Ranking the stars of a contentious F3 season
Mick Schumacher's surge to the European Formula 3 title was astonishing, but it came with question marks that made judging the 2018 field difficult - though it didn't obscure the presence of a 'new Keke Rosberg'
The final season of the already-lamented Formula 3 European Championship was the most open in its history - until it switched to the most one-sided in a matter of weeks.
When Mick Schumacher went to bed on the evening of July 27, having thrown away his first F3 pole position with a first-lap tangle at Spa with Prema team-mate Guan Yu Zhou, he was a distant 10th in the standings just one race before the season's halfway point.
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Marcus Simmons is the Deputy Editor of Autosport magazine. As a child he was a regular on the chalk banks of Thruxton – hence his unhealthy obsession with 1970s Formula 2 and F3 – before he became an MSA timekeeper at the age of 17. At 19, his reporting debut for Motoring News arguably overshadowed Maradona’s ‘Hand of God’ goal as the sporting moment of June 1986, and he joined the staff in 1990 after graduating from his degree course in Plymouth. A parallel Formula First career – which was as incident-packed as his childhood exploits in show-jumping and hunter trials – finished when he wrote off his car and put himself in hospital in 1991.
Marcus moved to Autosport in the summer of 1996. Since then he has had two stints as a freelancer and a brief spell as editor of Motor Sport magazine, during which the revered green cover was revived, before he rejoined Autosport in 2008. He lives in Teddington with his wife (who, gratifyingly, grew up within earshot of Castle Combe), daughter, stepson, dog, cat and guitars, and additionally has an adult daughter and stepson.
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