How Formula 3 is keeping the wolves at bay

This weekend's Masters of Formula 3 at Zandvoort will carry more significance than usual for the category's famed mid-season showpiece.

Not only will the Dutch dunes determine who will be the 21st Master, joining a roll call that includes the likes of David Coulthard, Lewis Hamilton and Paul di Resta, but this weekend's Zandvoort event will also likely crown the inaugural FIA F3 International Trophy winner.

Spaniard Roberto Merhi has dominated the first season of this new championship, created by the FIA to protect F3 against the proliferation of alternative junior single-seater series, chiefly GP3. The Mercedes-backed Prema Powerteam driver has won four of the five races held so far and needs just one more point from this weekend's event to seal the deal.

With the series set to conclude at November's Macau F3 GP (the original Korea Super Prix finale has been removed from the calendar since the schedule was announced), crowning the champion now will steal a little thunder away from that end-of-season extravaganza.

Not that Macau GP and FIA Trophy organiser Barry Bland will be too bothered of course, but what will bother Bland is the fact that support among drivers for the first season of this new venture has been modest at best. Only nine have taken part in the inaugural championship and just eight of those have contested every race.

"It can be improved," says Bland bluntly. "I think it was announced fairly late, but we've got to make it more attractive. The thing it needs first of all is a really significant prize for the winner, and apart from cash, there's only one thing they all want..."

Bland is of course talking about an F1 test, such as that offered to the winner of the FIA Formula 2 Championship. To do this he needs to find a sympathetic team willing to take a risk on a young driver, or discover a significant pot of gold to pay for it.

Merhi is number one in the Euro Series and the International Trophy © LAT

Nevertheless, if Bland can build momentum around his series, it has the potential to bring the major F3 championships together and hopefully keep the snarling wolves of GP3 and co from the door.

Prema team manager Rene Rosin agrees: "The best solution would be to join them [British and Euro Series] as one championship, maybe under the FIA, but I don't know if the British or the Europeans want to do that."

As the single-seater landscape continues to shift, F3 may end up facing a question of need rather than want, and the Trophy could be a great way of bolstering the category while showcasing its best traits: open competition, expert engineering and a driving experience that is currently more relevant to F1 than anything outside GP2 and Formula Renault 3.5.

The most recent round of British F3 at Spa gave a glimpse of this potential. The late announcement of the Trophy prohibited all but two of this year's British series grid finding a budget to take part but, with Spa doubling up as round three of the FIA championship, the entire UK field ended up racing against the best of the Euro Series. With a 28-car pack, made up of some of the best teams and junior drivers around, suddenly F3 looked more than a match for GP3.

"To see a full grid of cars is fantastic and I think the more races we can do in Europe the better," says Fortec Motorsport boss Richard Dutton. "The world is getting smaller and Europe is getting smaller, so maybe we can combine the championships."

Other than drivers being able to secure a budget, the biggest issue facing this prospect is tyres. British F3 runs on Cooper Avons, while the Euro Series employs Kumho rubber. The Coopers tend to be softer and produce more front grip than the Kumhos, which are stiffer and generally considered harder to drive and find a set-up for.

Top British squad Carlin spent two seasons toiling in the Euro Series for just one (reversed-grid) race victory. Difficulties in getting a handle on the Kumho, combined with limited running, put many of the UK teams off taking part in events that require them to race on the Asian manufacturer's rubber.

By contrast, Euro Series teams and drivers tend to get to grips with the British rubber more quickly, and thus tend to fare better when guesting at British rounds. Whether this suggests the European teams and drivers are more skilled than their British counterparts, or that the Cooper tyres are simply easier to work with than the Kumhos, is a moot point. The answer is surely to mandate a neutral tyre, such as the Yokohamas employed at Macau and Pau, for the entire FIA championship and thus create a level playing field for everyone...

Trophy grids have been modest at best this year © sutton-images.com

Opinion is divided. Runaway British F3 points leader Felipe Nasr (not taking part in the Trophy) agrees with this suggestion, while Trophy table topper Merhi thinks running on different tyres is the right way to find out who the best driver is. Bland concurs with Merhi, as far as the challenge for drivers and engineers goes, and says individual tyre contracts drawn up by championships and event promoters for their own races (remember the Trophy piggybacks on existing meetings) makes the single-tyre idea unworkable.

Whatever, the Trophy needs greater support from British F3 in order to grow substantially, and mandating a single neutral tyre would make a big difference if the contractual impasses can be overcome. Bland is still hopeful the F3 Euro Series can harness greater support from teams in the domestic German championship and thus avoid the question of unification altogether.

None of this will solve the bigger problem of chief rival GP3's place on the F1 support bill, which has turned many drivers' - and their sponsors' - heads away from F3. Nevertheless, this issue is out of Formula 3's hands. Much better to focus on what you can control, and F3 can still be bigger and better if it is willing to try.

Veteran F3 engineer Mick Kouros concurred it would be "ideal" to have a united Formula 3: Ten races, all FIA events on the best circuits in Europe, on one tyre. Such a championship is more likely to keep big engine manufacturers like Volkswagen and Mercedes interested (assuming debates about future engine regulations can be resolved of course), and attract the best teams and drivers into competing. Then the category might once again be seen as the best junior-driver training ground in the world, rather than a fading star.