German F4 champion Vips lands Motopark F3 seat

The 17-year-old Estonian will race for the same team with which he made his F3 race debut in a one-off at the 2017 Hockenheim finale. 

Vips has raced for Prema Powerteam during his two seasons in F4, and took his first steps in F3 in a test with the Italian squad in September.

But after joining Motopark for his F3 race bow, he completed a concerted testing programme with the German operation.

That was alongside Red Bull junior Dan Ticktum, second-year F3 racer Marino Sato, and Vips’s fellow F4 graduates Fabio Scherer and Jonathan Aberdein, all of whom have been confirmed in the Motopark line-up for 2018.

“The cooperation with Team Motopark ran smooth as silk right from the word go,” said Vips who, like third-year F3 racer and compatriot Ralf Aron, is mentored by 2007 British F3 champion Marko Asmer.

“My early experiences reassure me that I’ve found the right environment with a very strong support to help me learn my trade in F3, which is a totally different world from F4.

“What I found at Hockenheim and in our early off-season prep programme makes me very confident of a good start to my F3 life.”

Motopark boss Timo Rumpfkeil said: “We took a good, hard look at Juri’s progress in the 2016 and 2017 F4 seasons because we had heard about the reputation which preceded him – and his two years did, indeed, show he is an extremely promising talent. He may well have what it takes to go all the way.

“Following our extensive testing after his first race weekend in 2017, I’m certain he will only need a very short period of time to find his feet in F3 and be successful there too.”

UPDATE: Van Amersfoort Racing has announced Artem Petrov, a race winner in Italian F4 last year, as its second European F3 driver for the 2018 campaign.

The 17-year-old Russian rookie joins second-year driver Keyvan Andres at the Dutch squad.

2018 European F3 line-up so far:

Team	Drivers
Carlin	Devlin DeFrancesco  Jehan Daruvala  Sacha Fenestraz  Ferdinand Habsburg  Nikita Troitskiy
Prema	Marcus Armstrong  Robert Shwartzman  Ralf Aron  Guan Yu Zhou  Mick Schumacher
Motopark	Fabio Scherer  Dan Ticktum  Marino Sato  Jonathan Aberdein  Juri Vips
Hitech GP	Enaam Ahmed  Alex Palou  Ben Hingeley
Van Amersfoort	Keyvan Andres Soori  Artem Petrov
Ma-Con	Julian Hanses