KEY POINTS:
Successive podium finishes in Portugal has ensured outright championship victory for Palmerston North driver Brendon Hartley in the acclaimed Formula Renault 2.0 Euro Cup.
Third placings for Hartley, 17, in both 17-lap races at Estoril gave him an unassailable championship lead going into the two-race final round in Barcelona this weekend. He is the youngest Euro Cup Champion.
Hartley's triumph is the first single-seater title for a New Zealander in Europe since Mike Thackwell won the European Formula 2 Championship in 1984.
Thackwell and Hartley are the only New Zealand drivers to win major open wheel, single-seater European championships.
Three of this year's Formula 1 drivers, now world champion Kimi Raikkonen, Filippe Massa and Scott Speed, stepped from Formula Renault into the Grand Prix arena.
During the Euro Cup season to date Hartley has scored four wins, two seconds and two thirds and taken pole position and recorded the fastest lap three times. He has been in the top six at nine of the 12 races and follows in the footsteps of Felipe Massa (2000), Scott Speed (2004), Kamui Kobayashi (2005) and Filipe Albuquerque (2006).
Hartley has already been announced as a Red Bull-sponsored entry in the November 17-18 Macau Grand Prix, the world's biggest Formula 3 race and a significant stepping stone for motorsport's single-seater stars of the future.
