Team Trident announceed the deal signed with 19-year-old Canadian racer Devlin DeFrancesco, who will line up with the Italian squad in the 2019 FIA Formula 3 Championship.
The promising Toronto-based prospect will be part of a high-potential roster also including Finn Niko Kari and Brazilian Pedro Piquet. DeFrancesco, who ended up third in the 2017 Euroformula Open championship, entered the European F3 championship and the GP3 Series last year.
DeFrancesco certainly has great potential and Team Trident had the chance to evaluate his skills at the end of the last season when he drove one of the Italian squad’s cars in collective postseason testing.
Back at Yas Marina, DeFrancesco set the sixth fastest lap overall and was a constant presence among the frontrunners. With such good performance on the books, the conditions needed for an agreement between the team and driver came to fruition and DeFrancesco is now set to join the Trident stable full-time.
He is looking forward to the 2019 season opener which is scheduled for the third weekend of May at Montmelò, Catalunya, alongside the Formula 1 Grand Prix of Spain. There are now all the right ingredients for an extremely positive season.
"I’m super looking forward to this year. I started to work with Giacomo (Ricci – Team Manager) and everybody from Trident at the tail end of last year." Commented DeFrancesco "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.”
Team Manager Giacomo Ricci saidf: "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.”
