Italian
Nicola Lacorte (born 1 June 2007) is an Italian racing driver in his second season of the FIA Formula 3 Championship in 2026, racing for DAMS Lucas Oil.
The climb
Lacorte came up through karting until 2021 before moving into cars with two seasons of Italian Formula 4 — 28th with Iron Lynx in 2022, then ninth with Prema in 2023 for a single win. In 2024 he raced the Formula Regional European Championship (FRECA) with Trident, finishing 21st in a competitive field, and also contested Formula Regional Oceania over the European winter, where he took a win at Hampton Downs to show the raw pace was there. Often linked early to Ferrari, he in fact attended only a one-off Ferrari Driver Academy scouting camp in July 2022 and was never an FDA member; instead he joined the Alpine Academy for 2024–2025.
Formula 3
Lacorte stepped up to FIA Formula 3 in 2025 with the new DAMS entry, a difficult rookie year: he scored no points and finished 33rd, with a best result of 15th, a qualifying disqualification at Monaco and a one-round ban after accumulating twelve penalty points. He was nonetheless retained by DAMS for 2026, carrying car #29, saying he would compete independently after his time on the Alpine programme. Away from single-seaters he has built sportscar experience — racing the 2025 24 Hours of Daytona with Cetilar Racing alongside his father Roberto, and taking part in the FIA WEC rookie test in Bahrain that November in AF Corse's Ferrari 296 GT3.
2026 / current season
The second F3 year is about turning hard-won experience into points and shedding the disciplinary baggage of his rookie campaign. After the Barcelona round Lacorte sits 23rd without a score, his best finish an 11th in the Melbourne Sprint, and he retired from the Barcelona Feature after contact with DAMS teammate Nandhavud Bhirombhakdi. With a settled second season at a team he knows and the rawness of his rookie year behind him, the rest of 2026 is the test of whether the speed that won races in junior categories can finally surface on the F3 timesheets.