2021 FIA Formula 3 Championship

The 2021 FIA Formula 3 Championship was a motor racing championship for Formula 3 cars that was sanctioned by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). The championship was the twelfth season of Formula 3 racing and the third season run under the guise of the FIA Formula 3 Championship, an open-wheel racing category that serves as the third tier of formula racing in the FIA Global Pathway. The category was run in support of selected rounds of the 2021 FIA Formula One World Championship. As the championship was a spec series, all teams and drivers that competed in the championship ran the same car, the Dallara F3 2019.^[1][2] The championship was contested over twenty-one races at seven circuits. It started in May with a round in support of the Spanish Grand Prix and ended in September on the weekend of the Russian Grand Prix.

Dennis Hauger became the third FIA F3 drivers' champion in his second year in the series. Having moved from Hitech Grand Prix to Prema Racing over the winter, Hauger laid down the gauntlet with pole position in Barcelona, but a collision in the final laps of Race 2 knocked him out of contention for a maiden victory in the series. Nevertheless, Hauger rebounded on Sunday to win Race 3 and assume the championship lead, which he never relinquished. Strong weekends at the Red Bull Ring and the Hungaroring enabled Hauger to extend his lead to 63 points—nearly a full weekend's worth—as the championship entered its summer break, and he ultimately secured the title in Race 1 of the last race at Sochi.

A late surge from Jack Doohan propelled him to second place in the drivers' championship. Like fellow Red Bull–affiliated driver Hauger, Doohan took four wins across the season. In Belgium, Doohan became the first driver in series history to take two wins in one weekend after winning Races 2 and 3; with all three Prema cars struggling in the wet conditions at Spa-Francorchamps that weekend, Doohan and his Trident team—which also fielded Clément Novalak and David Schumacher—closed their respective championship gaps to Hauger and Prema significantly. Though Doohan could not supplant Hauger in the drivers' championship, Trident did beat Prema by four points to take their first teams' championship in the series and their first in any category in 16 years of competition.

In an effort to cut costs during the COVID-19 pandemic, series organizers adopted a new format for both F3 and its parent championship, FIA Formula 2, for the 2021 season. Notably, each weekend comprised three races rather than two; the traditional feature race was moved from Saturday afternoon to Sunday morning and renamed Race 3, while Races 1 and 2 adopted reverse-grid formats based on the results of qualifying and Race 1 respectively. The extra race was made possible because F2 races were run on different weekends to F3, with the exception of the Sochi round, leaving more space in the timetable of each race weekend.

The schedule adjustments also allowed several drivers to move between F2 and F3 mid-season. Matteo Nannini entered the opening F2 event with his F3 team, HWA Racelab, and two later events with Campos Racing; Jake Hughes and Enzo Fittipaldi joined the grid at Monza in September; and Doohan, Novalak, Logan Sargeant, and Olli Caldwell all made their F2 débuts at Jeddah in December. Despite enabling these opportunities, the format used in 2021 was unpopular with many in the paddock, and it was altered again for the 2022 season.^[3]