The Mercedes v Renault v Honda v Ferrari title fight

Mercedes, Renault and Honda drivers fighting for the championship, with a Ferrari racer racking up the wins to stay in the title hunt - it's a combination that would make for an epic Formula 1 season.

And that's exactly what is happening two steps down the ladder on the F1 support bill in GP3.

The third-tier series is halfway through its 2017 season and the top six drivers are separated by just 29 points. With 25 points for a race one win and four on offer for pole, that's a gap that can disappear very quickly.

The scrap between the top four is even closer as just 20 points separate the four ART Grand Prix drivers. Mercedes-backed junior George Russell - a category rookie - is currently in first place on 92 points, nine ahead of Renault academy driver Jack Aitken. Anthoine Hubert sits third, with Honda racer Nirei Fukuzumi in fourth.

ART is something of a powerhouse in GP3. Six of the series' seven teams' titles have gone its way and four drivers - Esteban Gutierrez, Valtteri Bottas, Esteban Ocon and Charles Leclerc - have won the championship in its cars.

Having all four drivers fighting for the title is not an unfamiliar scenario either.

"It's a good problem, I would say," says ART team boss Sebastien Philippe. "It's always good to have the four of them fighting for the championship. I've never given any order to my drivers - I will not start now - I just need to be sure that they respect each other and they don't do stupid things.

"It's better to have four drivers fighting than no one, so I will not complain about this."

McLaren Autosport BRDC Award winner Russell switched to GP3 after two seasons competing in European Formula 3, where he won three races and came away with a best result of third in the championship in 2016.

"If we have no more unlucky moments I have full confidence I can do the job" Mercedes junior Russell

He made a low-key start to the 2017 season at Barcelona with a fourth and fifth in the two races, which were hampered by poor starts as he struggled to get to grips with using a hand-operated clutch for the first time in his career.

GP3 tends to have a hefty gap between its first two rounds - eight weeks in 2017 - but Russell used an in-season test at the Hungaroring, where he would drive the Mercedes W08 F1 car two months later, to work on his starts.

"We knew our main issue was the starts and going to Budapest really paid off for us," he later said.

It did indeed. The 19-year-old claimed back-to-back pole and race one wins at the Red Bull Ring and Silverstone, which propelled him to the top of the standings.

But disaster struck at the Hungaroring when a sensor problem stopped him lining up in second place in race one. He had been clearly furious to lose pole to Aitken that morning, and an unfortunate collision between the pair ended his hopes of points in race two.

"If we have no more unlucky moments like this I still have full confidence that we can continue with the job," Russell said after his DNS in Hungary. "Myself and the team are working pretty well together. So long as we keep trying to put it on the front row, put it on pole, it's all we can do."

Aitken, taking part in his second GP3 season, is back in the title hunt after a difficult start to the year. It had begun perfectly when he claimed pole at Barcelona, but a sensor problem halted his fight with Fukuzumi for the win. In a season with only eight rounds, it looked as if that DNF would prove to be seriously costly.

But the 21-year-old chased Russell from lights-to-flag for the win at the Red Bull Ring and came away from Silverstone with 24 points.

Hungary reignited his title charge as he scored 31 points in race one - two for the fastest lap added to his pole and win rewards - and was catapulted back into contention with what is so far the largest haul from a single qualifying-race one combination.

Thanks to that result Aitken, who finished fifth in the championship last year, headed into the summer break with restored optimism.

"It's just nice to see we've finally got the result we wanted and I can go to the summer with a bit of a smile," he said. "I think the tracks coming up will suit me more because I had a really strong end to last year so I'm quite confident."

Hubert, the other ART driver racing in GP3 for the first time, is the only person to have scored at least one point in every race so far this season. The Frenchman took a while to make it onto the podium - his second place in race one at Silverstone remains his best result of the season, which he followed up with third in the first event at the Hungaroring.

"Behind the dominant ART squad sits Ferrari junior Giuliano Alesi, who has won the last two reverse-grid races"

The 20-year-old would have been on the rostrum at the Red Bull Ring, but a badly misjudged move at the uphill Turn 3 right hander on the opening lap ended when he clattered into Arden's Leonardo Pulcini, which also impacted on Steijn Schothorst, and earned him a time penalty.

While Russell and Aitken have both suffered with reliability problems, arguably the unluckiest of the ART squad has been Fukuzumi, who led the championship after Spain, where he won the opening race.

The Honda junior was still the standings leader leaving Austria but his own sensor problem derailed his chances in race one in Britain and he failed to score in the second race after being given a 10-second penalty for overtaking under the safety car.

A race two coming together with Pulcini in Hungary means the popular Japanese driver, who is desperate to score his first GP3 pole, is now 20 points from the head of the standings.

Behind the dominant ART squad sit Trident's Giuliano Alesi and Jenzer Motorsport's Alessio Lorandi, and this pair cannot be counted out of the title hunt just yet.

Alesi, son of former F1 racer Jean, is a Ferrari academy driver and has won the last two reverse-grid second races. His path to victory at Silverstone was eased by team-mate Dorian Boccolacci failing to line up on pole due to a gearbox problem, but the 17-year-old marshalled the gap to the Aitken-led pack for the entire race, much to the delight of his visibly emotional father.

Trident has made race two events something of a speciality so far this season as Alesi's Silverstone win was followed by the Italian squad lining up in positions 1-2-3-4 on the Hungaroring Sunday.

After a "hard meeting before the start of the race" led by team boss Giacomo Ricci, who was "a little bit afraid with four team-mates in front that a big mess could happen", it held onto those positions. Alesi took advantage of a lock-up from polesitter Ryan Tveter to nip up the inside and sealed the win, which leaves him 26 points behind Russell.

Lorandi left Barcelona second in the standings thanks to a brace of third places, and had been producing a Hubert-esque points streak until a puncture scuppered his chances in the second Hungarian race.

One of the key features of Alesi's pair of wins and Lorandi's charges in Spain was the way they mastered the two sides of GP3's DRS, which is new for this year. In race one, each driver has six uses of the F1-style overtaking aid, and four in the sprint race.

The lead driver, naturally, must be careful to stay as far out of reach as possible, but it has been rare for them to escape the one-second zone entirely and keeping in front while prolonging the life of the fragile Pirelli tyres has become something of an art.

In the pack behind, in Spain in particular, where Lorandi and Russell were able to gain places at a track where overtaking is traditionally tough, DRS has created a high-speed tactical game that has led to a series of intense races.

While Spain felt like something of a new dawn in terms of overtaking, the race one duels for victory have so far remained tense and fast paced but without much wheel-to-wheel action. Race two in Hungary is so far the only time a front-row starter has not gone on to take the victory.

After the summer break, the ART drivers will resume battle in their ultra-tight title fight - one which has been markedly good natured so far. There's no guarantee that they will fall out off-track and on-track, and the mature approach from all four has been noticeable so far.

But in a title battle the second half of the season brings extra motivations to be the one to ultimately succeed - especially when it's being fought out alongside the pressure that comes from backing from Formula 1 manufacturers.