Euro F3 Season Review: Like Father, Like Son…

In the first of Motorsport Radio’s 2018 Season Review, Joe Ellis takes a look at the European F3 Championship, won spectacularly by Mick Schumacher.

The final season of the European F3 series, as we know it, saw a total over the 30 races, with 26 drivers, all looking to emulate 2017 champion – and 2019 McLaren F1 driver – Lando Norris, by winning the title and elevating their CV greatly. Along with the returnees from last year, there was a glut of very fast rookies aiming to come straight in and challenge at the front.

Following a rare season without a clean sweep of trophies, PREMA Theodore Racing were more determined than ever to reclaim their stranglehold on the series, with Ralf Aron returning to the team with rookies Robert Shwartzmann and Marcus Armstrong also joining 2017 drivers Guan Yu Zhou and Mick Schumacher in a five-car line-up.

They would start well, winning 2 of the 3 races at the season opener at Pau thanks to Zhou and Aron, but it was the other 3 drivers that drove their teams’ charge. Armstrong was the early leader, but a sudden upturn in form from both Schumacher and Shwartzmann saw the former take all 3 race wins at the Nürburgring and a further 2 at the Red Bull Ring, to ultimately secure the drivers’ championship. In doing so, followed in his father’s (seven-time F1 champion Michael Schumacher) footsteps, 28 years after he achieved the same feat. Shwartzmann followed Schumacher home in all 5 of the race wins mentioned and finally took his first win in the final race in Austria, as Zhou and Aron failed to build on a positive start, while Armstrong hit bad luck multiple times to rule him out of title contention.

Motopark were the closest challengers to the almighty PREMA, led by Red Bull junior Dan Ticktum who was the only driver to be close to the top of the standings throughout the whole season, but was unable to match Schumacher’s upturn in speed in the latter stages of the year. He was backed up well by Juri Vips who scored 3 race wins on his way to a 4th placed finish, with Jonathan Aberdein occasionally being a spoiler at the front, but not consistently. Fabio Scherer, Marino Sato and Sebastian Fernandez all failed to keep up with their teammates as the divide between the 2 calibres of drivers became clear as the season wore on.

Carlin came into 2018 having housed the previous drivers champion but they were disappointed in their defence, despite race wins for Sacha Fenestraz, Jehan Daruvala and Nikita Troitskiy. Qualifying was ultimately the downfall of the British squad as they often found themselves mid-pack, behind all PREMA drivers and left themselves on the back foot. Their cause wasn’t helped by the fact Ameya Vaidyanathan competed in all 30 races and failed to score a point all year. They will also be disappointed that Ferdinand Habsburg was unable to record a race win as he had in 2017 as they would have been looking to the Austrian Royal to lead the team in tough times.

Hitech GP had the joint smallest team of the year, fielding just the 3 cars, but Enaam Ahmed and Alex Palou showed a lot of fight in being challengers for the podium on a regular basis. Ahmed was even leading the championship after the second round at the Hungaroring following 2 victories, but he was unable to sustain a title challenge for the entire year. Ben Hingeley piloted the 3rd car and showed promise at times, but ultimately wasn’t up to the same standard as his teammates in his first year in the series.

The final full-time entry this season was Van Amersfoort Racing, who began with just the 2 cars of Artem Petrov and Keyvan Soori, only to be joined by Sophia Floersch from Zandvoort onwards. As a result, they struggled all year, never proving to be challengers for big points and were often lucky to find themselves with any. Considering they carried Max Verstappen to 2nd overall in 2014, they have really fallen since and were by far the worst of the regulars in 2018.

Petru Florescu and Fortec Motorsports appeared in half of the races in 2018 but were well off the pace of even the slowest runners, and as a result, pulled out at the eleventh hour before the Misano weekend. Ma-Con returned briefly for the first 5 rounds but were forced to withdraw due to money issues. Their driver Julian Hanses did get the chance to return for Austria and the final round at Hockenheim with Carlin, but failed to make a great impression.

So that brings to an end a fabulous era of junior formulae. Mick Schumacher will go down as the final FIA F3 European Championship winner. The organisers are trying to find a way to rebrand the series which will run alongside the DTM series, as the F3 name heads over to the F1 circus to take over from GP3 as International F3.