The top 10 GP3 drivers of 2012

The top 10 GP3 drivers of 2012

1. Mitch Evans (NZ)
Championship position: 1st (151.5 points)
Team: MW Arden
Starts: 16
Wins: 3
Poles: 4
Fastest laps: 4

Began racing single-seaters almost as soon as his voice broke - and it shows. Stays calm under pressure and almost always puts his car in the right place at the right time. It's called racecraft. As measured outside the car as he is within; hard to believe, sometimes, that he turned 18 only this summer.

As yet there are no obvious weak spots in his armoury. All that and he benefits from Mark Webber's patronage, too. Prospects could scarcely be more promising.

2. Antonio Felix da Costa (P)
Champ: 3rd (132)
Team: Carlin
Starts: 16
Wins: 3
Poles: 1
Fastest laps: 5

Might as well have missed the first few races, so rarely was luck on his side. Things reached their nadir in Valencia, where he was twice sent to the back of the grid: firstly because his brake discs were too thin, latterly for causing a collision.

Victory at Silverstone marked a turning point and he was ever a factor thereafter - so much so that he seemed to have title momentum until his car jammed in sixth gear on Saturday at Monza. A no-nonsense, ballsy racer.

3. Daniel Abt (D)
Champ: 2nd (149.5)
Team: Lotus GP (ART)
Starts: 16
Wins: 2
Poles: 1
Fastest laps: 0

It's a little too easy to overuse the 'rookie' tag nowadays, but technically he qualified. Previous F3 experience was no hardship, but he still had to adjust to a new car and the fiercest intra-team competition in the paddock.

Mature and calculating, he didn't take long to find his feet and reaped the rewards with a splendid run of late-season form. Drove wonderfully at Monza. Had the campaign been two laps shorter, the crown would have been his.

4. Tio Ellinas (CY)
Champ: 8th (99)
Team: Manor Racing
Starts: 16
Wins: 1
Poles: 0
Fastest laps: 3

Best of the 'proper' neophytes, as in drivers who haven't previously competed in a vaguely parallel category (unless you consider Formula Renault to be such).

His relative rawness was manifest at times - witness his short-cutting of the final corner in Valencia to annex a podium, although stewards didn't allow him to keep it - but his speed was more apparent still. There is time aplenty to fine-tune the little he lacks in smoothness. Worth watching.

5. Matias Laine (FIN)
Champ: 5th (111)
Team: MW Arden
Starts: 16
Wins: 1
Poles: 0
Fastest laps: 0

Scored no points at all in 2011, but a switch to MW Arden brought an upturn in both form and confidence.

By the middle of the year he was beginning to talk* about a breakthrough victory, something he achieved at Spa, and by its end he felt sure he could mount a season-long title assault. A great asset, self-belief. (*Talk in this instance tends to be a relative term: short sentences, quietly delivered - he's a disciple of classic Finnish tradition.)

6. Aaro Vainio (FIN)
Champ: 4th (123)
Team: Lotus GP (ART)
Starts: 16
Wins: 1
Poles: 2
Fastest laps: 0

Began strongly enough and took a splendid win from pole in Monaco, the first time he'd raced a car on a street circuit (although such things were his speciality in karts).

Title challenge began to unravel around mid-season and he put the matter beyond doubt by ignoring a yellow flag at Monza. Has high-profile management - he's part of the Nicolas Todt stable, alongside Felipe Massa and Pastor Maldonado - but it might be a struggle to flog him to an F1 team on recent form.

7. Conor Daly (USA)
Champ: 6th (106)
Team: Lotus GP (ART)
Starts: 16
Wins: 1
Poles: 0
Fastest laps: 0

Scored his only win in race two at Barcelona, but the balance was a blend of highs and lows.

Spain apart, the better bits included a fine run to second in the wet-dry Sunday race at Silverstone, where he'd also raced particularly well the previous day, but then there were weekends such as Monaco, where he jumped the start in the first race and suffered a huge, race-stopping accident while trying to fight back in the second. His speed was consistent, solid results a little less so.

8. Patric Niederhauser (CH)
Champ: 7th (101)
Team: Jenzer Motorsport
Starts: 16
Wins: 2
Poles: 0
Fastest laps: 1

Graduated from Formula Abarth - yet another championship that solves an arguably non-existent problem - and proved to be a good advertisement for other alumni. Scored a reversed-grid victory in Valencia and, more impressively, won in horrible conditions in the first of the two shortened Hockenheim races.

Generally looked good in the wet, which is always a useful barometer of feel and touch. As far as we know, he was also the only GP3 driver with a qualification in electronic engineering.

9. Will Buller (GB)
Champ: 15th (20)
Team: Carlin
Starts: 16
Wins: 1
Poles: 0
Fastest laps: 0

None of the Brits had a consistently positive campaign, but his peaks were higher than those of his compatriots.

There were some tough moments - landing upside down against the Ste Devote barriers in Monaco, for instance - but the second Silverstone race provided his seasonal zenith. His slick-tyre gamble paid handsomely as he tore through from 25th to win on a drying track. It wasn't what he did at the end that mattered, but the way he nursed the car through the difficult early laps. Impressive, that.

10. Marlon Stockinger (RF)
Champ: 10th (55)
Team: Status Grand Prix
Starts: 16
Wins: 1
Poles: 0
Fastest laps: 2

A red flag hastened his lone victory, in the second race at Monaco: he was leading when the race was abandoned, after Daly's flying car damaged trackside debris fencing, but he was on course to win anyway.

That was the apotheosis of a year that began and ended brightly, although he flirted with oblivion at its core. Still, that solitary success was the first for a Filipino-Swiss in an international single-seater race - the answer to a pub quiz question that is likely to remain unasked.