Does British F3 have a future?

The British Formula 3 International Series is set to kick off its truncated 2013 calendar at Silverstone on May 25/26, and indications are that the decision by promoter SRO and teams group FOTA to change the format could bear fruit.

AUTOSPORT spoke to all the teams competing in the Formula 3 European Championship, and there appears to be interest in competing in British F3 even from some of those that have traditionally had little to do with the UK series.

Between them, those outfits possess all 33 of the current-generation FIA-rules F3 cars in Europe, and as such are the only ones who can compete for the main title. But there is also substantial interest in the National Class (see below), which could return to numbers not seen for a decade.

SRO initially published an entry deadline of May 1, but AUTOSPORT has learned that this was erroneous and that teams have until one week before the first race weekend to lodge their intention to compete.

The big news is that reigning British F3 champion Jack Harvey is hoping to appear at one or two rounds during the long gaps on the GP3 Series calendar. This could mean he races in the opener at Silverstone, and in the finale
at the Nurburgring.

"I maintain a good relationship with Carlin [which ran Harvey in F3 in 2011 and '12]," he says. "They've done a brilliant job over the winter and their car looks really hooked up. I'd like to give it a go.

Jack Harvey hopes to appear this year © XPB

"I want to be in a position to push hard to win the GP3 title, and not lose my race sharpness. And it would enable me to race at Macau - there's massive unfinished business there."

That's the good news, but how is British F3 looking longer term?

The teams, which largely are given autonomy by SRO in the way the championship is run, met at the Silverstone European F3 round two weeks ago. While nothing concrete came from the discussions, it appears as though the current four-round format could be retained for 2014.

There was talk that British F3 could rebuild its calendar, with mainly UK-based events and using a spec engine, perhaps supplied by Mugen Honda tuner Neil Brown Engineering, but this hope appears to have faded.

The personal view of FOTA's Peter Briggs, who stressed that this is not necessarily the teams' official line, is: "Can you run a series predominantly in Britain with budgets of £350,000 [significantly below the price in recent years]? I think not. And the reason for that is that the lower formulas in Britain are so poor that drivers aren't coming here in the first place anymore.

"Therefore, what do we do? You probably end up with what we're doing now: a four-round mini-series with the new engines [mandatory in European F3 from 2014], so teams doing Europe can join in."

WHAT EURO F3 TEAMS SAY

Prema Powerteam

Rene Rosin (team manager): "At the moment our only interest is the Spa round. It's such an important circuit, and we will do it with all four of our regular drivers [Raffaele Marciello, Alex Lynn, Lucas Auer and Eddie Cheever]. We're looking forward to that, but putting the programme together for other races is difficult."

Mucke Motorsport

Peter Fluckiger (technical director): "We have to speak to the drivers. We'd love to, but it's a budget question. Spa is certainly a possibility, and if they want to do the races we are prepared - also to run other drivers if some of our drivers can't do it. I would like to see British F3 survive."

Carlin

Carlin intends to run four cars © LAT

Trevor Carlin (racing director): "We fully intend to have at least four cars out. I'm waiting for full confirmation but I'm pretty sure my four drivers [Harry Tincknell, Jordan King, Jann Mardenborough and Nicholas Latifi] are well up for it. I've got to decide on whether to put a hotshoe in our fifth car, but I'll keep it at five, maximum, to make sure Gaz [Bonnor, team manager] doesn't have a heart attack!"

T-Sport

Russell Eacott (team principal): "The reason we haven't looked at it is our engines [ThreeBond Nissan] are rebuilt in Japan. We're looking at which race to add, possibly two, but for drivers to find a budget and then another lump on top is difficult."

Fortec Motorsport

Richard Dutton (team principal): "We hopefully will have some cars but don't know how many yet."

EuroInternational

Antonio Ferrari (team principal): "No. We are new to European F3 and we are still catching up with our modifications to the cars. Also I have contracts to run Formula Middle East, plus a new championship in India and we have our German F3 team. It's not that we don't like British F3, it's just that physically it's not possible."

Van Amersfoort Racing

Frits van Amersfoort (team principal): "I hope so. Mans Grenhagen has asked about it, I've got some pieces of paper from the organisers and we'll see what we can do. We'd like to do it, but of course it all depends on the usual finance."

Ma-Con

Otto Schwadtke (team principal): "It is very interesting because it's more track time. We have only six private test days allowed in European F3, so if we do British we can get more experience. We are working on the idea with our drivers [Sven Muller and Andre Rudersdorf] but it's a question of budget. Another option could be to prepare drivers for next year or Macau. I hope we can do it."

Double R Racing

Hieatt wants to increase his drivers' mileage in F3 machinery © LAT

Anthony 'Boyo' Hieatt (team principal): "We're trying to get at least two of our drivers out, hopefully all three [Antonio Giovinazzi, Sean Gelael and Tatiana Calderon] because they're all relatively inexperienced. It will be good for them to catch up on the mileage."

URD Rennsport

Harald Ungar (team manager): "No, I don't think so."

Romeo Ferraris

Dario Calzavara (team principal): "It's just too difficult, and too far."

Jo Zeller Racing

Sandro Zeller (driver/team manager): "No, I don't think so."

THE NATIONAL CLASS

European F3 Open squad Team West-Tec has committed a seven-car National Class team to the opening British F3 round at Silverstone. It will run four current-spec Dallara F312 chassis for UAE-based Briton Ed Jones, Venezuelan Roberto la Rocca, New Zealander Chris Vlok and China's Hu An Zhu, the younger brother of ex-Formula 2 racer David Zhu.

It will also run older F308s for Sean Walkinshaw (son of the late team boss Tom), South African Liam Venter and, possibly, Briton Cameron Twynham.

Although Jones, Walkinshaw and Venter are only confirmed for the first two rounds - at Silverstone and Spa - team boss John Miller hopes they will contest all four.

Miller confirmed that early testing on the Cooper tyres used in British F3 suggests the cars, all powered by the EF3 Open spec-Toyota engine, should be competitive.

Meanwhile, stalwart British F3 team CF Racing has two cars fitted with the traditional National Class spec-Mugen powerplant. Team boss Hywel Lloyd hopes to confirm China's Zheng Sun, whose racing to date has been in Asia but who has been testing recently with CF.

West-Tec will run seven cars © LAT

AUTOSPORT understands there could also be some leading contenders from the MSV F3 Cup.

Ex-GP3 racer Alice Powell, who leads the MSV standings after a double win at the opening round, said: "We're thinking about it. We've just got to look at the cost."

Powell is racing a Dallara F307 run by former stalwart National Class team Mark Bailey Racing.

"It would be tough to compete with the newer cars in the National Class," she added. "I believe SRO are debating whether to put in an extra class for the MSV cars. That would make it easier for us."

Former FF1600 racer Kyle Tilley also confirmed his participation some time ago with an ex-European F3 Open Dallara F306.

AUTOSPORT says

Marcus Simmons (@marcussimmons54)

Peter Briggs, who represents the British F3 teams body FOTA, has expressed an interesting opinion.

His personal view is that the state of British single-seater racing today is so poor that drivers are no longer coming to the UK to race, and that therefore there is no obvious crop of drivers to graduate to British F3 if it were to expand its calendar once more into something recognisable as a full series.

I'd go further, and add that many UK drivers are no longer even staying in this country to begin their single-seater careers. Just look at last year's McLaren AUTOSPORT BRDC Award: five of the six finalists raced abroad during 2012.

As things stand, it looks as though Alex Lynn and Harry Tincknell will be the last Brits to graduate through the traditional UK single-seater system before heading to the higher strata of the sport.

I don't want to knock Protyre Formula Renault (nee Formula Renault BARC), British Formula Ford or the new BRDC Formula 4. I've got a lot of friends running cars in those series, and they're doing a great job.

But I wonder whether the only hope for the future - and this is relevant across Europe - is the plan of FIA Single-Seater Commission president Gerhard Berger for a carbon-monocoque F4.

The big plus for this is that it would be open-chassis. I've never bought into the idea that one-make racing makes things cheaper. (I realise FFord is open-chassis, but let's face it, the new EcoBoost era is not going to catch on outside the UK).

Will British F3 survive? © LAT

It's competition between constructors that brings prices down for the real aces: do you think Dave Coyne, John Pratt, Gerrit van Kouwen etc were paying full budgets to Van Diemen/Swift, Reynard and Lola respectively in those golden Formula Ford days of the 1980s?

No, but they were winning races and indirectly selling cars for their constructors.

And look at the cases of Ayrton Senna, Jan Magnussen, Tommy Byrne, Eddie Irvine. All relied on faith, ingenuity and fabrication skills of those around them in FF1600 and/or FF2000. Could they have progressed in an era of having to buy spec-chassis hardware at a fixed price? Doubtful...

I'm not sure I agree with Berger's view, expressed in my column on this website last week, that FIA F4 could act as a 'new' F3 for some countries. And anyway, the man himself says he wants a handful of national F3 championships to acts as feeders to the FIA series.

Anyone graduating from national FIA F4 - with budgets of, say, £100-150k - would find themselves too far into the deep end in FIA European F3, both on budget and levels of competition.

So could the answer be a progression from FIA F4, via national F3 (learning the cars and systems for roughly the same budget as a current Formula Renault season) and into European F3?

This is a pivotal time for all of European junior racing as we enter a two or three-year interim period. This will determine whether British F3, and others, survive.