For those who watched dominate in 2023, this year's British F4 season would have felt very familiar.

Except it wasn't a Dutchman doing the dazzling - it was a teenager from Crawley who knows nothing about crawling around a race track. Deagen Fairclough doesn't have the financial backing that many of his series rivals have, yet he became champion this year in record-breaking fashion.

Fifteen pole positions, 14 race wins and a 222.5-point gap over nearest challenger Alex Ninovic saw the 18-year-old win the title in style. There were still five races to go in the season when Fairclough made sure of that success.

And, like Verstappen, not only does he perform on real circuits, but the young Brit also hones his skills through sim racing. He even once got the better of in a virtual race, when he could barely even call himself a teenager.

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Fairclough told Mirror Sport: "That was when I was 13 or 14 years old, so it was a little happy moment for me. I ran downstairs and shouted to my mum, 'Oh my God, I beat him!' I get to race such fast drivers now on the sim.

"There's a lot of fast drivers and when you put yourself around faster drivers, you tend to get quicker because you're pushing extra hard to beat them or to be the same speed as them."

That practice paid off as Fairclough blew away the competition in British F4, having won his seat through a ROKiT Racing Stars sim racing competition. He took to racing single seaters in real life like a duck to water, scoring six wins and 166.5 points more than did when he took the British F4 title in 2015.

He said: "I got to hold that trophy and seeing Lando's name on it was quite nice. There are so many people who have come through F4 and have made it to F1. Obviously, they've had that financial backing to get there and we're a little bit on the back foot."

No kidding. Motorsport is incredibly expensive and Fairclough's parents don't have the cash to fund his rise up the motorsport ladder themselves. "Without ROKiT, I wouldn't be in British F4," he admits. "They've helped me out massively and it's gone so well. It's kind of a way to pay them back with this championship year we've had in British F4.

"We've known as a family for many years now that we've been in motorsport that, without the financial backing, it's near enough impossible. To have that financial backing via ROKiT, I'm just ever so grateful. The sim competition they set up in 2022 has literally changed my life and it felt like I won the lottery."

Fairclough's exploits this year have earned him a place in the final four racers in the running for the coveted Autosport BRDC Award. He's up against stiff competition, including junior Arvid Lindblad who will race in F2 next year and the previous British F4 champion Louis Sharp, who went on to win GB3 this season - the category Fairclough will step up to in 2025.

But, if he wins, not only will he land a maiden F1 test, but he'll also get a £200,000 prize which would go a long way towards funding the next stages of his career.

Naturally, F1 is his end-game. "Oh my God, it would be a dream come true," he smiled. "Seriously, I dream about it, I think about it - racing is in my head 24/7. We're all as one in the family and we know the difficulties of getting there. But with the right attitude and the right mindset and the right hard work, I definitely think we could get there."