Photo: Jakob Ebrey Photography

The planned Formula Regional Australia championship will now be known as AU3 after altering plans for its inaugural season.

AU3 emerges from the pre-existing Australian Formula Open (AFO), which features multiple classes of single-seater machinery.

Motorsport Australia approved the AFO promoter’s seperation of the FRegional class into a new championship for 2025 last November, a month ago it was yet to be determined whether it would run with FIA certification as it opted for the Tatuus T-318 chassis used by many FRegional championships but with no spec engine provider.

There were also plans for an invitational class for previous-generation Toyota Racing Series cars that sit roughly at the FRegional level and have been raced in AFO.

In addition to a name change, the promoter has announced a partnership with GB3 team Hillspeed. The AU3 champion will win a test programme with the team, and “Hillspeed is also providing a subsidised test package for the series runner-up”. This year the primarily Britain-based GB3 championship introduces a new FRegional-level car.

Australian Formula 4 is also undergoing a rebrand to AU4, as it combines first and second-generation chassis on its grid. The Mygale M14-F4 was used from 2015 to 2019, then when it was relaunched last year it switched to the second-generation Tatuus T-421 chassis. AFO adopted the Mygales for its AF04 class, which will now be moved across to AU4.

Taking over promotion of AU4 is the AGI Sport team, while fellow single-seater outfit Tim Macrow Racing will run AU3, and a minimum age of 14 has been set in AU4’s class for older cars. The class champion will receive free entry into the 2026 season’s top class, as well as a test, and the overall champion this year will also get a test prize.

Sydney Motorsport Park hosts the season opener on March 22-23, then there are rounds at The Bend Motorsport Park (May 23-25 and July 12/13), Phillip Island (August 16/17) and once again at Sydney (September 26-28).

The post FRegional Australia and Australian F4 rebranded as AU3 and AU4 appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: TGR NZ

Australia will get its own Formula Regional championship this year, with a six-round schedule that includes a round in New Zealand.

Rather than being an all-new creation, the championship emerges from the pre-existing Australian Formula Open (AFO) which features multiple classes of single-seater machinery.

Motorsport Australia approved the AFO promoter’s seperation of the FRegional class into a new championship for 2025 last November, then work has been taking place since on finalising further details on the sporting and technical regulations as well as where FRegional Australia will race. FIA certification of the championship is yet to be determined.

For example there will be multiple engine suppliers that drivers can choose from (one of which will be Alfa Romeo) for powering their Tatuus T-318 chassis, and there also plans for there to be an invitational class for previous-generation Toyota Racing Series cars that sit roughly at the FRegional level and have been raced in AFO.

Pre-season testing will take place at Winton Motor Raceway in April, then the opening round will take place at Phillip Island on May 16-18.

One Raceway, previously known as Wakefield Park, hosts round two on June 27-29 and the field visits Sandown a month later for round three.

The next rounds are at Winton (August 22-24) and The Bend Motorsport Park (September 19-21), then the trip to New Zealand occurs on the final weekend of October. It is yet to be announced which circuit that will be at, although the circuit map for Hampton Downs has featured in the calendar release.

• Read more: The story behind Australian racing’s slicks-and-wings survival route [March 2023]

AFO creator and promoter Tim Macrow said: “When the Australian Formula 3 championship ended in 2022, there was nowhere for them to race so we created AFO as a home for any driver with an open-wheeler to compete because we believe in formula racing.”

“But if we’re to support young drivers in getting the best start to a career overseas, with the best safety standards and technical support, moving to a platform like FRegional is what drivers and their parents, plus our partners are asking for.”

His own team, Tim Macrow Racing, already has FRegional chassis ready to race in the new championship.

The post Formula Regional Australia to launch this year as AFO spin-off appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: Meritus GP

There was plenty of F4 racing in 2024, with career-launching campaigns accompanied by winter warm-ups

Middle East

The go-to winter series for several years now has been Formula 4 United Arab Emirates, which races at Yas Marina Circuit and Dubai Autodrome. Prema’s Mumbai Falcons-branded cars were the ones to beat, and Italian F4 dominator Freddie Slater needed just two wins and four other podiums from 15 races to pip team-mate Kean Nakamura-Berta to the title.

Nakamura won the season opener in Abu Dhabi, which Yas Heat Academy’s Keanu Al Azhari started from pole, and Formula 3-bound Nikita Bedrin won for PHM Racing in the reversed-grid race. Slater won race three, and passed team-mate Alex Powell to make it two in a row in the opening race of round two. Al Azhari won the next two races, but Slater was on the podium in both to hold the points lead.

Bedrin turned pole into victory twice at Dubai, with Powell getting his sole win in the reversed-grid contest, and a double podium put Al Azhari on Slater’s tail in the title fight. A return to Abu Dhabi spiced up the season narrative in round four.

Prema’s Doriane Pin won race one from pole after on-the-road victor Nakamura was penalised for jumping the start, and Al Azhari and Slater collided on lap one. Although he was demoted to fifth, Nakamura still boosted his title chances.

Hitech GP’s Gabriel Stilp came through from sixth on the grid to dominate a wet race two, and all three title contenders failed to score. The weather was unpredictable for race three, and led to a mix of strategies. Al Azhari took the points lead by finishing third, as Prema’s Rashid Al Dhaheri won and neither Slater or Nakamura finished.

Nakamura took a double pole in the final round at Dubai, and after winning a dusty race one ahead of Al Dhaheri there was now a five-way title fight as his two main rivals could only finish fifth and ninth. R-ace GP’s Enzo Deligny won the reversed-grid race, Slater pipped Al Azhari to fourth to become his main rival and Nakamura stayed in contention by scoring two points.

Photo: F4 UAE

Al Dhaheri immediately passed Nakamura for the lead in the title-deciding race three and all but ended his hopes since Slater was sat behind him in third. Focus then switched to Al Azhari, who lost the title to Slater by finishing eighth.

Running concurrently to F4 UAE was the inaugural Saudi Arabian F4 season, where all cars were run by Meritus GP. Federico Al Rifai won twice in the first round at Kuwait Motor Town (in Kuwait), while in round two at the circuit, Saqer Almaosherji, Al Rifai, Andrej Petrovic and Suleiman Zanfari shared the wins. Retrospectively it was made a non-championship event, so Qatar’s Losail circuit instead hosted round two in March and Al Rifai took another double.

Eventually races actually took place in Saudi Arabia, and three rounds were held in Jeddah over the course of 11 days. Petrovic took the points lead by winning twice in the first of the triple-header events, with Al Rifai’s title ambitions hurt by missing a race. However he moved back ahead with his own double in the next round, and when the results of race one in the final round was taken back by a lap [without explanation] it handed Al Rifai another win at the expense of Petrovic.

Although Petrovic won the final race, it was too late as Al Rifai wrapped up the title the day before in a race won by Zanfari.

Over the last month there has been further F4 action in the UAE with the Formula Trophy. Al Dhaheri was the star of round one at Dubai, remained unbeaten in qualifying for round two in Abu Dhabi but for the second time lost a win to a penalty, and then skipped round three. A double podium earned Evans GP’s Kai Daryanani the crown, but Prema’s Sebastian Wheldon stole the headlines with his race one win.

Spain

Formula Winter Series featured a combination of drivers warming up for Italian F4 and Spanish F4, and MP Motorsport’s Griffin Peebles was champion of the four-round tour of Spain. Jerez was more wet and wild than warm-up, and the wins went to Andres Cardenas (Campos Racing), Peebles and Juan Cota (Drivex School).

Photo: Gedlich Racing/Daniel Burgin

Cardenas left with the points lead, but further chaos at Valencia’s Ricardo Tormo circuit put Peebles ahead. Cardenas won a red-flagged race one, Peebles was victorious in a delayed and safety car-filled race two and US Racing’s Matheus Ferreira led home Peebles in race three. James Egozi appeared on the grid with Campos at Motorland Aragon, and was announced as joining the Red Bull Junior Team. He proved worthy of his Formula 1 backing by taking pole and a win, while Al Azhari came over from the UAE to do the same with MP. Rodin Motorsport’s single-seater rookie Thomas Strauven won race two.

Storms at Barcelona limited track action until race two, which Peebles won from pole. He was victorious again in race three to seal the title. MP’s Maciej Gladysz was third in the points, and would be the most competitive of FWinter Series’ full-timers in Spanish F4.

His team-mate Lucas Fluxa won twice in the opening round at Jarama, but actually crashed out of the second race he won, then never had another competitive showing over the season. Al Azhari came to the fore at Algarve in Portugal, then team-mate Mattia Colnaghi was dominant in the first two races at Paul Ricard in France. Gladysz won the third, and took another two at Aragon before Al Azhari returned to the top step of the podium to hold a sizeable points lead.

Cota went unbeaten at Valencia, and while Al Azhari and Gladysz both made the podium they also retired in race one due to colliding and each had another non-score. Colnaghi’s two podiums made him a more likely title contender, and he stepped up to that status by being the form driver thereon.

He won twice at Jerez to become points leader in theory, but Al Azhari also claimed a victory and went into the final round 13 points ahead after winning an appeal against a penalty at Aragon. In race one at Barcelona, Colnaghi soaked up a lot of pressure from his rival for another win, then moved ahead on victory countback by winning race two, before a track limits penalty for Al Azhari cost him a podium and handed Colnaghi a big advantage going into the decider.

Cota cruised to victory, not quite enough to deny Gladysz third in the points. Al Azhari had another off-track moment and this time went penalty-free despite moving ahead of Colnaghi, who became champion in fifth as Al Azhari came home third.

Photo: Jakob Ebrey Photography

Two weeks prior, Valencia specialist Cota had claimed the Motorsport Games F4 gold medal at the track. He was pipped to pole by 0.007s in a damp qualifying session, but then won the qualification and main race.

North America

Starting, or rather ending the F4 action on this continent is NACAM F4 since the first three rounds of its 2024-25 season have already taken place. The Mexico-based series had issues with its switch from first to second-generation F4 chassis, delaying its season start by over four months and making it a multi-year schedule, and Jose Carlos Hernandez leads the way so far.

He won from pole in both races of the F1-supporting first round, team-mate Helio Meza bettered him twice at Autodromo Miguel E. Abed, and Alessandros Racing’s partnership with Campos Racing contributed to former W Series racer Nerea Marti joining their garage in round three this month. Hernandez took two more wins in Mexico City, but Marti pushed hard and took the second F4 win of her career.

United States F4 has also had an uneasy switch to Gen2 machinery, cancelling its first round and averaging just seven cars this season. The Australian drivers, Atlantic Racing Team’s Daniel Quimby and Crosslink/Kiwi Motorsport’s Nicolas Stati, and the latter’s New Zealander team-mate Alex Crosbie, were usually fighting each other for victories and Quimby (who went unbeaten at Mosport in Canada) took the crown by just 4.5 points over Stati.

The older cars continued to run in the Ligier JS F4 Series (previously known as Formula Development), which had bigger grids and far more entertaining action. Scuderia Buell’s Teddy Musella won a third of the races and the title, and Crosslink/Kiwi’s Kekai Hauanio denied him pole twice and took four victories and four second places to be runner-up in the standings.

Fifth in the standings was Brad Majman, another of Crosslink/Kiwi’s Australians, and he went unbeaten at New Jersey Motorsports Park.

Photo: Gavin Baker Photography

The same car is used by Formula Pro USA for its F4 Western championship, which cancelled its one-round winter series and also did not go ahead with its planned ‘Women Racing Series’ classification for female entrants. Majman and World Speed Motorsports’ Valentino Garbarino shared the wins in the first two rounds at Thunderhill Raceway Park. Kiwi’s Drew Szuch was the only other driver in round one, and World Speed’s Alexander Cornfeld their sole rival in round two.

Laguna Seca held the next two rounds, the first of which only featured Cornfeld and Garbarino. They took a win each, then Garbarino went unbeaten on the return visit as the grid grew to five cars. Jensen Global Advisors’ Athan Sterling finished second twice, and did the same at Sonoma Raceway where he finished last to newly crowned champion Garbarino.

Four drivers turned up to the Buttonwillow Raceway finale, and Garbarino led home Sterling twice more. Cornfeld finished third in race one, enough to earn him second place in the standings over the absent Majman.

The Skip Barber Formula Race Series ran using Mygale’s Gen1 car, and the title went to Andretti Global junior Oliver Wheldon. After a stellar karting career in the USA, the single-seater rookie wone nine races out of 14 but only very narrowly became champion since third-year driver Dean Lambros was just as consistent. He won four races and took four poles, and was only off the podium once while Wheldon went trophy-free twice. USF Juniors-bound Ryan Giannetta was the other winner.

Asia

The Honda versus Toyota battle occurs in Japanese F4 each year, and in 2024 it was a Honda one-two as Yuto Nomura was near unbeatable in the season’s second half and fellow junior Ryota Horachi consistently saw the podium to be title runner-up.

Despite the rivalry, it is the Toyota-linked TOM’S that is the spec engine supplier and its units were the big talking point of round one as 10 drivers were ruled out of race two at Fuji Speedway due to engine issues. After Toyota junior Yuki Sano won race one, Helm Motorsports’ Tosei Moriyama got the chance to turn his pole into victory with far more ease due to the absence of many of the drivers who would become the usual frontrunners.

Photo: Japanese F4

Nomura won both races from pole at Suzuka, Horachi and Drago Corse’s Hironobu Shimizu came out on top of a 37-car field on the return to Fuji, with Horachi taking the points lead, then Sano doubled up at a soaking wet Sportsland SUGO but only got points for one of those victories as he won a one-lap race.

The championship belonged to Nomura following that, going unbeaten at Autopolis (where rain caused a race to be cancelled) and Twin Ring Motegi then taking a fifth win in a row in the postponed Suzuka round that ended the season. That secured him the title, and Kageyama Racing’s Kotaro Shimbara rose to third in the standings by winning race two.

Chinese F4 was as entertaining as ever, while also mostly going overlooked outside of China. However it was a teenager from Sweden who beat all the locals to become champion. An F1 support slot at Shanghai attracted 27 cars to the season opener, and Blackjack Racing’s Alex Sawer and Fukang Jiang took the wins.

Venom Motorsport’s Oscar Pedersen won twice at Tianfu International Circuit, then had seven consecutive podium finishes at Ningbo and Shanghai to remain atop the standings while wins went to title rival Kaishun Liu (Black Blade Racing), Jiang, the returning Sawer and cameoing Mercedes-AMG F1 junior Yuanpu Cui.

The title fight went down to the final race at Zhuhai, with Pedersen and Liu each taking a win and a second place in the preceding two races. Black Blade’s Yuhao Fu dominated, his weekend lifting him from 10th to fourth in the points, Liu finished second with a diving penultimate lap pass and Pedersen became champion by finishing not far behind in fourth.

MP ran all cars in Indian F4, and ex-F3 racer Hugh Barter crushed the opposition at Chennai in round one.

The new Chennai Formula Racing Circuit, a temporary venue that had been a long-term ambition for the series and was designed to be raced on at night, hosted round two and Barter dominated from pole again in race one. That was held in the early evening, but race two was a proper night-time contest and Aqil Alibhai was victorious after forcing long-time leader Divy Nandan into a mistake on the last lap.

Photo: Indian F4

Barter did no more races, and on the return to the other Chennai track the points lead went to Alibhai as four different drivers won. Triple-headers at Kari Motor Speedway concluded the season in the final version of the calendar, with Alibhai going unbeaten in the first one then being crowned champion in a wet second visit to the track as Ruhaan Alva concluded a nine-race podium streak with two wins and a comfortable championship runner-up spot since Jaden Pariat was absent.

Australia

Currently in limbo is whether the opening FTrophy round also doubled up as the Australian F4 season finale. Originally ran from 2015 to ’19 by Motorsport Australia, the national championship was revived by new promoter Top Speed this year with second-generation Tatuus cars. The Bend Motorsport Park hosted rounds one and two, Sydney Motorsport Park had round three as the cancelled Queensland Raceway event went unreplaced, then the season was due to conclude with races at Malaysia’s Sepang circuit and at Dubai. The latter was down to Top Speed also promoting FTrophy.

But two weeks before the planned finale, the reveal of the all-Australian 2025 calendar was accompanied by the announcement that the AGI Sport team would take over as promoter and older cars would be reintroduced. Since then, Formula Scout has been unable to get a response from either promoter on the Dubai round’s championship status.

Regardless, the title was already settled by then as AGI’s James Piszyck had won the first nine races on home soil then did the minimum required to wrap it up at Sepang as Tiago Rodrigues, Cooper Webster and Daryanani won.

The older cars (both the Mygales previously used in Australian F4 and Tatuus chassis from abroad) were kept in use through 2024 in the AF04 class of the Formula Libre-style Australian Formula Open series. Car racing rookie Isaac McNeill (Volante Rosso) and Jayden Hamilton (Tim Macrow Racing) each contested five rounds out of seven, and McNeill went unbeaten in class until the final race at Phillip Island where Lachlan Evennett won. Evennett had taken a triple win at The Bend when he was the only entrant, with Hamilton doing the same at Sydney. McNeill took the title with ease thanks to his 13 wins.

Photo: Australian F4

Europe

F4 Central European Zone grew in popularity for its third season, and there was a big on-track rivalry between Jenzer Motorsport and Maffi Racing. Both titles went to the former, as Oscar Wurz became champion with a campaign built on consistency. He only won twice, both victories coming at the Slovakiaring, but 12 other podiums were enough for him to beat Maffi’s Kirill Kutskov who won at Balaton Park, Autodrom Most, Brno and then went unbeaten in the Salzburgring finale.

There were five other race winners, but Jenzer’s title outsider Max Karhan was the only full-timer amongst those. He took three victories on home soil in the Czech Republic, and compatriot Miroslav Mikes won at Most. The JMT Racing driver came fourth in the standings despite withdrawing from the final round, meaning AS Motorsport’s Michalina Sabaj was the only other driver to start all the races. Her best result en route to fifth in the points table was a fourth place.

The F2000 Italian Trophy had an F4 class this year, and Sergio Conti won it eight times.

F1 Academy

Supporting F1 at seven grands prix was the all-female F1 Academy, which was dominated by Rodin’s Abbi Pulling. The Alpine junior, a podium-finisher in Formula Regional when racing in the all-female W Series two years ago, was never off the podium and took nine wins, four second places and a third.

Mercedes junior Pin was best-of-the-rest in her first full year of single-seater racing after previously being a sportscar star, starting the season on top in Jeddah and winning two further times to be way ahead of Prema team-mate Maya Weug.

The battle in qualifying was slightly closer, with Pin taking five poles to Pulling’s 10, and she took four fastest laps in races while Pulling took six despite spending most of her time in clean air at the front.

Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd

Marti took four podiums to edge MP’s Hamda Al Qubaisi to fourth in the points table, her team-mate Chloe Chambers won race two at Barcelona after Pulling had an airborne moment and Williams F1 junior Lia Block – an established rallying and rallycross driver in the USA who is the daughter of late off-road motorsport star Ken – came eighth in her first full single-seater campaign.

To find out more about the 2024 seasons of Brazilian F4, French F4 and Nordic 4, keep an eye on the Formula Scout website during the off-season!

The post 2024 International Formula 4 season review appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: Brice J Hildred

Australian F3 is no more, and an open formula series has been launched in its place. Tim Macrow, the brains behind the new series and an F3 champion, explains the plan behind Australian Formula Open

Formula 3 as a category ended in August 2021, when BRDC British F3 rebranded to GB3. It was thought to be the last move by the FIA, the exclusive holder of the rights to the F3 moniker, in its plan to streamline the single-seater ladder at the tertiary level.

Other F3 series had already been ended, the FIA’s own two-tier model of F3 had been shortlived after deciding to homologate the lower tier as Formula Regional, and F3 series in Europe and Japan had to adopt new cars built to non-F3 specifications due to the exclusivity of rights.

In some cases of series with contracts that gave them permission to use the F3 moniker, primarily because they used F3 cars, they still found themselves having to change name. Australian F3 hung on to such status until the end of 2022, as a series using previous-generation F3 machinery, but eventually that came at the expense of court cases and the series’ existence.

There have been many different single-seater series in Australia since 1950s, and the mantle of being the top level of open-wheel racing in the country has been recognised with ‘Australian Drivers’ Championship’ status and the awarding of the national governing body’s ‘Gold Star’ to the champion each year. Australian F3 had that status from 2005 to 2014, and it is now held by S5000: a modern day interpretation of the Formula 5000 category that used to exist above Formula 2 as a cheaper alternative to Formula 1.

S5000 was first thought up in 2016, but didn’t get off the ground properly until 2021 after behind-the-scenes politics and the COVID-19 pandemic delayed progress in getting the cars and series ready. Australian F3 was also hit hard by the pandemic, with no racing taking place in 2020 and only one round being completed in 2021 before restrictions returned. It was during this period that the idea for a new series, Australian Formula Open, emerged.

Photo: Australian F3

“It’s sort of a product of the pandemic I suppose,” recalls Tim Macrow, the creator of Australian FOpen who is boss of an eponymous team that previously competed in Australian F3 and a two-time champion (2007 & ’13) in that series himself.

“In 2020 we did nothing basically, a lot of people down in Melbourne were locked down for a couple of years. They sort of relaxed the COVID-19 rules for a month or two there, and we got one race meeting in at Sandown in December 2020.

“It was a race meeting put together by the MG Car Club. We hadn’t had a race meeting in that long that it was a good national-level race meeting [to join]. Phil from the MG Car Club rang me and said ‘can you put together something open-wheel so we can have some variety?’.

“So we put together a Formula Free race which had all sorts of things. We had F3 cars, Toyota Racing Series cars, we even had Radicals [open-top prototype sportscars] to sort of bump up the field. And that’s where it all started. We got 15 cars on the grid, which is really good. Everyone just wanted to come out and race. And we had some historic cars, even a Formula Holden turned up. It just worked out really well in that you had so many different cars that got their laptime in a completely different way, but everyone was quite even. It was more arse than class [for pace].

“The race was great, everyone loved it, and we went to do it again in 2021 but kept getting cancelled. And that’s where it started, that was the state-level stuff. Really sort of low-level ‘let’s have some fun’ sort of stuff. Towards the end of 2022, it sort of became apparent that Australian F3 wasn’t going to be allowed to use the F3 name anymore. We sort of know when we got towards the end of 2021 that was probably going to be the case, and everything had to be wound up in that regard.

“We’ve got a lot of F3 cars down here, and we’ve got a gaping hole in Australian motorsport for a development category. Either coming from Formula Ford, which is more state-based, or even going straight into FOpen from karts. So I reckon there’s a hole there. Kids shouldn’t be going straight from karts to S5000, it’s the most brutal car you’ll ever drive. So Australian F3 has pretty well morphed into Australian FOpen.

Photo: Australian F3

“We ran our first race meeting at Philip Island with the last round of Australian F3 in that field. But what we’re doing, to bump up the field to make sure we’ve got enough cars on the grid, is running a class format and it’s all going to be up to two litres. There might be a couple of cars which are invitational which may go over that, but we just look at how quick they are and laptime and all that sort of thing.

“F3 is the top class, and we have a lot of Formula 4 cars down here – we still do the Ferrari Driver Academy [scouting for the region]. Even I’ve got an F4 that we go testing with. So it would be nice to get kids some experience in actually racing them before they go over to Europe or America or wherever they want to go. We’ll have a class for those, then we’ve got lots of TRS cars as well. To have two or three classes within FOpen, catering for these cars, we should have decent grids and some good racing throughout the field.”

Although the occasional Dallara F312 appeared in Australian F3, the majority of the cars tended to be several generations old, with the Dallara F308 and its F305 predecessor the two most popular models.

“I’ve got one F312 here. But we’ve got the majority of the F311s,” Macrow says. “The plan is to have more F312s and F317s coming. Some time this year we’ll have some more cars coming, and slowly in the next two or three years we have to progress.

“We’ve got a decision to make whether we go with FRegional cars, with halos, or whether we go [to Euroformula’s Dallara] 320s. Theoretically we could buy some 320 tubs and turn our 312s into 320s, but it just depends – we have to sit down and actually work out which direction we go in the future and what cars we actually end up with down here. Because we can’t keep running these cars forever.

“There’s definitely got to be a progression there, but because these cars are already local, they’re still somewhat relevant, it’s a good starting point, we can do it at a good price.”

Photo: Brice J Hildred

While junior single-seater series in Europe tend to be team-led, in America there are more family-run cars and at the club level in the United Kingdom there are lots of privateer racers. In Australia, the market is “a mixture” of all three.

“For example I’ll have five cars available for lease for young drivers. I’ve already got a couple of young drivers locked in. There are two or three teams that have cars available that are professionally run. And there’s professional owner-drivers as well, there’s a good mixture.

“We’ve got AGI Sport, who are doing all sorts of things with the FDA and have five or six F4 cars, which are a very professional team. Up the front there will be some professionally-run cars with some young blokes in them, having a crack. It will be good.”

After the question of where the cars come from and who runs them, the next important focus for an open formula series is how many different engine builders are needed, and if any of them are local local given many F3 cars and engines originate from Europe.

“It is difficult, I’m honest,” Macrow states. “I deal directly with HWA, and in the past and up until recently we’ve been sending our engines back and forth to Germany to get rebuilt. But we do have a HWA representative down here who is building engines, so we can do our own down here.

“You’ve got the choice, whether you’ve got the time in between race meetings – because we’re so far away it takes probably a month turnaround to get the engines to HWA and to get them back. We can buy parts and build our own engines down here, and there is a representative down here. HWA have a couple of guys down here who look after the whole of Asia and for their GT programmes, so we are fairly self-sufficient down here and we can do our own thing.”

One engine supplier that is overseas, but fairly local in comparison to HWA, is Toyota Gazoo Racing New Zealand. Their engines appear in the previous-generation TRS cars that FOpen seeks to attract [pictured below].

Photo: Brice J Hildred

“Nico [Caillol, TGR NZ motorsport manager] and the TRS guys over there are very helpful. I have a Tatuus FT-50, they’re super helpful and they’re close to home, so we can send our stuff back there and get it done and get it back relatively quickly. That’s a really good situation. The gearboxes we can do here locally. I have an amazing relationship with Holinger down here who do all the S5000 gearboxes, so we can get all that sort of stuff done fairly locally.”

Due to its class strucuture, FOpen isn’t using the standard FIA points system (25-18-15-12-10-8…) and has instead adopted a system similar to Australian F3’s. The first two races of a weekend award 12 points to the winner, then victory in the longer feature race that ends each round is worth 20 points, with 15 and 12 points respectively for the next two podium positions. There will be overall and class points, and if a driver from a lower class starts winning races outright then they could become overall champion.

The inaugural FOpen races held at Philip Island’s ‘Island Magic’ meeting as a Victorian state event last November featured 28 cars, including the drivers signing off Australian F3, and there had been 30 entered.

“We actually had more guys wanting to come, but I capped it at 30 for garage [space]. We really only planned on 20 cars and we got a really good response,” says Macrow.

“For us down here, Island Magic is a really, really, really big race meeting. I think 300 cars or something turned up. 30 is a good number for us. If this year we can get anywhere between, it will ebb and flow a little bit, but if our minimum is 15 we’ll be really, really happy. Because sometimes when we go up to Queensland, stuff that’s really, really far away, sometimes the numbers can drop a touch.”

Round one of the 2023 series took place last weekend at Winton Motor Raceway in New South Wales, and the races featured 17 cars. There were 12 Dallara F3 cars ranging from the F304 to 2012’s F312, and a 34-year-old Reynard F3 car, a 31-year-old Reynard 92D built to Formula Holden specifications, five first-generation FIA F4 cars and a Formula Renault 2.0 car.

Photo: Brice J Hildred

Several of the cars had interesting histories, with many of Australia’s F3 chassis having previously been raced in Europe and then at the Macau Grand Prix before being sent down under rather than shipped all the way back home. Macrow himself runs cars previously raced by Valtteri Bottas and Romain Grosjean.

The colossal size of Australia, much like the USA, brings impracticalities when organising national championships that want to attract car owners from all over the country.

“It’s probably mainly between Victoria and NSW, where the majority of the cars are. And with our calendar, that’s where the majority of the race meetings will be. Trying to cater for where all the cars are so they will come to the race meetings. That’s our biggest thing, travel, because of how far we have to go. We have to keep an eye on that to keep it cost-effective.

“We just want to get the open-wheel scene happening back down here. We don’t have the population down here to sustain several different categories, so that’s why we need to do a combination grid, in my belief. And with all the cars we have down here, it’s the way to go.”

For FOpen to work as a feeder series, to S5000 and championships abroad, its position in the single-seater landscape needs to be established and work has to be done to build connections to the levels above and below it in motorsport.

S5000, from a marketing perspective, is Australia’s “version of Super Formula; our top category, one you aspire to” and one day potentially a genuine career alternative to the nation’s biggest series: Supercars.

“There’s several things in the works at the moment which haven’t been finalised which we’re trying to get over the line. Partnerships with other categories overseas or locally, so we can help those kids progress, and definitely that’s something we kind of had in place with F3, and I’m just trying to get those things happening which will hopefully be announced soon where we can help those kids progress from our category either overseas or onto the next one up.

Australian F3’s top graduates

Peter Hackett – 2nd in 2005, ’12 & ’19 Australian GT – 2001 champion
Will Power – 2014 & ’22 IndyCar champion, 2nd in 2010, ’11 & ’12 IndyCar – 2nd in 2002
Michael Caruso – 10th in 2014 &’16 Australian Supercars – 2003 champion
Tim Slade – 5th in 2012 Supercars – 10th in 2004
Marco Mapelli – 2019 GT World Challenge Europe champion, 2nd in 2014 & ’15 Italian GT, 2nd in 2015 Bathurst 12 Hours, 5th in 2018 GTWC Asia – 5th in 2007
Nick Percat – 7th in 2020 & ’21 Supercars, 2011 Bathurst 1000 winner – 8th in 2008
Earl Bamber – 2015 & ’17 Le Mans 24 Hours winner, 7th in 2008-09 A1GP, 2014 Porsche Supercup champion – 13th in 2008
Mitch Evans – 2nd in 2021-22 FE, 4th in 2014 GP2, 2012 GP3 champion, 2010 & ’11 Toyota Racing Series champion – 2nd in 2010
Rio Haryanto – 24th in 2016 F1, 4th in 2015 GP2, 7th in 2011 Auto GP, 5th in 2010 GP3 – 8th in 2009
Ben Barker – 2020 Dubai 24H winner, 6th in 2017 WEC GTEAm class, 6th in 2014 Porsche Supercup – 2010 champion
Josh Burdon – 2014 Asian V8 champion, 2nd in 2017-18 Asian Le Mans Series LMP3 class – 8th in 2010 & ’11
Cameron Waters – 2nd in 2020 & ’22 Supercars – 13th in 2012

“I did a fair bit of stuff in the US so I’ve got some relationships over there with people I’m talking to now, and there’s New Zealand and there’s Asia as well. There’s a few people we’re talking to to help those kids progress out of our category, and obviously S5000 is one of them as well.”

Australian F3 may have died, a demise influenced by factors far beyond grid numbers alone, but FOpen can effectively continue what it offered. F3 used to be a regular support category to the Australian Grand Prix, there was an Indy F3 Challenge supporting Champ Car’s visit to Surfer’s Paradise, and there was a Tasman Superprix that ran for several years which was Australia’s answer to Macau and Europe’s old Masters of F3 race.

Now that the new FIA F3 Championship is supporting the grand prix, the top level of American single-seater racing is no longer visiting Australia and S5000 exists, the space that domestic winged junior single-seaters exists in is going to be different.

Potentially that’s a stronger position than previously, with racing in FIA F3 a more achievable target for a young Australian driver than racing in the grand prix it supports, so Australia having its own winged series helps to bridge the gap. And, as mentioned, making it a multi-category championship was the starting point needed for 2023.

Australian F3 champions

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