The 2011 GP3 Series review

The mix of talent on the 2011 GP3 Series grid may never be repeated. Why? Because now that the Formula 1-support category has established itself at this level after two years of existence, drivers are more likely to go there directly from the lower rungs of the single-seater ladder, rather than going to Formula 3 first and then moving across to the grand prix support bill in a bid for recognition.

So this year's field was something to savour. It was a blend of previous GP3 winners, up-and-coming rookies, and a clutch of stars with impressive F3 pedigree. It was always going to be a hotly-contested campaign, and one where the ability of whoever won the championship could not be called into question.

Ten winners from as many races told that story as the season reached the summer months. With so many drivers capable of winning on any given weekend, nobody could get a foothold in the title race.

But just because GP3 is asserting its dominance over F3 at the moment (in the driver market at least), that doesn't mean that everything has to change. Indeed, there was an air of familiarity when former F3 powerhouse ART Grand Prix found a competitive advantage mid-season, and the title fight became an exclusive battle between its lead drivers Valtteri Bottas and James Calado.

In the end it was the Finn's ability to pounce on race-winning opportunities that made the difference, and gave his career the momentum it had lost after he missed out on the F3 Euro Series the year before.

The top 10 GP3 Series drivers in focus

1. Valtteri Bottas (ART Grand Prix)
Points: 62
Wins: 4
Other podiums: 3
Poles: 1
Fastest laps: 3

The Finn's decision to step sideways from the F3 Euro Series to GP3 was a huge gamble. He was vastly experienced at this level, and with the season over he has admitted that anything but the title could have meant the end of his career.

It's a testament to his character that he didn't crack when the season started so poorly, as ART didn't adapt its championship-winning 2010 set-ups enough to accommodate the change of tyre compound and reduced rear-wing levels for this year.

Instead, Bottas worked with the team to fix the car's handling issues, and when it rediscovered the sweet spot he grabbed the championship by the neck in the second half of the year. His progress from 10th to first in the standings in just three races was proof of the turnaround.

2. James Calado (ART Grand Prix)
Points: 55
Wins: 1
Other podiums: 5
Poles: 1
Fastest laps: 2

There were plenty of heroics from Calado throughout the season. When the ART car was at its worst in the early races, the Brit fought and made far more of it than Bottas was able to. And his drives from the back of the field in Germany and Hungary would have been declared legendary if they had been in a series that more people were paying attention to.

In the end, it was the misfortunes that precipitated those charges up the field, and the fact that Bottas seemed to have the extra fraction required when the ART car was dominant, that made the difference between the top two. But Calado can move on to GP2 (with ART) with his head held high.

3. Nigel Melker (RSC Mucke Motorsport)
Points: 38
Wins: 1
Other podiums: 4
Poles: 0
Fastest laps: 2

Melker was a second-year GP3 driver, but even he seemed surprised at how well his campaign started as he won the season opener in Turkey. The RSC Mucke car was genuinely fast in the opening races, but the German team appeared to stand still in the tests that followed round two at Barcelona.

From there, Melker was forever fighting a losing battle, but he did it with plenty of class. The Dutchman showed a good ability to switch his goals from going for all-out results to just trying to be in the hunt. But the points gap between him and the ART drivers illustrates just how much ground his team lost over the course of the season.

4. Nico Muller (Jenzer Motorsport)
Points: 36
Wins: 1
Other podiums: 2
Poles: 0
Fastest laps: 0

As another second-year driver in this category, Muller had high hopes for his season, but points were hard to come by in the first half of the year. He only scored twice in the first 10 races, and one of those was a wet-weather victory in a bizarre race at Silverstone, where only 11 cars started the race from the grid as the rest pitted to change tyres.

Muller is better than his record suggested at that point of the season, but he was being hampered by the fact that he had two inexperienced team-mates at Jenzer, leaving him with no data to work from to help solve his own problems.

Once the Swiss got the car to his liking his season took off, and he closed out the year with six consecutive points finishes to catapult up the standings.

5. Adrian Quaife-Hobbs (Manor Racing)
Points: 36
Wins: 1
Other podiums: 1
Poles: 2
Fastest laps: 2

It was important for Quaife-Hobbs to prove that his flashes of speed in 2010 had really been hindered by car problems. Unfortunately, in the early part of the season there was little he could do, as Manor was at sea with the new tyres and aero rules and he was mired towards the back of the field.

But that all changed after round two, when the Virgin Racing-affiliated squad made the biggest gains of all in testing. Quaife-Hobbs latched onto the opportunity immediately by winning at Valencia, and from there he was always a threat.

In a year when the competition was so close, the Briton's ability to qualify and race at the front on a regular basis could not be overlooked. Mechanical gremlins started to creep in again towards the end of the year, which took the wind out of his sails and left the ART drivers free to dispute the title among themselves.

6. Alexander Sims (Status Grand Prix)
Points: 34
Wins: 1
Other podiums: 4
Poles: 0
Fastest laps: 2

Like Bottas, Sims came into this year on the back of two years in F3 that hadn't quite yielded the success expected. There shouldn't have been much to choose between the two but, while Bottas and ART got on top of any car problems, Sims and Status were a bit more hit-and-miss.

When the car was on song, the 2008 McLaren AUTOSPORT BRDC Award winner was able to get the best out of it, as five podiums in the opening 10 races illustrated. At that stage - leaving the Nurburgring - he had a six-point lead in the championship, but he would not score again all year.

Status was lost next time out in Hungary, and Sims' lap to qualify 11th on the grid was one of the performances of the season. He then hauled the car up to fourth in the race, only to be excluded because the floor of his car was "fractions of a millimetre" too low in post-race scrutineering.

It set the scene for a finish to the season that was littered with incidents as Sims found himself frequently battling an ill-handling car. Bottas didn't dare think about what would happen to his career if he didn't win this title. Sims will have to.

7. Rio Haryanto (Manor Racing)
Points: 31
Wins: 2
Other podiums: 2
Poles: 0
Fastest laps: 1

The Indonesian has an army of followers and backers at every race, but this year they didn't witness him make the step up in his second season that his team-mate Adrian Quaife-Hobbs did.

Haryanto was always a factor in the rain, and initially that seemed to be the only string to his bow. But as the year went on he gradually caught up with the progress his British team-mate had been able to make when Manor improved its car, and he strung some good results together - regardless of the conditions - in the second half of the season.

8. Lewis Williamson (MW Arden)
Points: 31
Wins: 1
Other podiums: 2
Poles: 1
Fastest laps: 1

There was a lot of head-scratching going on at MW Arden when the season came to a close at Monza. It had consistently put one of the best cars on track on most weekends, and had two very strong drivers leading its charge in Williamson and Mitch Evans. Yet nobody in the red-and-white awning had much to shout about by the end of the year.

Last year's McLaren AUTOSPORT BRDC Award winner Williamson looked comfortable from the off as he stepped up to GP3 from Formula Renault UK. The battle for supremacy in the team with Evans was fascinating as it ebbed and flowed in the early races, but as the year went on both seemed to settle down to around the same level.

That level should have been more than enough from which to mount a title challenge, but mistakes from team and driver, and occasional mechanical gremlins, took the shine off of an impressive rookie campaign for the Scot.

9. Mitch Evans (MW Arden)
Points: 29
Wins: 1
Other podiums: 1
Poles: 2
Fastest laps: 0

What applies to Williamson pretty much does so here too! But teenaged sensation Evans deserves some praise of his own. An early victory thrust him into title contention, and despite his age the Kiwi seemed perfectly happy scrapping at the front in his first season of European racing.

Everything was going well enough until the Nurburgring, where his title hopes were dealt what became a killer blow. As Evans sat on pole pre-race, his mechanics delayed over which tyres to start on as changeable weather was in the air. In the end they took too long, and he was forced to serve a drive-through penalty.

It was a blunder that team co-owner and Evans' mentor Mark Webber was not impressed with - just hours after taking pole position for the German Grand Prix the Aussie was down in the GP3 paddock "trying to find out what the f*ck went on".

10. Andrea Caldarelli (Tech 1 Racing)
Points: 20
Wins: 0
Podiums: 1
Poles: 0
Fastest laps: 2

The most interesting stat missing from Caldarelli's year in numbers is: starts: 4. He only raced in a quarter of the campaign, but his consistency in those four races at the start of the year proved enough to keep him in the top 10 to the end of the season.

The fortunes of Tech 1 also took a dive once its cash-strapped lead driver departed for a paid drive in Japan. Rookies Aaro Vainio and Tamas Pal Kiss struggled to get a handle on setting up the car without his guidance, meaning that a promising start to the year did not carry into the bulk of the season.

Any other business...

There were a couple of storylines of note outside of what became the top 10 in the championship; one was a positive, the other a negative. But both were significant.

To start, a positive note. Eventual German F3 champion Richie Stanaway was drafted into the third ART car for the final two rounds of the year, starting with Spa. His predecessor, Pedro Nunes, had not managed to score a point all season alongside title contenders Bottas and Calado.

But Stanaway showed good speed from the off, despite his first taste of the ART car not coming until the first free practice session in Belgium. He made up for some bad luck in qualifying with some good fortune in his debut, as he stayed out of trouble and made his way from 17th on the grid to eighth - that meant a point first time out, and earned him reversed-grid pole position for the second race of the weekend.

Addax slipped back during the year and has sold its entry to Trident for 2012 © LAT

From there he stormed to an unlikely victory and, while he didn't add to his points tally in the finale at Monza, he made an impressive statement in his late-season cameo.

Now onto the story that is less about joy and more about suffering: GP2 frontrunning squad Addax started the year in fine form in the junior category, as its leading cars were regularly in the hunt for victory.

But things were to take a turn for the worse, and a team that should have been fighting tooth and nail with ART as the year progressed fell by the wayside. For the bulk of the season its line-up was Tom Dillmann, Dean Smith and Gabby Chaves - and all three were short on cash.

That caught up with the Spanish squad as the year went on, and by the end of the season the white cars were languishing towards the back of the field. It was hardly a good reflection on what is one of the better-run GP2 teams, and sure enough the owners decided to cut their losses and sell their GP3 entry to Trident Racing for next season.