The man who beat Verstappen

The fate of Esteban Ocon has been one of the most convoluted stories of the motorsport off-season, and kind of represents in a nutshell the odd state the sport finds itself in.

For those of you who haven't followed this Anglo-French soap opera, he went from clinching the Formula 3 European Championship over Tom Blomqvist and Max Verstappen in October last year, to making his Formula 1 Friday-practice debut with Lotus at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, to testing with the DAMS GP2 team, to... racing in GP3.

That's pretty much as sideways a step as you can imagine as far as where the categories sit on the rungs of the racing ladder, with the added damp squib of GP3 having reset the bar on the phrase 'processional racing' since the series' new car was introduced in 2013.

This is perhaps a contributing factor in GP3 just not carrying the same level of public interest as F3. How do we know? In the past 12 months, GP3 stories on this website have averaged 79 per cent of the clicks of those on F3, and those in the latter category include the moribund-and-doomed British F3...

And that's despite the GP3 title having been won by a popular Brit (in the form of Alex Lynn), who was supported by the Red Bull junior initiative.

Verstappen has gone straight to F1 while Ocon's moved sideways to GP3 © XPB

So why does it represent the odd state of the sport, as I mentioned in my opening gambit?

Well, drivers are becoming better and better trained at ever-earlier ages, so that by the time the average teenager arrives in F3 they are already not far adrift of being the finished article.

The Gravity management scheme, which has done so much for Romain Grosjean and Marco Wittmann to name but two, has invested a lot of money in honing the raw talent it saw in Ocon when he was picked up as a schoolboy karter.

And what for? Thanks to its commercial disasters and its teams' struggles, Formula 1 is becoming almost impossible to break into. It would be all too easy for a brilliant 18-year-old such as Ocon to be washed up.

With that in mind, any management company worth its salt has to be mounting a parallel programme - yes, take the F1 chance if it arises, but otherwise be open to the alternatives: DTM, WEC, Japan, IndyCar, whatever.

The lines between Gravity and the Lotus F1 team are blurred - with the companies' shared ownership, it's natural that many of the junior drivers run in the black-and-gold livery.

The same goes for the shirts of Gravity mentors Gwenael Lagrue and Stephane Guerin, two amiable Frenchmen who gratifyingly live up to our stereotype of our neighbours across the Channel by sporting facial stubble and cigarettes. (It would be even better if, instead of the old-fashioned Lotus livery, it was the blue-and-white of Gitanes-era Ligier, but you can't win them all!)

Ocon had the measure of the Toro Rosso F1 driver in F3 last year © LAT

Even so, Lagrue has always stressed that, as a management company, Gravity's job is to find the best deal for its drivers, whether that's with Lotus or another team.

That's why, as well as representing the much-honoured ART Grand Prix team in GP3, Ocon is expected to be announced as reserve driver for the DTM Mercedes squad.

And it probably wouldn't be too much of a long shot to suggest that, as a Mercedes 'junior', he may be given a role within the Stuttgart manufacturer's F1 programme in the not too distant future.

Ocon's parallel relationship with Mercedes dates back to the autumn of 2013 when, as a Formula Renault Eurocup frontrunner, he had his first test with the Merc-powered Prema Powerteam F3 squad.

He flew in that run-out on the tough Imola circuit, and Prema wanted him instantly for its 2014 line-up (so much so that an entry was rushed through for the 2013 Macau Grand Prix). Ocon was one of the small handful of F3 drivers supported by Mercedes last year (along with Felix Rosenqvist, Lucas Auer and Felix Serralles), and he did a superb job to wrap up the title with one race weekend to spare.

Yes, that was against Verstappen - now in F1 with Toro Rosso - as well as Blomqvist and Auer, both of whom are now paid professionals in DTM race seats.

Would he do as effective a job as Verstappen in F1? It's hard to say - he had the better of the Belgo-Dutchman in F3, but that doesn't always translate to the top level, otherwise Marc Hynes or Luciano Burti would have won the 2009 world championship for Brawn rather than their 1999 British F3 chaser Jenson Button.

Ocon's relationship with Mercedes, established in F3, has been boosted © XPB

But what is certain - and there are many at Mercedes and Lotus who believe this - is that Ocon has the potential to be very good indeed in F1.

He turned up in the F3 hospitality last weekend at Hockenheim, sporting the ever-present Ocon smile and keen to catch up with his old mates.

He was there for his first weekend of DTM 'taxi' passenger-ride duties - probably not the most exciting thing in the world for one of his calibre, but the beginning of a new era that will hopefully integrate him further within the Mercedes structure.

Ocon certainly doesn't consider his 'stalling' in GP3 as a negative thing, even going so far as to suggest that he's fortunate to be racing at all, and that there are many others who aren't as lucky as him.

That's the sign of a well-grounded, nice guy and is a mindset that should hopefully serve him well as he and his Gravity team plot his course to the top - wherever that may be.

In a world where the costs of motorsport become ever more eye-watering, the fact that a kid of average wealth from Normandy - whose dad runs a small garage business and prepped his son's kart himself for minimal outlay before Gravity came calling - should already have flirted with F1 is a heartwarming story in itself.

He'll probably never have the buzz about him that the audacious Verstappen has, but that doesn't mean to say he doesn't have the talent to be fighting with his former F3 rival for world championship titles in the future.

For Ocon, GP3 may be a sideways step for now, but that step may well have taken him onto a path that bears richer fruit in the long term.

The next issue of AUTOSPORT, available online and in stores from Thursday, features an interview with Ocon and his management ahead of the GP3 season, which kicks off this weekend.

In it, Ocon and Gravity talk about:

* Dealing with Verstappen's graduation to F1

* How F1, GP2 and DTM roles passed him by

* Courting Mercedes, being GP3 title favourite and more