and you could estimate that four or five will make it into Formula 1.

But the drivers are young — some of them are basically kids, and kids don't always do what they're told. During last weekend's event at Monza, a spate of ridiculously poor driving caused some huge crashes at the ultra-fast Italian track, leading to the third and final race being called off early due to fears over safety.

The problems really began in Saturday's second race, which included the above monster crash for Canadian Lance Stroll. He was unhurt — which is a miracle in itself — and was given a stern warning for causing that incident, while two other drivers were banned from race three for causing separate crashes (one of them below).

The race director warned the drivers that any more bullshit in race three would lead to him calling the race off. And, when he got more bullshit, he made good on that promise.

"During the briefing we informed the drivers that it was not acceptable or the way we want to present F3," the race director told Autosport.

"I was talking with the stewards and they said this [abandoning the race] is the only way to do it — you could see pushing on the straight and overtaking manoeuvres off the track."

F3 veteran Felix Rosenqvist won all three races by sticking to a very smart tactic: get out front and avoid the bullshit taking place in the pack. The Swede later tweeted that it was "scary to drive among these muppets". You get the feeling his words were significantly toned down for public consumption.