FIA F3 European Championship
Esteban Ocon, Tom Blomqvist and Max Verstappen
The 2014 FIA F3 European Championship might have been decided before the final round and had a final winning margin of 58 points, but it saw rookie stars Esteban Ocon and Max Verstappen go head-to-head in a battle for attention, and so incredible was their form at times that it never really felt like a foregone conclusion until it was mathematically guaranteed.
Ocon certainly streaked away early on, totally ignoring the fact that he was a 17-year-old Formula Renault 2.0 graduate by taking five wins and a total of 11 podiums from the first 12 races. That gave him an 82-point lead already over relative veteran Tom Blomqvist.
But Ocon?s form was then overshadowed by the even less experienced Max Verstappen, who abused his karting graduate status to win six races in eight days across the Spa and Norisring rounds. He was now the closest man boy to Ocon, ?only? 74 points adrift, and with five rounds still to go, that could evaporate in no time on that kind of form.
Of course, Ocon then notched up a hat-trick of his own in Moscow, and the fight for supremacy between the pair reached new levels at Spielberg when they collided at turn one in the first race of the weekend.
Verstappen, now signed to Red Bull, took another win next time out at the Nurburgring but an engine failure and subsequent three-race penalty looked like it would call a halt to the title fight. But with Verstappen making it back to the podium in the first of his penalised races and with Ocon having another poor weekend, it wasn?t done yet.
Fortunately for Ocon, he was back on top when the series reconvened for Imola, winning the opening race while Verstappen had a scrappy non-finish. The Dutch ace won the final race of that weekend, but third there was enough for Ocon to seal the deal. Verstappen could claim one triumph over his rival though, taking a tenth victory at the final round at Hockenheim, one more than Ocon.
He would be beaten to the runner-up spot in the standings however. A strong end to the campaign from Blomqvist ? with three wins and seven other podiums from the final 12 races ? brought him into the mix. Although a bad run mid-season meant this was too little, too late to ever be a serious threat to Ocon?s title, it was still a good story to see the underrated Briton and ex-Red Bull Junior to end his breakout season by beating the new golden boy.
Peter Allen