Will an FIA rule change lead to a popular F1 talent school’s revival?

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An adjustment to Appendix K of the FIA’s International Sporting Code does not, on the face of it, sound like much to get excited about. But for fans of historic racing, the decision announced following last month’s World Motor Sport Council meeting to issue Historic Technical Passports (HTPs) to machinery built between 1991 and 2000 from next year could have major ramifications.

“It would be correct for somebody who owns a 1992 car to question, ‘Has my car fallen into the heritage or not? Is it part of the historic motorsport?’” says FIA historic championships and committee manager Mathias Doutreleau.

Among the tantalising possibilities that may result from the first significant change to Appendix K since 2014, the result of an FIA technical working group codenamed Project 2025, is the prospect of a return for Formula 3000 cars. In their pomp before going single-make for 1996, these provided performance to rival tail-end Formula 1 machinery.

When reflecting on his first F1 test for Lotus at Silverstone in 1994, Max Papis attests that the “mesmerising” level F3000 had reached made motor racing’s pinnacle slightly less impressive than he had imagined. The Italian, who went on to race for Footwork in 1995, recalls: “When I drove out of the pit the first time and I floored it, I was expecting to have that same feeling that I had when I drove the F3000 [for the first time], that it pushed me in the back of the seat and I was hanging on. It was not like that.”

Papis says the feeling of driving an F3000, the category that in 1985 replaced European Formula 2 as the principal training ground for F1 drivers, “was like sitting on a rocket”, and the reverence in which the cars are held today is widely shared. For historic preparation specialist Nick Edgington, their self-evident appeal is magnified by the mystique that surrounds them given “there’s been no home for F3000 cars at all”.

“They’re just fantastic cars; they sound fantastic and proportionally they look right, as you’d want a racing car to be,” enthuses Edgington, who has period F3000 experience as a mechanic on Yvan Muller’s Omegaland Reynard that won the 1992 British F2 title. “Whenever we’ve been out with an F3000 car at Donington on a general test day, people just don’t see them anymore, and they just don’t really know what they are”.

There is currently nowhere for F3000 cars to race, although Sowter (in car) and Edgington hope that will soon change

Edgington has since 2017 worked with Colin Sowter, who describes himself as “the chairman, the founder and the exclusive member of the club of one” when it comes to F3000 zeal. To the owner of six F3000 cars, among them the title-winning ex-Roberto Moreno and Jean Alesi Reynards from 1988 and 1989 among his impressive collection, the Appendix K tweak offers hope that his cars will race again.

“If there was somewhere to race them, I would absolutely love to,” remarks Sowter, whose ex-Alesi 89D is due to be demonstrated by the Frenchman at next year’s Historic French Grand Prix. “It’s not for not wanting to race the cars, it’s been that there hasn’t been anywhere to race them.”

Doutreleau says the governing body plans to have a presence during Retromobile Paris next February to assist owners of newly eligible historic cars in applying for HTPs and answer any questions. But expanding the provision of HTPs is only part of the story for F3000. There has in theory been nothing stopping cars built between 1985 and 1990 from racing, after all.

Limited availability and the high costs of sourcing engines is one of the major stumbling blocks to getting the cars running again

The problem is essentially twofold; in addition to there being nowhere for them to race, which Edgington attributes to cut-off dates and UK noise restrictions, steep costs can be offputting. As Sowter explains, “while the cost of entry in terms of your initial purchase of F3000 is less, the cost of running and maintaining one is the same as a Formula 1 car”. The investment involved may easily dissuade potential F3000 owners and push them towards owning an F1 car instead.

Although F3000 was devised as a means of finding new homes for Cosworth DFV engines that had become redundant in F1, with 9000rpm rev-limiters fitted as a cost-saving measure, limited availability and the high costs of sourcing engines is one of the major stumbling blocks to getting the cars running again.

As Edgington explains, while “there’s quite a lot of rolling chassis around” – several went to Australia for Formula Holden or were used for hillclimbs – “it’s quite unusual to find them with engines, especially with the DFV.” The same applies for cars that used Mugen or Judd propulsion, including Sowter’s recently acquired ex-Alessandro Zanardi Il Barone Rampante Reynard 91D that was powered in period by Mugen.

“There’s not a whole load of those around, they’re quite a rare beast as well,” Edgington adds. “To find one and then get it rebuilt takes time. That tends to be the problem, and the biggest cost, getting engines sorted out.”

Finding engine parts and then funding the cost of restoring them is not easy

The engine itself isn’t the only problem, points out Sowter. The injection and electronic systems used to manage them have to be sourced too, since many DFVs were converted back to their original mechanical spec for historic F1 racing. It all means “you’ve got to be very enthusiastic about them to want to spend the amount of money it takes”, shrugs Sowter.

If that all sounds like a lot of doom and gloom, Edgington doesn’t share it. Those with the means who would be willing to put their money on the table will not be disappointed, he believes. Your average gentleman historics racer “isn’t going to get any quicker in a Formula 1 car”, he says.

Operationally too, F3000 cars are less onerous than F1 machinery since, for all their impressive performance, they remained off-the-shelf racing cars. Although it wouldn’t be feasible for an owner to take one to the track on a trailer and do everything themselves, Edgington allows that “you could do it with a small team”.

That tallies with Mike Earle’s recollections of 1991, after returning to the category his Onyx team had won with Stefano Modena in 1987 following its subsequent brief stint in the grand prix paddock. “Coming back from F1 [with Ralts entered under the 3001 International banner], you realised how low-tech the F3000 cars were, they were still a lot less ambitious,” he says.

Historic bouts would likely be shorter than period contests that typically exceeded an hour, since “your average amateur driver would struggle” with their physicality, Edgington notes. With shorter running times, engine mileage would stretch further too.

Sowter hopes that the HTP will “raise awareness” of the possibilities of racing F3000 cars, with “a much bigger pool of cars to pull on” in Europe, but knows this is just the first step. “It just needs somebody to bite the bullet and start allowing them in,” he says. Edgington agrees: “It’s going to take a bit of time.”

Both suggest that a feasible workaround would be if an organiser agreed to run a combined grid with historic F1, F5000 or indeed ground-effect F2 machines. “If they get enough cars out on the back of the Formula 1 race, they could then look at having a standalone grid,” reasons Sowter.

Masters Historic Racing will include a demo event for ’90s F1 cars at Brands Hatch on 31 May-1 June, but plans to mix grids with F3000 cars aren’t on the cards, a spokesperson told Motorsport.com.

Doutreleau says the FIA will help historic car owners with applying for HTPs through a workshop held in February

Photo by: FIA

Doutreleau expresses optimism that a revival “will happen” in some form, though is at pains to stress “this is outside of our scope, because we’re not organisers”.

“Formula 3000 definitely has its spot,” he argues. “We hope that by putting together this regulation, it will spark the interest of a promoter or an organiser to say, ‘Well, no one is celebrating Formula 3000, I’ll be the first one.’”

Apathy around promotion dogged F3000 in period. It was remarked by Motorsport.com that racing at Albacete in 1992 was merely “another way of keeping F3000 out of the limelight”. It would truly be a pity if, with the 40th anniversary of the category set to be celebrated next year, they remained hidden from view. Now the waiting game begins.

A brief history of F3000 in Britain

Damon Hill, pictured in a Cobra Motorsport Reynard at Brands Hatch in 1989, is among the leading alumni from the British F3000 championship

Photo by: Motorsport Images

Should a Formula 3000 revival take root, it would be fitting if it did so in Britain, for the category always had a close link to these shores. Although F3000 racers were built elsewhere too, Ralt, March, Lola and Reynard hoovered up all 206 races of the main FIA championship between them, while tyres originating from Avon’s Melksham workshop were on every winner from 1986 to F3000’s climax in 2004.

The very first F3000 race was held at Silverstone in 1985, with Mike Thackwell’s works Ralt taking victory in the International Trophy. Britain would host a round of the championship every year until its 2004 demise, and in 1987 held four of the 11 races between Silverstone, Donington, Brands Hatch and the Birmingham Superprix.

Such was the verve for F3000 that a spin-off national series was launched by the BRSCC in 1989, but it endured mixed fortunes over the next decade. From an initial motley collection of nine cars for the inaugural race at Brands, won by Andrew Gilbert-Scott in an Eddie Jordan Racing Reynard from Roland Ratzenberger’s Spirit-run machine, numbers steadily grew and had reached 20 cars by the end of 1990.

Rebranding as British F2 couldn’t disguise the fact that grids were back in single figures and the depth had disappeared, with the costs of racing in a national series deemed unattractive

A call to ban current machinery at the end of that season, claimed by Pedro Chaves in a Mansell Madgwick Reynard 90D, was arguably the right one and established the British series as a home for year-old machinery that attracted promising international talent. Future British Touring Car champions Alain Menu and Rickard Rydell were both race winners in 1990, while Swedish tin-top ace-to-be Fredrik Ekblom strung together a hat-trick in the closing stages of 1991.

Phil Andrews raced in the championship on and off between 1990 and 1994, and stresses “there was a lot of quality in depth” in 1991. That year Paul Warwick was crowned posthumously after the likes of Andrews, Richard Dean, Dave Coyne and Julian Westwood took points away from Ekblom. Another perk was “decent prize money, which was becoming unusual by then”, says Andrews, who returned to the FIA series for 1992, when Yvan Muller won the British title.

But Andrews is the first to admit that by 1993, it felt like a very different championship. Rebranding as British F2 couldn’t disguise the fact that grids were back in single figures and the depth had disappeared, with the costs of racing in a national series deemed unattractive. It staggered along through 1994, when unreliability cost Andrews the title, before prudently taking a one-year hiatus.

One last hurrah in 1996 attracted International F3000 dominator Super Nova and gave hope. But a final race with three cars in 1997, won by Dino Morelli, was the embarrassing last straw.