Mick Schumacher makes it a hat-trick at the Nurburgring!

In the sort of dominant on-track performance usually associated with his famous father, Mick Schumacher successfully clinched a sweep of all three races at this weekend's round of the FIA Formula 3 European championship at the Nurburgring.

It's the first time this season that the same F3 driver has won all three events over the same weekend

The 19-year-old started the first race on Saturday from second place after being pipped to pole by his PREMA team mate and Ferrari protégé Robert Shwartzman. However he soon moved in front of the Russian teen and held on to the lead until the chequered flag.

"My start was good and I managed to move up into the lead fairly quickly," he said afterwards. "Then I tried to save my tyres as well as I could."

When it came to the second race of the weekend on Sunday morning, Schumacher was able to take pole position in qualifying ahead of Shwartzman and Motopark's Dan Ticktum, the championship leader who had already finished third behind the PREMA pair in race 1.

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After 24 laps of hard racing, the three crossed the finish line in the same order that they started, signalling the second victory of the weekend for Schumacher.

"I am very happy with my victory and with my great car. My team has done a great job," he said after taking his fifth win of the season. "In the race, we had two safety car interventions and I had two good restarts. Every time I managed to pull away from Robert, which was important."

That left only the final race on Sunday afternoon. Schumacher once again started from pole ahead of Shwartzman and Ticktum, with Alex Palou lining up on the grid in fourth place for Hitech Bullfrog GP.

Schumacher was able to narrowly thwart the challenge from his team mate off the line, and he put himself almost five seconds clear by the finish. Behind them, Ticktum lost out on the final podium spot which was instead claimed by Palou.

As a result of this weekend's success, Schumacher takes a maximum haul of 75 points which moves him up from fourth to second place in the drivers standings, now just three points behind Ticktum. In the team standings, PREMA continues to hold a commanding lead over Motopark.

Ticktum is one of the drivers linked with a chance of the Toro Rosso Formula 1 race seat in 2019. However his hopes of getting enough FIA superlicence points to be eligible for a seat in F1 require him to win the F3 title - and even then he will be slightly short of the total needed.

Schumacher is tipped to move to Formula 2 with the leading ART team, as he continues his own progression to a future spot on the Grand prix grid.

There are two more weekends left in the 2018 championship, with three races to be held at the Red Bull Ring over the weekend of 22/23 September, and the season finale consisting of the last three races of the year at Hockenheim on 13/14 October.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.