Rookie and championship leader Marcus Armstrong (PREMA Theodore Racing) is in the most promising position but his more experienced rival and team-mate Guanyu Zhou follows just one point behind. Ralf Aron, another experienced team-mate of Armstrong and Zhou, holds third position, 4.5 points behind the current leader and Daniel Ticktum in fourth position (Motopark / 13 points behind) also has got good chances of beating the 17-year old Kiwi in the battle for the half-time title.

Altogether, a total of 10 drivers theoretically still may hope for leaving Spa-Francorchamps as half-time champion: in addition to championship leader another three rookies could achieve this goal: 18-year old Briton Enaam Ahmed (Hitech Bullfrog GP), 17-year old Estonian Jüri Vips (Motopark) and 18-year old Russian Robert Shvartzman (PREMA Theodore Racing). They all will make their debut appearance at the Ardennes rollercoaster with a Formula 3 single-seater.

Meanwhile, the grid also features drivers that already celebrated F3 successes at the Belgian GP circuit. China’s Guanyu, for instance, a young gun supported by the Ferrari F1 team, made it to the podium last year by finishing third in one of the Spa-Francorchamps rounds. Austria’s Ferdinand Habsburg (Carlin) did even better, last year: he celebrated his first FIA Formula 3 European Championship win in Belgium.

The FIA Formula 3 European Championship race meeting will be held in the support programme of the Spa 24h Race. Therefore, the first two races of the weekend will be contested as early as on Friday (27th July) and the third on Saturday (28th July).

Alex Palou (Hitech Bullfrog GP): “Spa-Francorchamps is a fantastic racetrack, featuring everything a racing driver loves; sections where you have to brake hard, fast and slow corners. If you want to set a good lap time you have to deliver in every section. Furthermore, the circuit offers overtaking possibilities what should make for thrilling races. My season to date wasn’t exactly perfect. In the early stages of the season my starts were poor, in some cases my car wasn’t perfect and sometimes I had bad luck. But in consideration of the fact that the battle for the top positions still is extremely close my chances also still are alive.”