Formula 3 returns this weekend at historic Silverstone, for the fourth round of the 2020 season.
As things stand coming into Great Britain, championship leader Oscar Piastri has begun to break into a dominant position in the title fight. On 76 points so far, he is more than a feature race victory ahead of his nearest rival, teammate Logan Sargeant.
Apart from one eighth place in the first Austria sprint race, Piastri has consistently finished in the top five in every race so far this season, including a double podium last time out in Hungary. Meanwhile, Sargeant has yet to take victory this year, while third-placed driver Theo Pourchaire didn’t score points at all in the first round of the season.
Piastri’s rivals might take some heart from the fact that Silverstone was one of the few rounds Prema didn’t dominate last year, with Juri Vips and Leonardo Pulcini taking both victories for Hitech Grand Prix.
Hitech don’t look to be the same contenders they were last year, despite Liam Lawson winning the first sprint race of the year in Austria and Dennis Hauger finishing third in Hungary. However, Trident and ART have both been close challengers to Prema in 2020 and will be pushing to deal any blow they can to the Italian team this weekend.
One driver in particular who could be a real headache for Prema and Piastri is David Beckmann, who comes to Silverstone off the back of his first F3 win in the Hungary sprint race. With two further podiums already to his name, Beckmann is also one of only three drivers—alongside Piastri and Richard Verschoor—to score in every race so far this season.
As for ART, Pourchaire underlined his own championship credentials in Hungary by becoming the only repeat race winner of the season so far. The young Frenchman has a bit of ground to make up after his slow start to the campaign, but clearly has the speed to challenge for the podium this weekend.
But it’s not just Pourchaire carrying ART’s hopes. The French team has plenty more talent in its lineup in Sebastian Fernandez and Aleksandr Smolyar, both of whom have taken a feature race pole this year.
So far luck hasn’t been on their side, with Fernandez and Smolyar both retiring early from their respective pole position starts. But if either of them can marry up another strong qualifying performance with a clean race on Saturday, there’s no reason they can’t join the fight at the front with their teammate.