The 2008 F3 Euro Series Preview

Every year championships talk of a great strength in depth, and race winners and potential champions coming from right the way down the field, and this season shaping up to be a golden one for the category - but for the F3 Euro Series, those cliches are actually true in 2008.

The 30-car field has an almost unprecedented strength in depth, with no fewer than 12 drivers having already won F3 races, and another seven having been multiple race winners or champions in other categories. That gives you almost 20 drivers who are genuinely capable of winning races this season - that's one victory each, then!

The next generation Dallara chassis will take a little bit of the edge away from the more experienced drivers, and give the rookies a better stab at getting up to speed in the car early in the season. Volkswagen have also emerged as an eight-car threat to the established Mercedes units and will throw another variable into what was fast becoming a one-make series.

The favourite

All that competitiveness isn't to say there isn't a chance that one driver could dominate the title race, unfortunately. It's one thing to be able to win the odd race, but it's quite another to be able to put together a full championship assault. Nobody is better placed to make that assault in 2008 than Nico Hulkenberg.

Nico Hulkenberg, ART Dallara Mercedes-Benz

The German won four races last season and finished third in the championship. The two that finished ahead of him, and even the one behind, have all moved on this season, leaving him as the clear favourite - especially given that he's sticking with champion team ART Grand Prix.

He's going to be tough to stop. Still only 20, he has two years of F3 behind him and has already racked up A1GP and Formula BMW championship titles, as well as winning last season's F3 Masters.

Hulkenberg led the way in pre-season testing and the Williams F1 test driver will be hot favourite as the cars roll out for the first qualifying session of the season at Hockenheim on Friday.

Returning rivals

Champion Romain Grosjean, runner-up Sebastien Buemi, and fourth-placed Kamui Kobayashi have all stepped up to GP2, but Hulkenberg isn't the only driver coming back for another stab at the Euro Series this year.

James Jakes has switched from Manor Motorsport to ART and it's time for the Englishman to really grab the bull by the horns. He'll never be better placed to win a title than with ART for his second season in the Euro Series, and third in F3. He got his maiden win out the way last year and has to add to that a few times over this time around.

Edoardo Mortara scored a couple of wins last season and was unlucky not to get at least one more. His sheer speed isn't in doubt but he and Signature-Plus will need to raise their all-round games if he's to threaten ART's dominance. He could still be a dark horse for the title if the VW engine is a match for the Merc.

Franck Mailleux and Renger van der Zande also picked up a win apiece last season and are back for another go. Mailleux moves to join Mortara at VW-powered Signature, while van der Zande sticks with Prema.

He'll be joined at the team by Charlie Kimball, who returns to F3 after his Formula Renault 3.5 campaign in 2007 was cut short when he was diagnosed with diabetes. Cleared to race again, he'll be keen to re-establish himself in a series in which he's already won.

Sporadic front-runners Dani Clos, Tom Dillman, and Jean-Karl Vernay will all be expecting to take a significant step forward with a season's experience under their belts. Clos in particular has looked bright in testing, as has Maxi Gotz who is back for another year in the series and the rapid German sticks with RC Motorsport and VW.

The new but not so new

Sam Bird, Manor Dallara Mercedes-Benz

Several semi-rookies have also joined the Euro Series this year - drivers that are new to the series, the circuits, the tyres, etc but that have raced in, and in most cases won in, F3 elsewhere in the world. Manor Motorsport has even managed to find four of them.

Sam Bird finished fourth in the British series last season, but for much of the year was the only driver realistically fighting with runaway winner Marko Asmer. It would have been easy for him to stay at home for another year where he would have been a title favourite, but instead he opted for a move to Europe in search of that elusive first crown.

He's joined at Manor by former Carlin Motorsport team-mate Niall Breen. The Irishman was also a race winner last year, and previously a champion in Formula BMW, so he too has the potential to be there or thereabouts.

Kodai Tsukakoshi and Kazuya Oshima complete the English team's line-up and, although little may be known of them so far in Europe, their pedigree in Japan is excellent.

Oshima beat Briton Oliver Jarvis to the Japanese F3 crown last season, and Tsukakoshi finished second to Jarvis at Macau, beating all the Europeans in the process, so both are doubtfully quick enough to win races if they can get their heads around the European circuits.

Mucke Motorsport came closest to deposing ART last season and the team have enlisted the help of the closest thing you can find to title-favourite Hulkenberg. Christian Vietoris is already an F3 race winner (in the German series) and has spent his career so far following in Hulkenberg's footsteps, including FBMW and A1GP wins, and even an F1 test.

Vietoris was just a whisker behind his countryman in the final test of the pre-season and is eager to take over as Germany's next hottest prospect. So too is Michael Klein who is looking to transfer his German F3 form to the Euroseries and was refreshingly quick in testing with Jo Zeller Racing.

You can throw a team into the 'new but not so new' pot, too. Carlin Motorsport have won it all in British F3 but this season will be their first in the Euro Series.

They've picked up Rodolfo Gonzalez, who also has British F3 experience, and Richard Philippe for their first bash at it. Another experienced British runner, Franky Cheng, comes across to join RC Motorsport's VW assault.

The real rookies

It will be tough for any true rookies to really make their mark in the Euro Series this year with so many experienced frontrunners around, but fortunately the rookies that will give it a go are some of the most sensational prospects around.

Martin Plowman, RC Motorsport Dallara Volkswagen

Potential winners with such little experience don't exactly grow on trees, but ART have managed to find two of them. Jules Bianchi ran away with the French Formula Renault title last year, and while it isn't anywhere near as competitive as the Eurocup he has been incredibly fast in testing and some believe he's even better than Grosjean.

Jon Lancaster is the other. You simply can't overstate how massive an achievement it is to finished second in the Formula Renault Eurocup in your first season of car racing. That series is rivalled only by this Euro Series for competitiveness, and to win five races when the car and every circuit is a new experience is astonishing. He hasn't found that sort of form in F3 yet but it's still early days.

Mika Maki is another Formula Renault graduate set to make an impression. He won the Italian FRenault title last year - and that one is as competitive as the Eurocup. He has the might of Red Bull behind him and he went even better than Bianchi in testing.

Other rookies to watch out for include Jens Klingmann - he won the FBMW Germany title last season and looks to the next driver off the seemingly never ending conveyer belt of German talent - and Stefano Coletti, who reigned in his wild streak last season to finish a creditable fourth in the FRenault Eurocup.

The average Euro Series produces one or two future F1 drivers, but you might do well to count this year's quota on the fingers of one hand. See who you think will be the next name on the list when the action kicks off at Hockenheim this weekend.