British F3: What went wrong
Its rich heritage wasn't enough: now it's effectively a tournament hoping to entice competitors from other series for extra races. Marcus Simmons talks to British F3's major players to find out how it came to this
With only half a dozen drivers signed up for the 2013 British Formula 3 International Series it was inevitable: series promoter the Stephane Ratel Organisation slashed the calendar from 10 to four race weekends, with only two of them in the UK.
How has it come to this? There are a number of tangled threads, and to start unravelling them we need to go way back, to 1979...
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Marcus Simmons is the Deputy Editor of Autosport magazine. As a child he was a regular on the chalk banks of Thruxton – hence his unhealthy obsession with 1970s Formula 2 and F3 – before he became an MSA timekeeper at the age of 17. At 19, his reporting debut for Motoring News arguably overshadowed Maradona’s ‘Hand of God’ goal as the sporting moment of June 1986, and he joined the staff in 1990 after graduating from his degree course in Plymouth. A parallel Formula First career – which was as incident-packed as his childhood exploits in show-jumping and hunter trials – finished when he wrote off his car and put himself in hospital in 1991.
Marcus moved to Autosport in the summer of 1996. Since then he has had two stints as a freelancer and a brief spell as editor of Motor Sport magazine, during which the revered green cover was revived, before he rejoined Autosport in 2008. He lives in Teddington with his wife (who, gratifyingly, grew up within earshot of Castle Combe), daughter, stepson, dog, cat and guitars, and additionally has an adult daughter and stepson.
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