How 50-car Formula 3 could work

Last January the press department for the Formula 3 European Championship sent out a release proudly declaring that 50 entry requests had been received for 2015.

No one really believed that 50 cars were going to turn up three months later for the opening round at Silverstone, but it did cause cautious estimates to rise from the high twenties to the low thirties, and it was 35 that materialised in the paddock under the traditionally eye-wateringly cold Northamptonshire skies - up from the record 30 that had appeared for the opening European F3 round at Monza in 2013.

Also at Silverstone that weekend was FIA Single Seater Commission president Stefano Domenicali, the first race-meeting wheelout for the ex-Ferrari team boss since he replaced Gerhard Berger at the helm.

While his remit has mostly been to establish a new FIA Formula 2 (which has gone a bit quiet lately) and further the expansion of the baby Formula 4 category (which is booming), he was already thinking of some tweaks to F3 for 2016 and beyond.

Among these were a cap on the number of cars that can be entered by one team, along with a restriction on the number of years anyone can stay on any rung of the FIA's single-seater ladder (except Formula 1, of course, although it wouldn't be a bad thing if that were implemented in some cases!) and a minimum age limit.

Further into the season, noises began to emerge that the FIA was looking to impose an upper limit on the total entry, in the style of GP2, GP3 and Formula Renault 3.5.

Of these suggestions, we're now at a point where team bosses were told at last month's Algarve round that a cap of four cars per team is likely to be introduced, although the prospect of the total entry being restricted has receded.

As far as age and experience are concerned, that one is still an open question.

I must say I'm glad to hear that the restriction on total entries is fading, but I have mixed feelings on any limitation on the number of cars any team can run.

The Stefano Domenicali-led FIA Single Seater Commission is weighing up options for 2016

In fact, I'm dubious about any attempt to impose artificial restrictions on F3, because the beauty of the category has always been that it's organic, with interest waxing and waning as passing fads come and go, but the next revival usually not too far away.

If the FIA imposed an upper grid limit of, say, 32, then it could find itself turning away 10 drivers who'd look instead to GP3 or FR3.5, and then when economic realities bite, end up with an F3 grid of 25 by the end of the season - and perhaps with drivers and, worse still, teams lost for good to other championships because there was no place for them at the start of the year.

Turning to the four-cars-per-team rule, it's never good to see giant teams juggernauting a championship while other deserving squads struggle to get one driver on board, so on the one hand I quite like the idea.

But on the other, Trevor Carlin (whose team runs six cars in Euro F3) raises a very valid point when he remarks that a driver wouldn't necessarily trot off happily to a less-glamorous team in F3 if they couldn't get into a top squad - they might just decide to go to another series with one of the leading teams there.

Talking of other series, the FIA is known to have been asking a few questions about getting British F3 back off the ground - presumably to keep all those surplus F3 cars racing in the event of any restrictions imposed on the European championship.

Few in the UK are giving it much chance at the moment, at least until the new-generation cars are introduced in 2018 and the current cars need somewhere to go and play. Even so, German F3 organisers keep popping up, most recently last week when they said they are 'ready for a relaunch of German F3 any time'.

Carlin's six-car line-up includes George Russell and Antonio Giovinazzi

But let's assume that, for the time being, European F3 remains as the only series for the category on this side of the world run to FIA rules.

If teams are restricted to four cars in European F3, that would trim the line-ups of Carlin as well as Mucke Motorsport and Motopark (five each this year), but there is more than enough interest to suggest that the series could have giant grids again next season, with many of the existing competitors staying on and another clutch of drivers graduating from Formula Renault or F4. Good news? Well, not completely.

It's great to have 35 cars in the paddock, but in these days of closer-than-ever competition and nervous race officials it creates chaotic racing with endless safety-car periods, not to mention the crammed tracks making a lottery of qualifying.

Of this season's 30 races, 24 have been interrupted by safety cars - and that is a pathetic statistic.

It's clear to me that grid sizes are too big, and I don't believe that races fought out by 30-plus cars are any better than those with a field in the low twenties anyway.

Back to Trevor Carlin: while chewing the fat at Zandvoort recently, we came up with a solution that I reckon would alleviate the safety-car/qualifying-lottery problems greatly, and would mean that a race weekend at most circuits could even cope with 50 cars if necessary.

Carlin harked back to the glory days of British F3 in the late 1980s, when he was team manager at Bowman Racing (which was running much more than four cars!), and when entries were such that a qualification race was held at some circuits for the bottom half of the field, with the top half-dozen joining the back of the grid for the championship race.

Let's modify that slightly to deal with the current era, and we'll invoke this system if the championship entry exceeds, say, 26 cars.

The safety car has been kept (too) busy throughout the 2015 season

Instead of two separate qualifying sessions of 20 minutes each, we could have one 40-minute period split into two 20-minute segments. Say you've got 36 entries, you could put them in alternate championship order, with 1-3-5, etc, in the first 20-minute segment, and 2-4-6, etc, in the second.

The slowest half of the field (18 cars, so nine from each group) would then go into a qualification race - maybe we could call this a Challenger Race to borrow some NASCAR Chase terminology - with the fastest half qualifying automatically for the two championship races, their quickest times deciding the grid for the first, and their second quickest for the second.

From the 'Challenger Race', the first, third, fifth (etc) finishers could go onto the back of the grid for one of the championship races, with second, fourth, sixth (etc) graduating into the other.

That way, everyone gets two races per weekend, and no one realistically has any less racing time than they have had in 2015.

Why? Because most rounds this year have had one race that has been so affected by safety cars that they've been pretty much a waste of time anyway, and with just 27 cars on track in each race the risk of incidents would be considerably lower - and races could evolve in a natural way.

The track would also be less crowded in qualifying, making for happier drivers and a more-realistic reflection of their pace.

Let's implement that this year, and we find lower-half 'Challenger Race' poles for such drivers as Pietro Fittipaldi, Dorian Boccolacci, Michele Beretta, Raoul Hyman and Fabian Schiller - great opportunities not only for them to have a chance of a win and good TV exposure, but also to race cleanly at or towards the front without tripping over 15 other cars in the midfield, thereby giving more opportunity to hone racecraft rather than just scrambling around trying to avoid accidents.

OK, if we had an entry of 50 cars, we'd be getting a 25-car 'Challenger Race' and then 38 and 37 cars in the two championship races, so we'd probably be back to safety-car misery. But we're not going to get 50 cars, are we?

Well, not until the championship puts out a press release stating that it's had 65 entry requests.