Piastri gives Prema nine from 10

Renault F1 Junior Oscar Piastri plans to move up to Formula 2 for next season after clinching the FIA Formula 3 Championship title in a thrilling three-way final-round showdown at Mugello last weekend, in which he became Italian powerhouse Prema’s ninth champion in the past 10 years of top-flight F3 competition.

Piastri (above), who struggled for pace on the Tuscan circuit and was carrying a grid penalty from the previous round at Monza, did just enough to edge out Prema team-mate Logan Sargeant and ART Grand Prix charger Theo Pourchaire. It was a rookie F3 crown for Australian Piastri, who came into the season as reigning Formula Renault Eurocup champion.

Piastri, whose mentor is ex-formula 1 race winner Mark Webber, said: “Providing everything goes well in the off-season, I think a move to F2 is on the cards. Obviously I can’t do F3 again [champions are banned from returning], and ideally I’ll be doing F2.

“I don’t know if I would say it’s a priority [to stay with Prema], but obviously they’re having a strong year in F2. They’re leading the teams’ championship [thanks to drivers’ points leader Mick Schumacher and Robert Shwartzman], so obviously I’d love to go back to Prema and stay there for next year, but I have no idea where

I’m going to end up next year so far.”

The extraordinary Prema run of success in F3 started in 2011. The Italian team had just been through a big restructure and stabilisation of its technical team in response to its poor form in preceding seasons, and carried Roberto Merhi to the title in the old F3 Euro Series.

Under then-fia Single Seater Commission president Gerhard Berger, the governing body revived its F3 European Championship for 2012. In that year it piggybacked the Euro Series plus two British F3 rounds, with Daniel Juncadella claiming both European crowns.

The F3 Euro Series was phased out for 2013, and over the next six years Prema drivers won FIA F3 European Championship titles in 2013 (Raffaele Marciello), 2014 (Esteban Ocon), 2015 (Felix Rosenqvist), 2016

(Lance Stroll) and 2018 (Schumacher), with only Carlin’s Lando Norris breaking the sequence.

In 2019, the first year of the F1-supporting

FIA F3 Championship, Shwartzman led a

Prema 1-2-3.