CANCER survivor Dean Stoneman could join Lewis Hamilton in being crowned a world champion on the final weekend of the motor-racing season.

Hamilton’s engrossing battle with Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg has captured the imagination of Formula One fans across the globe.

Meanwhile, Dean is one of only two drivers who can win the GP3 Series, the final rounds of which will be on the F1 undercard when the season reaches its climax at the Yas Marina circuit in Abu Dhabi.

To do so he will have to become the first GP3 driver to gain the maximum 48 points in a weekend – by qualifying in pole today and completing the fastest lap times in winning both races – and hope that championship leader Alex Lynn finishes outside the top ten.

But Dean is no stranger to beating the odds – this is his first season of single-seater racing since beating cancer.

What makes his achievement all the more remarkable is the fact he is still suffering the debilitating after-effects of chemotherapy.

“I may never fully recover,” admits the 24-year-old, who had ambitions to enter F1 after winning the 2010 F2 Championship, but is lucky to be alive after being diagnosed with a rare form of testicular cancer in January 2011.

“I have a chesty cough all the time, which is just one side-effect,” he says, as he relaxes at home in sleepy Bishop’s Waltham ahead of another high-octane weekend.

“I have pins and needles in my fingers, the training’s a lot harder now I’ve got scar tissue on the lungs and I still haven’t got a complete feel of the pedals, so I have to adapt the way I drive.

“I do sometimes wonder where I’d be if I never had the illness.

“But that’s gone. I have to deal with the way things are.”

The portents are not too shabby ahead of Dean’s return to the Yas Marina circuit.

“I know it inside out, like the back of my hand,” he says.

Dean achieved a lap record there while winning in an SR8 Radical at last year’s Radical Middle East Cup.

And he amassed 43 points – the biggest total by any GP3 driver this season – by finishing first and second in his impressive first drives of the season for Koiranen GP in Sochi last month.

He also finished second for Koiranen in Abu Dhabi after joining the Spanish team for the last two races of last season.

Dean will need to go one better and hope for the best in Abu Dhabi, but do not rule out a twist – his career is already worthy of a film script.

He began the 2014 season with Marussia Manor, winning on the opening weekend in Barcelona, at Spa in Belgium and in Monza, Italy.

But he benefited from a change of team when Marussia pulled out of the penultimate weekend of the series in Sochi for ‘commercial reasons’ six weeks ago.

For the first time this season, Dean was the fastest in qualifying, claiming pole by nearly half a second.

After becoming the first winner on Sochi’s brand-new circuit, he climbed from eighth – where he started due to the reversing of the grid – to finish second in a thriller the next day.

“The car is unreal,” he says. “You wouldn’t believe the difference. I could put it where I wanted to, stop it where I wanted, do whatever I wanted.

“If I brake too hard it costs me time but I can still get through the corner without losing my position.

“l have the confidence to push it beyond the boundary.”

Dean was a fraction of a second away from emulating Antonio Felix Da Costa and becoming only the second driver to win two races in a GP3 weekend.

To become the fifth GP3 champion (Esteban Gutiérrez, Valtteri Bottas and Daniil Kvyat have graduated to F1) he needs to go one better and hope the championship leader finishes outside the top ten and top eight in the respective races.

But Lynn, a 21-year-old from Essex, has not finished outside the points this season. “I’m the only one who can catch Alex, but he’ll have to have the worst weekend ever and I have to have my best, so the chances are very slim,” admits Dean.

“But there’s no pressure on me – when I was ill I thought I’d never drive again. The worst I can do is finish fourth overall and I was eighth before Sochi. But I’m going there to win.”

Unlike Hamilton and Rosberg, Stoneman gets on well with his rival.

“Alex is a very good friend. My sister’s boyfriend, Sam Blogg, is his number one mechanic and he was mine for nine years – he first worked for us when I was go-karting!

“It’s enjoyable when you can talk to the other drivers and plenty of texts have been exchanged.

“He’s got lots to lose and I’ve got lots to gain.”

Dean will have the support of several friends in Abu Dhabi, but one will be remembered in absentia.

His success this season is dedicated to Dean Paling, with whom he won the 2012 P1 UK powerboat title (Stoneman also has HGV and helicopter licences).

‘Lil’ Dean’ was a passenger in another friend’s car when he tragically died on the B2177, near Fareham, last December.

“It’s nearly a year ago, 11.08pm on December 2nd,” sighs Stoneman. “Dean worked for us, he had his own store room and was part of the family with his own key and his slippers by the front door.

“I think about him every day. When I’m on my boat I always wish he was there as the front rope man because no-one wants to do the front rope! Silly things like that.

“He had cystic fibrosis but still enjoyed life. We called him ‘racing snake’.”

Dean’s helmet has been decorated with a cartoon snake in memory of ‘Lil’ Dean’.

His thoughts are also with Formula One driver Jules Bianchi.

Despite now driving for Koiranen GP, Dean continues to wear his Marussia suit in tribute to the Frenchman, who has made encouraging progress this week but remains in a critical condition after suffering brain injuries when he crashed at the end of last month’s Japanese Grand Prix.

“I’m just praying he pulls through,” says Dean.

Such injuries highlight the perils of motor racing, but Dean has ambitions to progress.

“As you move up the ladder you become better at what you do so the ideal scenario next season is the World Series by Renault or the GP2 Series, but that’s up in the air,” explains Dean.

Still without a major sponsor, his motor-racing career is funded by dad Colin – a powerboating-world-champion-turned-property-developer who also owns Three Oaks Boarding Kennels on Botley Road.

“GP3 costs us 600 Euros but GP2 is 1.4m and the World Series is 1m and that’s out of our price range,” says Dean.

“Dad and I are very close, I’m very grateful to him for giving me the opportunity to go this far and the chance to come back after cancer.

“But we need to be realistic about what we can afford. We can’t do it on our own so we’re trying to find sponsors.

“We’ll see how this weekend goes.

“Hopefully it’ll open a few doors and end with someone knocking on my door rather than me knocking on theirs.”