The Green Flag British Formula Three Championship season kicks off this weekend at
Silverstone and Japanese driver Takuma Sato is already being heralded as this season’s champion.
Last year Sato finished third in the championship and towards the end of 2000 won four races. This year he will be starting his second season with Carlin Motorsport and having learned the tracks he will be very difficult to beat.
In pre-season testing Sato has been consistently quick – topping the times or at the least being in the top two on a regular basis. His nearest challengers are likely to be RC Motorsports Nicolas Kiesa and fellow BAR test driver and teammate
Anthony Davidson.
Both Kiesa and Davidson have been up there or ‘there abouts’ in testing and while Davidson will probably take the first few races to get up to speed having graduated from Formula Ford Kiesa at least has the benefit of having run in the championship in 2000.
Of the rest the Jaguar F3 Junior team have been disappointing in testing (no surprise there really considering the performance of their big brother
F1 team) and while they might spring the odd surprise in 2001 both drivers James Courtney and Andre Lotterer will have there work cut out. The Jaguar’s have been well off the pace in testing failing to get into the top six unless there was rain and well there is likely to be wet races in 2001 it can’t be good for team morale to know they can’t compete in the dry.
Courtney comes to the series like Davidson from Formula Ford and while teammate Lotterer has a years F3 experience in Germany he may still take some time to adapt to racing in Britain.
Having dealt with the F1 junior teams – Jaguar, Prost and Carlin Motorsport (racing with the BAR test driver duo) – Ryan Dalziel is probably another potential star. He finished second to
Kimi Raikkonen in the Formula Renault championship in 2000 and has performed well in testing often making it into the top six. So too has Gianmaria Bruni in his Fortec Renault Dallara F3001 and at the last test in Silverstone he was second only to
Takuma Sato.
