And we finally know the identity of our 2020 FIA Formula 3 champion: it’s Oscar Piastri!

Oscar mixes Fangio with Raikkonen IMHO, he’s also managed by Mark Webber; he never says ‘mate’, at least in public. He’ll be Alonso’s team-mate at Alpine F1 in 2022?

Sergio Álvarez asked the newly-crowned champ his thoughts on all the past shenanigans of the 2020 F3 season.

Did the long delay to the season and then the quick succession of races affect Oscar’s concentration? It’s been a bit of a zipped and compressed season this…

Oscar: “Um, I wouldn’t really say it’s made it more difficult, I think it’s just beig a challenge to everyone. To be honest, I think the break kind of helped me a little bit: it meant I could prepare a bit more, it meant I could speak with the team a lot more to try and basically learn everything I could without driving the car.

“So I think I prepared really well in the break before the beginning of the year and then obviously starting it off with a win was the perfect way to start it so I think the key to this year was to try and start the year with good momentum, which I did. It was a bit shaky in the middle, but yeah, I think as long as you could stay consistent and being mentally strong, and not let bad results get you down, yeah, that was probably the biggest thing to overcome.”

What advice would you give to any rookie FIA F3 driver starting in this championship maybe tomorrow or next year? Tomorrow would’ve been great, we’ll miss F3 until 2021!

Oscar: “Just to qualify better than I did because it makes your life a lot easier!

“I think learning the tyres was the biggest thing that I’ve had to do this year. And yeah, generally speaking, qualifying result dictates the weekend, except for maybe at Monza and Spa where it doesn’t really matter.

“Yeah, learning the tyres and being consistent throughout the year, and making sure you can score points consistently. I think Beckmann did a very job of that this year, (inaudible) he was still very much in the fight for the title.

I think you need to be quick but consistency is really the key and maximizing both the races. Obviously if you can qualify at the front and get big points in Race 1, it helps a lot but you never can count out the reverse grid race too.”

PS Our header image comes courtesy of https://twitter.com/FIAFormula3/status/1305111425216638976?s=20 screen grab.