Tech 1 boss defends standard of series

Tech 1 ran race winners Julian Jousse to second in the standings, and rookie Charles Pic to sixth, this season.

But he says the majority of the leading F3 and Formula Renault drivers are unattainable for next year because driver development programmes don't rate the level of competition in the World Series.

"Nearly all of the good drivers from the F3 Euro Series and Renault Eurocup have been snapped up for 2009 as they are on young driver programmes or with manufacturers," said Abadie.

"I would love to have an RDD (Renault Driver Development) or TDP (Toyota Development Programme) driver in one of my cars. It would make things easier, but at the moment it doesn't look like I can attract Red Bull for next year and when I spoke with TDP there wasn't much interest.

"They said 'ok, you're winning, but the level is crap'. They're wrong, I think that if you look around you'll see P1 Motorsport, a good team, Epsilon-Euskadi and Ultimate-Signature, both good teams. For prestige, it's very important that Tech 1 maintain our position at the top."