Photo: Dutch Photo Agency

Nico Hulkenberg recently lost his record for the most F1 race starts without a podium by setting a new record for the most starts before a maiden podium finish. Who has the equivalent in F1’s primary feeder series?

Most races without a podium

=9. Ricardo Teixeira ANGOLA 48 races
GP2 Asia (2009): 4 races, GP2 (2009-2013): 44 races   Best result: 1x 13th

Photo: GP2 Media Service

The Angolan spent four years in British Formula 3 with almost nothing to show for it before stepping up to GP2 via its Asia series in early 2009. He could do no better than 17th place, but committed to a full season in the main series with Trident.

In his rookie season he was so slow in Monaco that he actually failed to qualify for the races, although he ‘bounced back’ from that next time out at Istanbul Park with his personal-best finish of 14th place.

That was matched at three other circuits in 2009, then he stepped down to MotorSport Vision’s confusingly named FIA Formula 2 championship for 2010. A year working with Team Lotus in Formula 1 then followed, before he returned to action via GP2 in 2012. In the second round he claimed his best ever finish in the series, a 13th place which he would not get close to beating through the rest of the campaign or two outings in 2013.

=9. Tomas Kaiser SWEDEN 48 races
European F2 (1982-1984): 21 races, Int. F3000 (1985-1987): 27 races   Best result: 3x 4th

The Swede has spoken to Formula Scout before about his memories of European F2 prior to its demise as F1’s primary feeder series. It ran from 1967 to 1984, then was replaced by International Formula 3000 which ran through to 2004.

Kaiser debuted in 1982 in Thruxton’s BARC 200 race, then also drove at Hockenheim. The next year he suffered a lot of retirements, but finished a lapped eighth in the Rome Grand Prix and was seven laps down but classified in ninth at the Pau Grand Prix.

In 1984 he was ninth in the Deutschland Trophy at Hockenheim, two minutes behind the winner, a lapped seventh in Italy’s Rome and Mediterranean grands prix and eighth in its Adriatic Grand Prix.

In Britain he had improved form, coming eighth in the Donington Park 50,000 and then fourth in the Daily Mail Trophy at Brands Hatch. The race was red-flagged twice due to rain, and due to the restarted race being a full restart it meant the two portions of the race had to be added together to form the final result. Kaiser was third in the second part, but classified a distant fourth overall.

That fourth place was repeated in the next years in F3000, as Kaiser achieved the feat at Thruxton in 1985 and then in the Mediterranean GP in 1986.

8. Jason Tahincioglu TURKEY 50 races
GP2 (2006-2007): 40 races, GP2 Asia (2008): 10 races   Best result: 1x 8th

Photo: GP2 Media Service

Tahincioglu made his way up the single-seater ladder in part thanks to a surge of motorsport investment in his home nation. Not only did F1 visit the country for the first time while he was racing, but his father was also president of Turkey’s motorsport federation.

He was a backmarker in Formula Renault 2.0 UK (which was considered just above being an entry level slicks-and-wings series) for three years and never even finished a race in the top 10, yet had the financial backing to buy his way onto the GP2 grid for 2006 with Fisichella Motor Sport.

Tahincioglu actually failed to make the start on debut, then had three non-finishes and a disqualification. He usually qualified outside of the top 20 and always finished outside of the top 10, with a best result of 11th place as a rookie.

His sophomore season was even less competitive, bar qualifying 14th on home soil at Istanbul Park, and he finished 11th two more times in races where many retired. After that he joined BCN Competition for the inaugural GP2 Asia season, and in the Dubai Autodrome finale remarkably (considering his usual level) qualified 11th and finished the races in ninth and eighth.

7. Ferdinando Monfardini ITALY 51 races
Int. F3000 (2003-2004): 12 races, GP2 (2005-2006): 39 races   Best result: 1x 4th

Photo: GP2 Media Service

Monfardini drove for BCN in the final two rounds of the 2003 Int. F3000 season, and finished 10th at his second attempt.

That gave him the confidence to do the full 2004 season, and while there were two top-10 finishes he languished 20th in the standings behind many part-timers.

When the championship was replaced by GP2, Monfardini stuck about and his experience of high-downforce machinery helped him in the inaugural 2005 season. He had a breakthrough at the Nurburgring by charging from 22nd to sixth, but then had no further top-10 finishes until his final outing with Durango at Monza where he qualified eighth and finished eighth in the feature race then finished fourth (a position held by 0.045s) from reversed-grid pole in the sprint race.

Monfardini missed the next round and returned with Scuderia Coloni for the finale. DAMS was his next home, and in the 2006 season he finished sixth three times. The first two were at Barcelona where he charged up from 20th in the feature race.

6. Guido Dacco ITALY 60 races
European F2 (1980-1984): 48 races, Int. F3000 (1985-1987): 12 races   Best result: 1x 4th

Photo: Gruppo Piloti Civitavecchia

According to one source, the late Dacco liked to be known as older than he actually was. Which is fitting given the experience he accumulated in the second tier of single-seaters.

Having debuted in European F2 in 1980, his first results of note came two years later and the highlight was seventh in the Mediterranean GP. In 1983 he was sixth in the Rome GP and fourth in the Adriatic GP, but a lap down in both, and in 1984 it was a similar story as he was lapped in the seven races where he claimed top-10 finishes. Fifth place in the Adriatic GP was the top result this time.

When F3000 arrived, Dacco became a more competitive racer but due to being a bad qualifier had to make his way up the order all the time. He finished a distant fifth at Spa-Francorchamps and Dijon, and was sixth in the Mediterranean GP and at Zandvoort (where he was lapped). The top three were always out of reach on race day.

Dacco later raced in Indy Nxt, where he did stand on a podium, and then in IndyCar.

5. Rene Binder AUSTRIA 74 races
GP2/F2 (2012-2017): 74 races   Best result: 1x 6th

Photo: GP2 Media Service

Binder did 68 races in GP2, then four in Formula V8 3.5 before claiming his maiden podium in single-seaters’ second tier, but since the latter championship was a rival to F1’s primary feeder series his race-winning form there has no impact on this list.

The Austrian did three seasons in German F3 before finding form, and was a slow burner in GP2 as well. He started off with the uncompetitive Team Lazarus, doing three rounds in 2012 and getting a best finish of 13th.

His full season with them in 2013 started strongly, as he finished 11th and eighth in the opening two races at Sepang. In Monaco he lined up 22nd and second on the grid for the two races, and finished them in seventh and sixth. Although there were two more top-10 finishes that season, the only points he scored in the following two years were in the opening round of the 2014 season. He was usually uncompetitive, and split his 2015 campaign between Trident and MP Motorsport.

His first weekend with MP was at Monza, and he scored straight away with a 10th place and an eight. Binder never saw the points again.

4. Rodolfo Gonzalez VENEZUELA 80 races
GP2 (2009-2012): 64 races, GP2 Asia (2009-2011): 16 races   Best result: 1x 4th

Photo: Alastair Staley/GP2 Media Service

Venezuela’s state-owned oil company PDVSA funded Gonzalez’s single-seater career, and as with countryman Pastor Maldonado (who was GP2 champion) that opened several doors in F1 and kept them open.

The one-time podium-finisher in British F3 arrived in GP2 Asia with FMS in 2009 and was a backmarker until a monsoon-hit weekend at Sepang where he qualified 14th then made his way up the order to two top-10 results.

He went full-time in the main series with Arden the year after, and Monza was the only circuit he could get within 1.6 seconds of pole. At Spa-Francorchamps he came eighth in the feature race, putting him on reversed-grid pole for the sprint race. Gonzalez only lost out to Sergio Perez in the race’s first half, but at a mid-race restart fell to fourth and stayed there.

That result was never close to being matched. Gonzalez got two ninth places in Asia and two in the main series in 2011, his average qualifying position being lower than 20th in the latter, then a move to the Caterham Racing team in 2012 included a surprise at Bahrain where he was half a second off pole in seventh but his average qualifying position was still a lacklustre 19.4. His only top-10 finish was in a chaotic Monaco sprint race where he was a distant fifth and a majority of drivers retired.

The aforementioned F1 links started off with the young driver tests, driving for Team Lotus/Caterham (2010, ’11 & ’12), Force India (2012) and then Marussia (2013) who signed him as reserve driver and used him in nine F1 practice sessions.

3. Marino Sato JAPAN 81 races
F2 (2019-2022): 81 races   Best result: 4x 8th

Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd

Sato is one of several drivers in recent years to have struggled against their contemporaries, then increased their stock by racing in Euroformula and winning the title. But FIA European F3’s demise meant Sato was against Euroformula’s strongest ever field in 2019 and he still came out on top.

It turned out coming 16th in European F3’s 2018 season was more representative, as Sato only scored twice in his first 55 F2 races. With Trident he was one of the slowest drivers on the 2020 grid and was outside of the top 20 in 2021.

Moving to Virtuosi Racing for 2022 looked like it would unlock his underlying potential, as he was in the top 10 on outright and long-run pace in pre-season testing, but fundamentally Sato’s driving style was incompatible with the demands of F2’s Pirelli tyres. MP’s Clement Novalak had a similar problem, and the pair were the only full-time drivers on average not within a percent of the pole pace through the season. Sato was then 26th best in the field on race pace.

Ex-Formula E driver Tom Dillmann worked with Sato from day one of his F2 career on the issue, and by the end of 2022 the only positive that could be taken was Sato’s four top-10 finishes was twice the tally of the preceding years combined.

2. Daniel de Jong NETHERLANDS 90 races
GP2 (2012-2016): 90 races   Best result: 1x 7th

Photo: Zak Mauger/GP2 Series Media Service

“One more year,” said de Jong as he committed to a fifth GP2 season in early 2016. It was a rewarding decision, as his six points in the first five races matched what he had scored in his preceding 68 starts.

The majority of his GP2 experience came with MP, owned by his father Henk, so he had less need than some to think about how his budget and results would impact his chances of landing a seat each year.

De Jong raced for MP concurrently in the F3000-spec Auto GP during his first F2 campaigns to increase his experience of high-downforce single-seaters, but his podiums in the former did not translate into strong results in the latter.

He qualified sixth at Barcelona in 2015, and two weeks later in Monaco made the top 10 in qualifying for only the second time. However this came after crashing, which prevented rivals from improving late on.

On GP2’s chaotic first ever visit to Baku in 2016, de Jong finally finished high enough to benefit from a reversed grid, coming eighth in the feature race after a risky late pitstop paid off. From pole the next day he finished 14th.

His career-best result came in the 2013 Singapore sprint race, when he charged from 17th to seventh.

1. Amaury Cordeel BELGIUM 97 races
F2 (2022-2025): 93 races   Best result: 1x 4th

Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd

Victory in the final round of the 2018 Spanish Formula 4 season, a day before he became champion, was the last time Cordeel saw a podium. He’s shown his speed since then, albeit on public roads and via TikTok videos.

Fourth place was his best result from 47 Formula Regional races, then an 11th place was the highlight of 20 races in F3.

The lack of results was not the main concern once Cordeel was on the F2 grid though, as in his third weekend he got four penalty points and a 10-place grid penalty for overtaking in a zone where double waved yellows were during a red flag period.

He missed a race that weekend in Jeddah, then another at Imola where he made multiple rule infringements and picked up a further five penalty points. At Barcelona he was out of position on the formation lap, and not following the rules led to a 10s stop-go penalty and two penalty points that put him out of contention for a maiden points finish.

A collision in Baku led to a race ban after just six rounds, and he qualified a surprise seventh on his return at the Red Bull Ring but got more penalty points. Cordeel ended his and Van Amersfoort Racing’s first season in F2 with four top-seven finishes in the last five races, then was off the pace through 2023 with Virtuosi. The Red Bull Ring was an exception again.

Hitech GP was Cordeel’s home for 2024, and he led three races and scored in six feature races. At Imola he topped a test session and then qualified 10th, putting him on sprint race pole. He ran third until the final three laps, then in the feature race led 23 laps as he overcut almost the entire field. When he pitted, his rear-right tyre flew off and ended his race.

The 23-year-old joined Rodin Motorsport for 2025 at late notice, and has scored three points while his rookie team-mate Alex Dunne fights for the title.

Most races before maiden podium

10. Ritomo Miyata JAPAN 45 races
F2 (2024-2025): 14 races   Best result: 1x 2nd

Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd

A few weeks ago Toyota protege Miyata knocked Alberto Colombo, who raced in European F2 from 1973 to 1980 and made the podium three times, from this list with a breakthrough F2 event at Spa. He qualified second, finished eighth in the sprint race then was second in the feature race after the original top two drivers were hit with big penalties.

What makes Miyata’s inclusion in this list fascinating is that he’s already a champion of single-seaters’ top tier. He won the 2023 Super Formula title, then made the surprise switch to F2 as Toyota supported his dream of making it to F1.

A European Le Mans Series campaign was added to his schedule to boost his experience of F2 circuits, since his whole career had been Japan-based prior to last year. While Miyata shone in ELMS with two wins, he has struggled in F2.

He was just about in the top 20 on average single-lap and race pace as a rookie with Rodin, with two fifth places in Melbourne on his third F2 outing the highlight, and in the top 15 for both at the halfway point of this season with ART Grand Prix.

Miyata told media including Formula Scout that his confidence in the F2 car had grown two rounds prior to Spa and felt he had podium potential. He explained that switching teams meant he needed to learn even more for 2025, and reiterated to this writer that he had Toyota’s full support to stay in F2 despite the lack of results leading up to that.

9. Fairuz Fauzy MALAYSIA 46 races
GP2 (2005-2011): 62 races, GP2 Asia (2008-2011): 14 races   Best result: 1 win

Photo: GP2

After the Malaysian Grand Prix’s induction on the F1 calendar in 1999, it was only a few months before a Malaysian driver reached the pinnacle of single-seaters. Alex Yoong made it into SF, F1 and CART in the early 2000s, and Malaysian investment remained in F1 through the next decade, helping more drivers from his country embark on international racing careers.

Fauzy was the next big hope for the nation in open-wheel cars, although his results in British Formula Ford, FR2.0 UK and British F3 did little to suggest he had an F1 future. But when he arrived in GP2 in 2005 with a car sponsored by Malaysian petroleum company Petronas, it was clear he had the backing to make it to the top.

His rookie GP2 season with DAMS was lacklustre, with four top-10 results but no points under the sporting regulations of the time, but the week before the season finale he was already making his top-level debut as he represented Malaysia in the new nation-based A1GP series. He would go on to win there for his nation.

Fauzy went points-free in GP2 again 2006, then in 2008 joined the new Asia series and won in treacherous conditions at Sentul. This time it wasn’t rain, but rather the track literally falling apart and cars driving through dust clouds (which led to overheating engines).

After becoming a race-winner in A1GP, he was 2009 FR3.5 runner-up and the Malaysian-owned Team Lotus signed him as reserve driver when it joined F1 in 2010. They released him from his contract at the end of the year and Fauzy returned to GP2 and FR3.5 for 2011. One podium from 32 races that year was not enough to keep him on the single-seater map.

8. Roy Nissany ISRAEL 48 races
F2 (2018-2023): 119 races   Best result: 1x 3rd

Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd

The most experienced driver ever in single-seaters’ second tier took four wins and 10 other podiums in FR3.5 and its successor FV8 3.5, but in 119 F2 races claimed only one podium and two top-five finishes.

Seven years after his most successful FV8 3.5 campaign with Charouz Racing System, he reunited with the team in F2 two years ago and two ninth places in sprint races were the highlights of a points-free season.

Scoring nothing was a statistic Nissany has avoided until then, having scored at least one point in every year he has spent in F2 prior to 2023. In total he has 14 points finishes to his name, with eight of those coming in 2022 while driving for DAMS.

The year before that he had only scored three times with the team, but one of those was a third place in Monaco. Nissany started fourth for the first sprint race of the weekend, and was set to finish there before Christian Lundgaard suffered an engine failure ahead. He then had to hold off Campos Racing’s Ralph Boschung, who got a personal best result in fourth.

Nissany made his F1 test debut with Sauber while still in F3, where he had a best finish of sixth from 63 starts, then drove for Williams in 2019 post-season testing. After being signed as a test driver, he did six practice sessions across 2020 and ’21.

7. Simon Trummer SWITZERLAND 50 races
GP2 Final (2011): 2 races, GP2 (2012-2015): 72 races   Best result: 1x 2nd

Photo: Sam Bloxham/GP2 Series Media Service

Trummer was runner-up in FR2.0 Switzerland (which did not race in the country), made the podium in International Formula Master then joined GP3 for its inaugural season in 2010. He finished sixth in the first ever race, then it took until the end of the 2011 season to match that as he made the top five in each of the last three races with Arden.

The team rewarded him with a seat in the GP2 Final, a two-race contest at Yas Marina Circuit. It was a tricky debut, as he was 22nd in qualifying then got a grid penalty for causing a collision, but he made it up to 15th in the sprint race.

He then signed with Arden for a full season in GP2, and the team continuity did not give him an advantage. In Valencia he scored in both races, but there was only two other top-10 finishes.

Joining Rapax for 2013 proved instantly rewarding, as he started the season with three points finishes. But he was not a points contender until visiting the Hungaroring, where he was only the 15th fastest driver on track but nailed the overcut strategy to lead for a while and finish sixth from 17th on the grid. In 2012 the same strategy led to him leading laps.

Trummer led three successive feature races in 2013, but didn’t score again until his final start of the year.

2014 started badly too, as he qualified 21st at Bahrain then had to start from the pitlane after stalling on the pre-grid. But that enabled him to once again pull off the overcut on the harder compound tyres and he led until pitting with two laps to go. He then made his way up to seventh, far behind the podium finishers.

But the result put Trummer second on the sprint race grid, which was where he finished. Trummer returned to anonymity for the rest of 2014 and his two 2015 outings. He moved on to sportscars, and was IMSA’s LMP2 class runner-up in 2020.

6. Johnny Cecotto Jr VENEZUELA 52 races
GP2/F2 (2009-2017): 126 races, GP2 Asia (2009-2011): 6 races   Best result: 4 wins

Photo: Malcolm Griffiths/GP2 Series Media Service

The son of the 1975 350cc motorcycling world champion, F1 driver and DTM star of the same name, Cecotto was somewhat of a state-funded talent.

Although he drove second-tier machinery in just his second year of single-seaters, it was old F3000 cars in Euroseries 3000.

He made four starts there before entering GP2’s last two rounds of 2009. He also did a GP2 Asia round with Trident, in which he made the top seven in both races, and stayed with the team for the main series in 2010. Cecotto was inconsistent and only scored once, a fourth place in the Monaco sprint race. A sign of things to come.

In 2011 he went points-free in GP2 and GP2 Asia, then a move to reigning champion team Addax for 2012 resulted in being mired in the midfield once again until he rocked up to Monaco and claimed pole. He converted it into victory in the feature race, but then spun and caused a multi-car pile-up on lap one of the sprint race. Cecotto had a reputation for being a driver as likely to cause chaos as he was to get a strong result, and the Monaco weekend was the epitome of that.

Next time out in Valencia was a nightmare, then at Silverstone qualified and finished second. Next up was Hockenheim, where he qualified 18th but used local knowledge to choose slick tyres on a wet track in the feature race. He assumed the lead when everyone else chose to pit, then made his own compulsory pitstop and won by nine seconds.

Coecotto claimed Monaco pole again in 2013, duly crashed out on lap one of the feature race then was barred from the sprint.

That podium-free season was followed by his most competitive one in 2014. At Barcelona he qualified 16th, but was seventh after a chaotic first lap of the feature race. He led by lap eight, and it only took two laps following his pitstop to return to the front and take a convincing win. At the Red Bull Ring he took pole and won the sprint race, and three further podiums put him fifth in the standings. Over the next three years Cecotto drove for four teams, and across 22 races took another two podiums.

5. Max Chilton ENGLAND 53 races
GP2 Asia (2008-2011): 12 races, GP2 (2010-2012): 62 races, GP2 Final (2011): 2 races   Best result: 2 wins

Chilton winning in Singapore (Photo: GP2 Media Service)

Another driver whose father paved the way to the top via some large-scale financial investments in their son’s career, Chilton is also the younger brother of former British Touring Car star Tom Chilton.

In 2009 the younger Chilton came fourth in British F3 with Carlin, a team his father became majority shareholder of and thereon became a maintay in Chilton’s career.

Although he first raced in GP2 with Ocean Racing Technology, once Carlin arrived in the series in 2011 he was back in their line-up and came 20th in the standings that year. A singular fifth place was Chilton’s best result after 53 races in the second tier of single-seaters, but he and the team made a big jump up the order as 2012 began.

Chilton started the season by coming 0.064s shy of pole, and turned third on the grid into third in the race but was almost half a minute behind the winner as he was mostly defending. He was consistently in the points thereon, putting in an attacking drive en route to second in the Monaco sprint race and winning the Hungaroring feature race from pole.

A further pole and another feature race win meant he came fourth in the points, and with the Marussia F1 team sponsoring Carlin through 2012 it was no surprise that Chilton then stepped up to F1 with Russian-owned manufacturer. He lost his seat after two seasons, and returned to second-tier single-seaters and Carlin in Indy Nxt before a career in IndyCar.

4. Michael Herck ROMANIA 55 races
GP2 Asia (2008-2011): 31 races, GP2 (2008-2011): 69 races   Best result: 1x 2nd

Photo: GP2 Media Service

The 2004 FR1.6 Spain champion had gone points-free in several series before making it to GP2, with FMS handing him his debut in the 2008 Asia series. He was dreadfully off the pace, but so were several others so it masked how out of his depth Herck was.

Herck then joined David Price Racing partway through the main series and it took until the finale to be less than 2.2s slower than the poleman in qualifying. An 11th place was the best finish that year.

The 2008-09 GP2 Asia season was an improvement, but there were still many weekends being far off the pace. His father then bought DPR, which secured Herck’s place on the GP2 grid for two more years before the team left the series.

Silverstone was the highlight of the 2009 season, finishing ninth and eighth but scoring no points, and at the Algarve finale he led some laps as he rose went from 19th on the grid to sixth in the feature race before being disqualified.

Herck began 2010 on a high in GP2 Asia. Although he only qualified 19th at Yas Marina, he made it to the front using the overcut strategy then made on-track overtakes after pitting to finish seventh. Second on the sprint race was well utilised, as he took the lead on lap one and held it until being passed on the penultimate lap.

That form reappeared once in the main series, qualifying sixth in Valencia and converting that into an eighth and a third in the races, before he moved to Coloni for 2011 and came eighth in GP2 Asia with a career-best qualifying result of third.

3. Alexandre Negrao BRAZIL 58 races
GP2 (2005-2007): 64 races   Best result: 1x 2nd

Photo: GP2 Media Service

Negrao won the 2004 F3 Sudamericana title, and two F3 races at Spa marked his only European experience when he stepped up to GP2 with Piquet Sports.

His rookie season was full of ups and downs, epitomised by his second weekend in GP2 at Barcelona where he qualified 22nd but finished eighth in a feature race full of attrition, then went from pole down to 19th on lap one of the sprint race.

He next scored a point at the Hungaroring, where he rose from 18th to eighth in the feature race and this time dropped to 22nd from pole on the sprint race’s opening lap. Two seventh places at Spa put him 19th in the standings.

When he wasn’t retiring, Negrao had consistency in 2006 and scored in almost half of the feature races. He finished seventh in four of the first seven races, but never finished higher than fifth while team-mate Nelson Piquet Jr fought for the title.

Negrao began 2007 by qualifying second at Bahrain, 0.085s off pole, but fell to ninth on lap one and later retired. He completed no racing laps at Barcelona, was lapped in Monaco, had three more retirements and didn’t have a top-10 finish until race 11 of the season. He finally looked competitive again at Istanbul Park, where he started and finished seventh in the feature race then went from second to fourth before recovering back to second in the sprint race for a surprise first podium.

2. Julian Leal COLOMBIA 64 races
GP2 Asia (2011): 4 races, GP2 (2011-2015): 102 races, GP2 Final: (2 races)   Best result: 2x 2nd

Photo: Julianlealweb

Leal had plentiful experience of old F3000 cars by the time he debuted in FR3.5, where he came 20th in both of his seasons.

For 2011 he moved across to rival series GP2, and remained there for five years. He debut in GP2 Asia, taking a best finish of 17th, then in the main series finished ninth in two sprint races. It took 36 races in the car before Leal broke his points-scoring duck, and despite scoring nine points in 2012 he was still outside of the top 20 in the standings.

He moved to Racing Engineering for 2013, and got two sprint race podiums while improving his best feature race result to fifth. Meanwhile team-mate Fabio Leimer scored three times as many points and won the title.

Eager to still prove himself, Leal signed with Carlin for 2014 and began the campaign with his first two podiums. He qualified 12th for the Bahrain season opener, but boosted by a quick pitstop was able to climb up to second. The next day he went from seventh to third on lap one, then he and Trummer attacked that year’s champion Jolyon Palmer all race long.

Leal sat second in the standings after four races, then only scored four times in the remaining 18 races and dropped to 10th in the points table and was outscored to the same degree by his team-mate as in 2013. He remained with Carlin for 2015, but after reaching 100 races in the main GP2 series announced his ‘retirement’ from it and missed the last three rounds.

1. Ralph Boschung SWITZERLAND 76 races
F2 (2017-2023): 120 races   Best result: 1 win

Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd

Boschung ran out of budget one round before the end in his rookie F2 season in 2017, then suffered the same fate two rounds from the finish in 2018.

The funding dried up after five rounds in 2019, but he was able to return to return for two rounds later in the year, then in 2020 he only contested the season finale as a last-minute stand-in for Jack Aitken who had been summoned to race in F1.

The elusive prospect of a full season finally occurred in 2021 with Campos, and having greater financial stability was reflected in Boschung’s results. He came 10th in the standings and in the final two rounds claimed his first two podiums.

In Jeddah he qualified seventh, and made up four places at the start of the feature race before it was red flagged. When it was eventually restarted, only five laps were completed before race-ending red flags waved again with Boschung still third. A week later at Yas Marina he proved it was no fluke as he finished third from the front row in the second sprint race.

He started 2022 looking even stronger but after qualifying fourth and finishing the feature race in third at Imola his season was ruined by a neck injury that ruled him out for 12 races. On his second attempt at a comeback he made the podium, showing the potential that year could have held.

Fully recovered, and with a Campos team benefitting from a high-profile technical signing, Boschung began 2023 with the victory he had spent years pursuing, and even led the championship before a long points-free run that made for another ‘what if?’.

The post Who holds Hulkenberg’s F1 records in its primary feeder series? appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: Campos Racing

Juan Manuel Correa returned to the F2 podium last weekend five years after his previous podium appearance. Who else has waited more than three years between podiums in F1’s primary feeder series?

The vast majority of Formula 2 drivers do not stay in the championship for more than three full seasons, as their chances of making it to Formula 1 are unlikely to improve with a fourth campaign and convincing their sponsors to fund their lack of career progress can be very difficult. But some have raced in F1’s primary feeder series over the course of half a decade or more, and there are 10 drivers who waited three years or even longer between top-three finishes.

Three-time F1 world champion Jack Brabham finished seond in Austria’s Flugplatzrennen (Airfield Race) in the inaugural European F2 season in 1967, then three seasons (and 1,156 days) later contested the same race and was second again in the first of two heats that decided the overall winner.

Peter Gethin came 12th in an incomplete European F2 campaign in 1968, and after a few years as a McLaren F1 driver decided to return to junior single-seaters in 1972 as a factory Chevron driver. He had finished third in 1968’s season-closing Rome Grand Prix at Vallelunga, and 1,287 days later won the Pau Grand Prix.

Roberto Merhi was looking for a way back into F1 when he joined MP Motorsport for the 2018 F2 season, and despite making the podium in the Monaco feature race he did not see out the year with the team and later joined Campos Racing who he made the podium with in the season finale at Yas Marina Circuit. He returned to F2, Campos and the podium halfway through 2022, finishing third in the Red Bull Ring feature race on his comeback weekend 1,324 days after his last podium.

Jochen Mass had more than proven himself in F2 and F1, having been European championship runner-up in the former in 1973 and winning for McLaren in the latter in ’75, when he made a two-round return to European F2 in 1977 to contest his home races in Germany with March. He won the Germany Trophy at Hockenheim (1,330 days on from his last podium), then was victorious in the Nurburgring’s Eifelrennen race too.

Photo: Goossens & team-mate Fernando Alonso

After two seasons in a row of coming third in International Formula 3000, Marc Goossens headed to Super Formula for 1997 to achieve his dream of becoming a professional racing driver but he mostly struggled in the Japanese series. He failed to score as a rookie, and in his sophomore campaign he did make the podium but was more prone to retiring. To keep his single-seater career going he stepped back down to Int. F3000 in 1999, but had a points-free season there too.

In 2000 he landed a seat at Team Astromega for the last four rounds, and after setting the fastest lap in the penultimate race at the Hungaroring he ended a 1,443-day wait for an F3000 podium in the Spa-Francorchamps finale by finishing second.

5. Jean-Pierre Beltoise FRANCE 1,590 days

Beltoise made the podium three times in the inaugural European F2 season, and was champion in 1968 with three wins. Thereon he was ineligible for points as a graded driver (as the likes of Brabham was too), but he stil contested most of the 1969 season and claimed a win and three other podiums. His outings over the four years following that were far less successful, and by 1973 he was eligible for points again. In his first four rounds he took two poles and a fastest lap, but also failed to qualify for one race and didn’t finish the others. He returned to the paddock for the Albi Grand Prix late in the season, and finished a few seconds behind the winner in third, with the fastest lap to boot too.

4. Jean-Pierre Jarier FRANCE 1,667 days

A two-time podium-finisher in 1971 and then European F2 champion in ’73, Jarier spent his next years toiling away in the F1 midfield with Shadow. He decided to do two F2 rounds in 1977, then four the year after as his F1 commitments downscaled. He reminded everyone of his talents by finishing third in the Germany Trophy, and landed himself a Tyrrell F1 seat for 1979 that resulted in two podiums and a career-best 11th in the standings.

3. Juan Manuel Correa ECUADOR 1,828 days

Photo by Jerry Andre / LAT Images

The Charouz Racing System team had impressed in its first F2 season in 2018, but the arrival of a new car the year after presented another big challenge to the team and its rookie driver Correa. He finished 16th on debut, then in the second round in Baku surprised by coming from 17th on the grid to finish seventh in the feature race. That put him second on the sprint race grid, and he held his position to take a maiden podium. Four more non-scores followed, then at Paul Ricard he had a similar weekend to Baku as he converted 12th on the grid into seventh in the feature race, and was sprint race runner-up.

But then another six non-scores followed before his racing career almost came to an end as he was involved in the horrific accident at Spa-Francorchamps that claimed the life of Anthoine Hubert and broke Correa’s legs and spine. He returned to racing in 2021 via FIA Formula 3, then stepped back up to F2 at the end of 2022. The 24-year-old has been there ever since, and after a track limits penalty cost him a sprint race podium last Saturday he made up for it by coming from eighth on the grid to finish third in the feature race.

2. John Surtees ENGLAND 1,919 days

Surtees entered eight European F2 rounds: four in 1967 and four in 1972. He was a factory Lola driver, and already an F1 world champion, when he had his first go at the championship and he finished third in Silverstone’s BARC 200 then was Eifelrennen runner-up. He failed to qualify for the Guards’ Trophy at Brands Hatch, and five years later also failed to qualify for the London Trophy around Crystal Palace and Rouen’s grand prix. This time he was in his own Surtees TS10 car.

A month later he won Imola’s grand prix, which was one of his last ever races in contemporary single-seaters.

1. Lamberto Leoni ITALY 2,851 days

Any F1 fans will know Leoni for failing to qualify for the 1977 Italian Grand Prix while driving for Surtees, then a year later failing to qualify for two races after being signed by Ensign. He did qualify for the Brazilian Grand Prix, but transmission issues meant he could not race, and so his sole F1 start was in the Argentinian Grand Prix where his engine gave up 29 laps in.

But before reaching F1, Leoni had shown the potential to be a racing star. He finished third on his European F2 debut in 1975’s season-opening Estoril Grand Prix, but failed to score through the rest of that campaign. In 1977 he had three DNQs, but once he switched to a more competitive team he ended up winning the Adriatic Grand Prix at Misano.

With his F1 career going nowhere, Leoni made further F2 outings in 1979, 1982, ’83 and ’84, with pole position for the 1983 German Trophy being his next highlight in the championship.

European F2 was succeeded by Int. F3000 in 1985, and Leoni stayed in the paddock. That year he made the podium with two different teams, and his third place finish in the Pau GP came almost eight years after his Misano win. Three months later, and after switching from PMC Motorsport to Corbari Italia, he took another third place at the track now known as the Red Bull RIng.

Leoni did two more Int. F300 seasons after that, but came agnosingly short of any more podiums as he finished fourth in the last three races of 1987.

The post The longest gaps between podiums in F1’s primary feeder series appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: Penske

Gil de Ferran, 1992 British Formula 3 champion, double IndyCar champion and winner of the 2003 Indianapolis 500, has died in the United States.

According to media reports, de Ferran suffered a heart attack while competing with his son at an event in Florida.

De Ferran was born in Paris in 1967, moving to Brazil when he was four. After winning the Brazilian Formula Ford championship in 1987 he followed the path of Emerson Fittipaldi, Nelson Piquet and Ayrton Senna to Britain. Running Alan Cornock’s Fulmar Reynard he finished third in both the British and Esso championships in 1989, before being signed by Paul Stewart Racing for dual British and European campaigns in Formula Vauxhall/Opel Lotus in 1990.

Though he beat team-mate David Coulthard in both, championship success eluded him as Vincenzo Sospiri and Rubens Barrichello took the titles.

For 1991, de Ferran moved up to F3 with Edenbridge Racing, helping the team to develop the out-of-favour Reynard 913 and taking three wins. For 1992 his hard work in sorting the Reynard chassis paid dividends as, reunited with PSR, he dominated the British championship.

He stayed with PSR for his graduation to Formula 3000 in 1993, taking three wins in two seasons and a championship best of third in 1994.

Despite two brief outings in contemporary Formula 1 cars, which were too insubstantial to even merit being considered tests, there were no openings to move up with Barrichello and Coulthard, so de Ferran made the move to the USA and IndyCar.

His big break came when he joined Penske Racing in 2000, winning the IndyCar title in his first season with the team and doubling up the following year. He bowed out of driving single-seaters at the end of 2003, having notched up his only Indianapolis 500 win in his final season.

Having become a team owner, he made a brief reappearance behind the wheel of one of his own team’s Acuras in the American Le Mans Series in 2008 and 2009, maintaining his strong links with Honda.

On the other side of the pit wall, he was BAR Honda’s Sports Director in F1 from 2005 to 2007, and sporting director of McLaren from 2018 to 2021, renewing his links with the team in 2023.

In a statement Roger Penske paid tribute to de Ferran, who “defined class as a driver and as a gentleman. As an IndyCar champion and an Indianapolis 500 winner, Gil accomplished so much during his career, both on and off the track.”

David Salters, president of Honda Racing Corporation USA paid tribute to his “special place in all our hearts,” adding that “Gil was a big part of the Honda racing family and CART heritage…He was an extremely talented man and brilliant racer.”

In its statement, McLaren commented on de Ferran as “an important and integral part of our Racing team [who] made a lasting impact on everyone racing and working alongside him.”

Formula Scout extends its deepest sympathies to his family, wife Angela and children Luke and Anna, his friends and colleagues from the motor-racing community.

The post F3 and IndyCar champion Gil de Ferran dies aged 56 appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photos: Roger Gascoigne

Thirty years ago today, Luca Badoer wrapped up the 1992 International Formula 3000 title at his first attempt with a crushing victory, his fourth of the season, in the penultimate round at Nogaro

He infamously failed to score a single point in his subsequent Formula 1 career, which reached its nadir with a romantic but ill-judged and ill-fated cameo for Ferrari in 2009 as he replaced Felipe Massa for two races, 10 years on from his last F1 start.

Now he’s back in the single-seater paddocks, supporting his son Brando in Formula 4. Formula Scout chatted to Badoer about his title-winning F3000 season and his career, both before and after his year-of-years in F1’s primary feeder series.

Luca didn’t start karting until the age of 14, with his father acting as his mechanic, before stepping up to single-seaters once he had reached 18.

“In those years [it was] the normal step. To drive on the track, you needed to have a driving license and to be 18 years old, so that was the only thing to do. It was the same for everybody.”

Despite his later successes in cars, Badoer cites the 1988 Italian 100 International karting finale at Val Vibrata as a highlight of his career. He headed qualifying, but his weekend didn’t go to plan: “I had an accident in the pre-final, so I started last in the final. I made an incredible comeback and won the championship. That was something like a miracle at that time. That was an incredible highlight that everybody still remembers in go-karting.”

After dipping his toe into Italian Formula 3 in 1989, he returned for a full season in 1990 in a MRD Racing-run Ralt RT33.

“We bought [Alex] Zanardi’s car from the year before and we were the only team which drove with an old car. The same problem of money. We buy an old car, in a cheaper team but a good [one], and we did a great job as well.”

With victory in the final round, he moved to the Supercars team for 1991, armed with a new Dallara F391. After a slow start, his season ignited with a mid-season run of four consecutive on-the-road wins, including the Monza Lottery Grand Prix.

“I remember the Monza Lotteria for sure because it was on television as well,” Badoer recalls. “But it was all the season very performing and everything was working very well, everything was perfect at that stage. It was a very good season, but we didn’t win the championship, so good but not fantastic.

“The mechanics made a mistake at Mugello and put one tyre on the front that was not marked. I was disqualified for this, and I lost the championship.”

Badoer finished the year fourth in the standings. Had he kept his Mugello win, he would have been champion.

Despite his F3 form, he was certainly not one of the favourites coming into the 1992 F3000 season against a strong field including British F3 graduates Rubens Barrichello and David Coulthard, as well as returning drivers such as Laurent Aiello, Andrea Montermini and Emanuele Naspetti.

Barrichello joined the splendidly-named Il Barone Rampante team, which came second in 1991 with Alex Zanardi. But as the Brazilian explained to Formula Scout, “the jump from F3 to F3000 at that time was much bigger than today, so basically it was tough to drive that F3000”.

Badoer stepped up with Crypton Engineering, a team that had in the two previous seasons since entering the series scored just once. As was often the case in his career, Badoer’s choice of team was driven by money rather than form.

“I spoke to other teams. It was very expensive with a top team, so we chose Crypton because we had a budget just for that team, but it was a surprise for everybody. The team was working very well and we could get, I think, five pole positions, four or five victories – I don’t remember – and we won the championship one or two races before the end. It was fantastic work from everybody.”

Badoer’s season got off to a solid, if unspectacular start, with points in the first three races at Silverstone, Pau and Barcelona. At Silverstone, engine problems caused him to slip back having been running a comfortable second, while in Pau he calmly nursed his stricken Reynard home after sustaining wing damage in a typically chaotic first lap on the French street circuit.

Impressive results for a rookie but still nothing to give any indication of what was to follow.

Crypton turned up for the next round at Enna-Pergusa in Sicily with its own monoshock front suspension, developed by the Italian team’s in-house engineer, Gianfranco Bieli. Badoer qualified on pole and simply romped away to win by 22s from Naspetti, a four-time winner in the championship the year before.

Another dominant lights-to-flag victory followed at the next round at Hockenheim supporting the German Grand Prix, while at the Nurburgring, Badoer had to settle for second on the grid before calmly outbraking Naspetti for the lead on the second tour and pulling out a comfortable lead.

When did he start to believe that he could challenge for the title? “At the start of the season, no, because we have to put many things together but after three races we did a very good step, a very good job. Everything was running, I started to win the first race, the second, the third and then obviously everybody was thinking to get the final victory.”

Having been caught out slightly by wet qualifying at Spa-Francorchamps, in the race he was chasing Olivier Beretta on lap four when he lost control at Raidillon. He shot across the track, skipping over the gravel trap before slamming backwards into barriers on the right-hand side. The left rear corner was torn off the car but fortunately Badoer escaped with whiplash and heavy chest bruising, and an overnight stay in hospital in Liege.

Badoer remembers little of the crash 30 years later, simply demonstrating the spin with a twisting movement of his hands and a shrug.

Badoer (r) with fellow racing dad Emerson Fittipaldi in the F4 paddock

Showing no fear, Badoer stormed to pole at Albacete by 0.9s, with second place behind Montermini in the race giving him a six-point lead over his countryman as the teams headed across the Pyrenees to Nogaro for the penultimate round.

In another untouchable performance, Badoer again took pole and drove away from the field at half-a-second per lap. Having built up a comfortable lead of 20s, he took it easy in the closing stages to avoid tripping over backmarkers on the tight Gascon circuit, taking the flag still 12s to the good.

In truth, he had never looked under any threat and the title was his. “We had a big celebration,” he remembers, with a touch of understatement, perhaps.

Badoer does not believe there was any specific reason for his and the team’s dominance. “For sure, it is all together but one of the biggest parts was me, because I got really good confidence with the car,” he tells Formula Scout. “I could push, I could feel to have everything under control, so this was for sure one of the important things.”

He plays down the significance of the team’s monoshock suspension, noting that “sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t.” And to be fair, chassis manufacturer Reynard quickly introduced their own version for all their teams.

Barrichello is not fully convinced though: “They were so much faster than everybody else. When you have something like this, it is definitely something to look at,” he said.

Badoer himself says he doesn’t know what gave him such an advantage that season. “The key to success is to have clever people inside, a good driver for sure and for the victory you need that the team work all together,” he reasons.

“You need very good people inside and in the right places inside the team otherwise it is impossible. It was a surprise because on paper it was not for sure the promising team for the victory, but they did a very good job.”

Barrichello in 1992

Indeed, they did. Before the introduction of single chassis and engine suppliers, there was a colourful mix of chassis – predominantly Reynard but also Lola and Ralt – and engines from Mugen, Judd and Cosworth in F300, unlike today’s uniformity.

Undoubtedly the engine to have, at least on high-speed circuits, was a Heini Mader-prepared Cosworth. But Crypton was not the only team equipped with the preferred Reynard-Cosworth/Mader combination, and Badoer’s team-mate, Michael Bartels, was unable to live with the Italian’s pace.

Barrichello’s Il Barone Rampante team switched to the Mader-tuned engine mid-season. Barrichello explained to Formula Scout that “we had a difficult season because we had the Zytek-Judd engine. The balance of the car was very good, but we lacked on power. And we just said, ‘OK, let’s change,’ and when we changed, we changed the whole balance with the weight distribution and so on.”

While having the right chassis and engine obviously played an important role, there is no doubt that Badoer made the most of it. And, importantly, his rivals acknowledged that he and the team had simply done a better job. “Badoer was superb,” remembers Barrichello. “He was just too far ahead.”

There were plenty of talented drivers in the field, “and in top teams,” Badoer stresses. “It was a big surprise for everybody. And this opened me the door for F1, obviously. It was very important to catch the Formula 1 opportunity.”

Badoer stepped up to F1 with Italian minnows, Scuderia Italia. “I was talking with other teams,” he explains. “I had a very good offer from Tyrrell but finally I chose Scuderia Italia because on paper it was promising [and] because Ferrari pushed to get me there. Philip Morris was the sponsor and together they pushed to get me there.”

At that time, Badoer “didn’t have a contract or a strong relationship with them [Ferrari]. Obviously, they were paying attention to me and, together with Philip Morris, they opened the door for the test [with Scuderia Italia at Estoril in September 1992].”

With hindsight, as he admits, it was “the wrong choice, but this is part of life”. Scuderia Italia’s Lola-Ferrari was disastrously slow, although the Tyrrell-Yamaha was not much better.

If he had his time again, “absolutely, I would sign with Tyrrell. It was a very good contract, a long contract and the Tyrrell was very quick in the years later. It was the best opportunity but finally that was the decision.”

Famously, Badoer failed to score a single point in 50 races in F1, although, in fairness, at a time where only the first six finishers scored points. Running in fourth with Minardi at the Nurburgring in 1999, it finally looked like his luck had changed.

“That race was dry/wet, wet/dry, we had the right situation. I was out always with the dry tyres and it was possible for me at some point [to get on] the podium, but then we broke the gearbox. I was, I think, fourth and had to stop two or three laps before the end.”

In fact, he retired 13 laps from the flag, but the heartbreak was tangible, particularly when team-mate Marc Gene inherited sixth and the final point.

Recalled from the test track to the Ferrari race seat in 2009 after Felipe Massa’s accident in Hungary, Badoer was clearly not race-fit and was hopelessly off the pace. Does he regret coming back? “It was the wrong time because the car wasn’t good that year, and testing was forbidden. After one year without driving, I just went to the race and obviously it was not a good experience but, I mean, it was an experience. Anyway, I drove in a race with Ferrari [which] is something special but it happened not in the right moment.”

He first got involved with Ferrari “in ’98 after some years with Scuderia Italia, two years with Minardi. That was a good team, a good relationship,” he says. “Gian Carlo [Minardi] is a fantastic person.”

Photo: ACI Sport

“I was signing again with Minardi for 1998 but then I had the opportunity with Ferrari, so I spoke with Gian Carlo and I decided to take the Ferrari chance. Then finally, I was a Minardi driver and a Ferrari test driver. Anyway, it was important to stay in the circus.

“It was a fantastic period. It was very important to be part of Ferrari, especially in that period. Finally, I have my satisfaction for the career anyway for that period.”

His vital but unheralded role, in a bygone age of unlimited testing, involved pounding round Ferrari’s test track at Fiorano. “I remember that I did [a total of] 130,000km of testing,” including “34,000km in a single year”.

“It was very good there because I had the opportunity to drive a lot, to develop the best car, and to learn from the team, from the engineer. It was a fantastic opportunity with fantastic results,” he explains. His work undoubtedly made a huge contribution to Maranello’s dominance of F1 from 2000 to 2004.

During that time he built “a very strong relationship with Michael Schumacher, both on track and out of the track. We had the same thinking for the development of the car on track and we were very good friends also off track,” he says.

Had he got a decent result with a smaller team, could it have opened the door with a top F1 team? “It [might have done] but in F1 you don’t have a lot of opportunity,” he replies. “You have to enter in the right door straightaway. If you don’t have the right position straightaway, it’s very difficult to step in the future because there are always new drivers arriving.

“If you drive for a small or medium team it is very difficult to get into a top team if you don’t have already a contract or somebody who is watching you.”

He now maintains a careful watch over son Brando’s career, although he prefers to keep himself to himself at the back of the garage. “In 30 years, obviously a lot of things have changed. I try to give him some information, but I won’t push, as I want him to get the basic experience without too much suggesting or too much teaching,” he says.

Badoer junior was selected to participate in September’s Scouting Camp organised by the Italian Automobile Federation and the Ferrari Driver Academy, but Badoer insists there is no extra pressure or favouritism from his former employers. “I don’t have a contract or a job there [at Ferrari]. I don’t want to push,” he points out. “I don’t want that because I was in Ferrari, he must be in Ferrari. There are other opportunities, we will see.”

The logos of Badoer’s 1992 sponsor, Replay Jeans, on Brando’s F4 car provide a nostalgic connection to his own racing days. He may never have got the career breaks in F1, or at least not until it was far too late, but his achievements in F3 and F2, on a shoestring budget, deserve the greatest respect.

For one summer, 30 years ago, Badoer had simply been imperious as he romped from victory to victory against the top juniors racing in Europe.

Photo: ACI Sport

The post Has history treated 1992 F3000 champion Badoer unjustly? appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photos: Roger Gascoigne

Twenty years ago today, Tomas Enge scored a crushing victory at the Hungaroring to top the International F3000 points table for the first time. But a chain of events then occurred that marked a note in racing history

There was plenty of celebrations at Arden following Enge’s fourth win of the season, but unbeknown to him a random drug test he had undergone during the weekend would show traces of a “banned substance”, cannabis. He had been tested before in multiple occasions, always clean, but this time it was different. The fallout would ultimately change his season and his career fundamentally.

As the teams assembled for the championship decider at Monza on the second weekend of September, news broke of Enge’s positive drug test, prompting a level of media interest unprecedented in the category.

“Monza was crazy,” he tells Formula Scout over a coffee 20 years on.

“Of course, it was difficult because the media were pushing, and not only the media but the whole paddock – other teams, other drivers and so on. So, you feel the pressure from people, from all angles.”

For his fourth full season in F3000 in 2002, the then 25-year-old Czech had moved to Arden International, the team owned and run by Christian Horner, now, of course, Red Bull Racing’s team principal.

Displaying the same fierce protection of his driver that we have become accustomed to in Formula 1, Horner was, says Enge, “impeccable in his behaviour,” that weekend.

“He said: ‘Fine, we will stand by you, and we want to do the most for you so we can win the championship here at Monza. So, I will face the media and we just want you to concentrate on the race.’”

“But I think we managed the pressure – Bjorn [Wirdheim, Enge’s team-mate] won. All the pressure was on me personally, but we had a super car, so he managed to take maximum advantage because he was not under any pressure, and he just drove away from everybody and won the race.”

Enge himself, suffering from a nasty cold on top of everything else going on around him, appeared oblivious to the media frenzy. Third on the grid at Monza, he dropped to fifth at the start but after a late safety car restart picked his way through to second, enough to clinch the title. For now.

When a second sample also proved positive however, he was summoned to a World Motor Sport Council meeting in October for his case to be heard and to learn his sentence. Drug abuse, particularly for a recreational substance, was almost unknown in motorsport. Would the WMSC be lenient? Would it suspend Enge from racing but leave past results unaffected?

To this day, Enge continues to maintain his innocence of having knowingly taken cannabis. “We don’t know what happened,” he says. “There were lots of discussions – at a club, in some food or in some chocolate. We don’t know. In any case, because of that they disqualified me from the race at the Hungaroring which I had won, and thus I lost the title.”

Antonin Charouz says Enge “could have breathed it in at a disco”, such was the disbelief how cannabis could have been consumed.

“We were working with different outcomes,” remembers Enge. “In the end it could have been worse as they could have taken my licence away for a period and luckily that didn’t happen.”

In the end, Enge was disqualified from the Hungaroring race and as a result lost the title. That made him a genuine former champion, a phrase often used in motorsport but very rarely in its correct meaning.

Though we didn’t know it at the time, F3000 was entering its final iteration and would be replaced by GP2 in 2005. The 2002 season ebbed and flowed between principal rival Sebastien Bourdais and Enge, with a late charge from Hockenheim and Spa-Francorchamps winner Giorgio Pantano giving him an outside shot at the title going into Monza.

2002 International F3000 title battle

Looking back, Enge would have been a deserving champion. He was consistently quick, and Arden had mastered the new-for-2002 Lola B2/50 better than its rivals.

In the season opener at Interlagos he had demolished the competition. He was over 10 seconds to the good with five laps remaining of the race when a fuel pump failed. Or at least that was the story at the time.

“No, it was petrol,” he says, twenty years on. “We said, and I was told, that it had been due to a fuel pump but I think that we just ran out of fuel. Either somebody miscalculated or made a mistake in filling the tank. I think that if we sat down now with Christian Horner, he would say himself that it was fuel.”

He was out of sorts at Imola, before overcoming gearbox problems to finish second at Barcelona. Despite these first points, the championship seemed to be slipping from his hands after just three rounds and he had scored less than the year before.

But then it all came together at the A1-Ring (now the Red Bull Ring). In a weekend overshadowed by Ferrari’s team orders shenanigans in the Formula 1 race, Enge claimed a perfect lights-to-flag win and in the process took Arden’s first ever F3000 victory, to the delight of Horner.

After a surprise podium in Monaco, on a track where Enge never really clicked, Enrico Toccacelo punted him out of second place and a points finish at the Nurburgring, leaving him trailing Bourdais by 13 points at the season’s halfway mark.

Next up was Silverstone, Arden’s home track, and a circuit where Enge had flown in pre-season testing.

“Silverstone was like a home race for me and Arden,” he says. “I always liked England because of the language. I really liked British humour and also got on well with the British.

“Christian really wanted to win at Silverstone and there we ran like a Swiss watch. I won qualification by six-tenths. I knew that the first qualifying lap would be decisive so I had to give everything on the first lap and afterwards the times would go up.”

In the race, he was on a different level, taking the chequered flag 13s ahead of Bourdais after 30 laps of racing.

He was on pole again at Magny-Cours: “I remember as if it was yesterday. One warm-up lap, first lap – boom, time – and then the others would try to improve at the end, lap after lap but nobody was able to go faster.” Another victory came his way, but this time he had to fight Bourdais the full distance.

Contact at Hockenheim and Spa – where Bourdais missed his braking for La Source, hitting Enge from behind and damaging his rear wing – put him on the back foot again.

“I had so much bad luck that season, at Spa the collision with Bourdais and then Toccacelo took me out,” he recalls, before adding with a smile: “And unusually for me, they weren’t my fault! That’s how it was.”

Enge was always an open, jovial, effervescent character, ready with a laugh and a smile. “If people are relaxed, then so am I,” he tells Formula Scout. “The people in the paddock liked me, cheered me on and made it clear that they were supporting me – the other teams, the TV people – we used to joke around. I was just the person for little jokes.”

His two title rivals, Bourdais and Pantano were, he says, were “like night and day!”.

“Pantano was day – always smiling, Italian, laid back. We got out of the car and were mates.

“Bourdais was like night – very French, never smiled, a bit strange. We respected each other of course, but with Bourdais we weren’t really friends.”

Arden in 2001 Photo: Hellahulla

He has nothing but praise for team boss, Horner. “I can remember that Christian was extremely ambitious. In 2001 he ran Viktor Maslov, who had brought a big sponsor, and Darren Manning. When I came to Arden in the autumn of 2001, he immediately said: ‘We want to win the championship. You’re the only one who can do that for us, and we’ll give everything.’ Super team, engineers, as soon as I got there the ambition – ‘with you we will win the championship’.

“I didn’t feel under any pressure, rather I was really looking forward to it and it was great.”

Horner was a really “super, wonderful, very fair,” boss, says Enge. “He really made it clear that he believed in me. That really builds your self-confidence and I think he is still the same, how he fights for his team and his drivers, and against the competition. If I watch Drive to Survive he speaks just as he used to speak then.”

Enge has motor racing in his genes – father Bretislav was a top touring car driver in the late 1970s and early ’80s, competing in the European Touring Car Championship in a Skoda 130Rs and then various BMWs across Europe, despite the obstacles imposed by the communist regime in Czechoslovakia. Together with co-driver Zdenek Vojtech, Enge senior finished third in the 1982 Tourist Trophy at Silverstone.

“Dad raced in the West which meant that in order to get permission from the communists to travel abroad, he had to leave his family in Czechoslovakia to ensure that he would come back to his family, that he wouldn’t emigrate.”

Keen sportsman Enge played ice hockey and did ski jumping, typical sporting activities for a boy growing up in the mountains around his home town, Liberec. “I have to say that I wasn’t close to the motor racing, even though I had a racing father at home, surrounded by lots of photos even if I watched some races on television.”

Then around the age of 12 or 13 he finally got the bug. “Dad started to race back in Czechoslovakia, and started to prepare his racing cars in our garage at home.

“Whenever there was a race in Brno, sometimes we had the chance to go there to watch. As small boys, we didn’t know these big cars and famous drivers. Everything was so far away from us, these weren’t go-karts that we could jump into. At that time it was really popular for the teams to have stickers to give to the fans, so we just ran up and down the paddock trying to collect them, shouting: ‘stickers please’.

“At that moment I really wanted to race myself. In the evenings, when my parents were watching TV, I used to take dad’s overalls, helmet, shoes, gloves and go to the garage, get changed – I was still small so they were quite big – and got into the car. It was a Skoda of some sort and I would sit in the car and make the noise of the engine and pretend to be racing it.”

He didn’t start racing karts, with a 50cc motor, until the age of 14, but when the rules changed to allow 16-year-olds to race cars, Enge quickly got his racing licence and entered the Czechoslovakian Ford Fiesta Cup. When the opportunity came to try a single-seater, Enge was immediately hooked.

“Once I’d experienced the unbelievable feeling of driving a single-seater compared with the Fiesta or a touring car, I just really wanted to drive in single-seaters.”

For 1995, Enge stepped up to Formula Ford 1800 in the German championship, competing against the likes of Nick Heidfeld and Pierre Kaffer. “I got the hang of it very quickly and I was faster than Heidfeld. I won the first three races in Zolder, Brno and Most and then I started to crash a lot. I just wanted too much and didn’t know how to calm down and take that step back below the limit as I just had to drive always on or over the limit.”

After finishing third in that first season in FFord, he went on to take the title the following year, as well as coming 13th in the FFord Festival.

The step up to Formula 3 in Germany yielded little in the way of results, as Enge struggled to come to terms with the driving style required.

Enge in 1997

“It just didn’t suit my aggressive style. The car didn’t have much power but had lots of downforce to give it huge grip.” And so the smooth entry and exit required to get the most out of it was not something that a rather wild Enge could handle. “I always really overdrove the corners and then didn’t have the exit speed,” he admits.

Despite switching to the works Opel team of Bertram Schafer Racing for his sophomore season, results didn’t improve, not helped by dropping the dominant Dallara in favour of a Martini chassis. Then the chance came to test a F3000 car at Varano.

“I really enjoyed it – wide car, big tyres, big performance and drifting,” Enge says of the test. He made his F3000 debut in July 1998 at Hockenheim with the Auto Sport Racing outfit from Italy, qualified fifth at Spa and scored in the Nurburgring finale, before joining a new team, the WRT Fina squad of Gabriele Rafanelli, who had run BMW Bigazzi in touring cars, for 1999.

The season was a major disappointment. Enge failed to qualify for the first two rounds, but he stuck at it, “and even got a podium in the wet at Magny-Cours but otherwise we didn’t have any results”.

For 2000, Enge again followed the path trodden by Heidfeld, moving to the mySAP.com team, effectively a McLaren junior team, with which Heidfeld had clinched the 1999 title with. “For some reason, it wasn’t a success,” remembers Enge.

But at Hockenheim, two years after his F3000 debut, Enge finally tasted victory. Starting from pole on a wet track, Enge pulled away from team-mate Tomas Scheckter. However, as the rain eased it became more difficult.

“I had the feeling that I’d overheated the tyres and that Scheckter was catching me up. In my mind, instinctively I calculated that I wouldn’t be able to hold on and that Scheckter would overtake me.”

He radioed the pits to prepare to change to slicks. However, due to a radio problem, though they heard him, he could not hear their response telling him to stay out. After a lengthy stop, he rejoined in the middle of the top 10 with only a few laps remaining and was shocked to discover that everybody else had stayed out on wet tyres.

Enge in 1998

As he fought to get heat into the tyres, Enge feared that he’d made the wrong decision, but after a lap-and-a-half the tyres were working and he began to hunt down those in front.

“I began to go past one after the other – bang, bang, bang. And then onto the last lap and I was taking it carefully. It was such a bizarre win because nobody knew that it had been my decision to change tyres, that the team hadn’t wanted me to go into the pits and I hadn’t heard them.”

Enge again switched teams ahead of the 2001 season, joining Justin Wilson at Nordic Racing. He took two wins at Barcelona and the Nurburgring, but with Wilson out of reach in the championship missed the final round at Monza as F1 was beckoning.

Following Luciano Burti’s frightening crash in the Belgian Grand Prix, his Prost team was looking for potential replacements and Enge was invited to test at Magny-Cours.

“The team wanted me to test and to do the mandatory 300km in order to get a superlicence so that I could step in if required,” he recalls. He learned that he would be driving on the Monday before Monza – 10 September 2001. The next day, of course, the world changed.

“I was in Monaco at the time and somebody called me from the Czech Republic and asked ‘Have you seen what’s happened? Switch on the TV.’” In those pre-internet days, he, like the rest of the world, sat glued to the television.

“Nobody really knew what had happened but there was lots of speculation that the grand prix would be cancelled, that flights would be cancelled, that the world would freeze in an instant.”

After much debate, the race went ahead, and Enge got to make his F1 debut, “the first Czech, the first Eastern European, the first ‘Communist child’ to race in F1”.

Enge in 2000

His weekend was plagued by mechanical issues from the start of practice. “Each training session there was some technical problem – engine, brakes, electronics – so I went into qualifying having not done many laps.

“On the first lap at the first chicane the engine blew up. I stopped, ran back to the pits for the spare car, which was set up for my team-mate, Heinz-Harald Frentzen. The mechanics quickly changed the seat, the pedals, the set up for me.”

On his first flying lap in the T-car “the gearbox goes from seventh to fifth on the straight. Some sort of electronic problem. Gearbox blown up, engine blown up, kaputt.”

After another technical problem in the warm-up, “we started the race and I thought ‘if I do more than 10 laps without a problem it will be a miracle’. But I did 53 laps and I finished 12th, my best result.”

Enge saw out the season with Prost, finishing 13th at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and retiring at Suzuka, although with no testing and no simulators in those days, he’d had no chance to learn the circuits.

It was clear that the writing was on the wall for Prost’s F1 team, and in November 2001 it went into liquidation. “Money was short. Prost was unable to invest in new materials, such as engines or gearboxes. They ran the parts to the end of their lives, the overhauls didn’t happen as they should, that’s why we had so many technical problems.”

Alain Prost skipped the last two races to work on a rescue package but to no avail. Enge had been sure that someone would step in and that he would continue into 2002. When it became clear that wasn’t going to happen “the seats were pretty much occupied”.

Only Minardi had seats available but “we didn’t want to go there as Minardi had been the slowest car, which turned out to be a mistake” as the team started the next F1 season with a remarkable fifth place in Melbourne with debutant Mark Webber.

Enge in 2004

With no options to move up, Enge was forced to drop back to F3000 for 2002, which is where our story started.

Enge agrees that the doping test may well have cost him further drives. “Maybe not only F1, but also Indycar. But it is difficult to say. Even before the doping there were not the sponsorship funds to go further. I don’t want to speculate.”

After a final crack at F3000 in 2004, Enge decided to try his luck in the USA. For the next year he did secure a drive with Panther Racing in the Indy Racing League, at that time predominantly an ovals-based championship.

It was “a completely different world,” he says. “The speed, the massive adrenaline but the driving technique and thinking were completely different. Each oval is different – gradients, straight lengths, type of surfaces, bumpiness, even the ways the wind blew.”

In the fourth round at Motegi he had a rib-breaking qualifying crash, which complicated his Indianapolis 500 debut.

“I couldn’t start the race which was at the end of April and ribs usually need three weeks to heal.” With the Indy 500 less than a month away, and the rookie test and qualifying in between, he had a race to get fit.

He qualified 10th and ran sensibly through the first 400 miles. As the race went green on lap 160, Enge was running second behind Danica Patrick, the first woman ever to lead the Indianapolis 500.

Enge takes up the story: “Green flag. Patrick in front of me. Full throttle. She starts to spin. I went down. She crashed into me. Crashed into [Panther team-mate, Tomas] Scheckter. We were both out of the race, me and Scheckter.”

Enge was ready to stay in the US. “I took it that 2005 was for me a learning year and then 2006 and 2007 I would start to reap the rewards of the experience. I was mentally prepared to stay in America. I liked it there, the racing was great, I had good conditions, I felt at ease. The American race fans were amazing.”

Enge in A1GP

But then at the end of the year Chevrolet, who had been supplying engines exclusively to Panther, stopped its Indycar programme. A one-off drive with Cheever Racing in 2006 felt too much like stepping unprepared into the Prost again and so Enge called quits on his American adventure.

Asked to name a career highlight, he returns to his brief time in America. “I really loved Indycar because of the high adrenaline, high speed, side-by-side racing, cars in front, beside, behind and underneath you. You know that each small correction or mistake can end up in a huge and painful accident so therefore the adrenaline was massive.

“I had quite few technical issues throughout the whole season and a few accidents as well. While some of the accidents were my fault, some weren’t but that’s racing. Unfortunately, I could not prove myself.”

Occasional races for the Czech A1GP squad, run by former mentor Antonin Charouz, yielded one victory at Shanghai, but by this time Enge had moved to sportscars, the area where he achieved probably his most prolonged run of success.

Although his best finish in the Le Mans 24 Hours came in 2009 with the Lola Aston Martin LMP1 car, the car didn’t suit his ballsy style of driving, which was more attuned to the brutish GT1 machinery

“I never really got on with the prototype, because the driver sat relatively close to the front axle and the rear wheels were a long way back, plus the rear was very heavy with the 12-cylinder Aston Martin engine. When it got into a slide it wasn’t easy to correct it.”

His speed in a GT1 car at Le Mans was never in doubt, with six class pole positions, five of them in succession, for Ferrari and Aston Martin, but only one class victory in 2003.

In such a long and varied career, does he have any regrets? “Mistakes, of course,” he replies. “If mistakes hadn’t happened things would have been different. The question is, in which direction?”

Enge today

He is trying to pass on the benefit of this experience to a new generation of drivers. He is coaching two young Czech drivers in German GT4 racing and worked for a period in 2021 with the country’s rising single-seater star Roman Stanek.

Enge says he races now “more or less for fun”, continuin to drive in national rallies with his sister Lucie as co-driver.

He is clearly at ease with his life and his career, and its highs and lows. His young family is naturally important, but he doesn’t have any plan to be a racing dad pushing his five-year-old son into karting.

“I’m trying to keep him away, but I know I won’t be able to keep him away so long,” he says. “Once the kid starts to have fun in racing, the father has to stop having fun, to fully focus on the kid.

“I don’t want to be the parent who is getting crazy. Maybe I won’t get crazy. This is something I am learning as well, about my own kids.”

Possibly Enge was simply born 20 or 30 years too late. High-downforce cars, requiring finesse and precision were probably never his thing. Racing was always fun, the more power the better. He talks of adrenalin frequently. Versatile in the mould of a Vic Elford or his contemporary, and, briefly his team-mate, Stephane Sarrazin, he drove single-seaters on both sides of the Atlantic, prototypes, GTs, touring cars and rally cars.

Indeed, he came close to rallying a Prodrive-entered Subaru in selected rounds of the World Rally Championship.

Open and likeable, he appears at ease with his own failings and mistakes. His aggressive style led to incidents, but equally often he was the victim of others’ errors. And bad luck cost him dearly on and off-track.

He may be a former champion but a champion he surely was.

The post How Tomas Enge won, then lost, the 2002 International F3000 title appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: James Black

Andretti Autosport is best known for racing in IndyCar, but it’s also run the last three Indy Lights champions. As it continues its push to enter F1, we look at other junior single-seater outfits that attempted the same

There’s a possibility that an 11th team will join the Formula 1 grid in the coming years, but the championship is seeking a full manufacturer entry such as Audi rather than the all-American racing outfit that is Andretti Autosport.

Headquartered in Indianapolis, Andretti has over 90 IndyCar wins, is one of the big hitters in the Formula E world championship and also races in the groundbreaking Extreme E series with success. Not only that, but it’s finding the racing stars of the future by competing in Indy Lights and running its own driver development programme.

The list of names to have raced for Andretti is simply incredible, and one any F1 team would be envious of. In fact, its current driver roster is one to look up to as well with 2016 Indianapolis 500 winner Alexander Rossi, former F1 star Romain Grosjean and the record-breaking 22-year-old Colton Herta fronting its IndyCar efforts while in FE it runs the series’ 2021 super rookie Jake Dennis and 2019 Indy Lights champion Oliver Askew. Outside of single-seaters, its off-road programme in XE was able to sign Formula Renault Eurocup race-winner and World Rallycross champion Timmy Hansen.

The high-profile figures working in engineering and team management roles for Andretti also is something to boast about, and of course the team was founded and still run by former McLaren F1 driver and 1991 IndyCar champion Michael Andretti.

At the end of the day, however, it’s looking unlikely that Andretti is going to fulfil his F1 team boss dream. And he wouldn’t be the first to create a title-winning team in open-wheel racing that’s achieved everything but make it to single-seaters’ pinnacle. Here’s 10 teams that tried to join F1, and the impressive number of teams’ titles they won elsewhere.

ART Grand Prix
Titles: GP2 (2005, ’06, ’09 & ’15), GP2 Asia (2008), GP3 (2010, ’11, ’12, ’13, ’15 & ’18), F3 Euro Series (’05, ’06, ’07, ’08 & ’09)

Photo: FIA Formula 2 / Jakob Ebrey Photography

ART GP’s roots come from ASM Formule 3, a team founded by Frederic Vasseur that competed in the French Formula 3 championship. He joined forces with Nicolas Todt and rebranded his squad as it moved into GP2 for 2005, and the rest is history.

Through the 2000s it was the team to beat in continental F3 and quite frequently in GP2 too, running Lewis Hamilton and Nico Hulkenberg to titles in both. Its list of F3 champions also included Romain Grosjean and Jules Bianchi, while in F1’s primary feeder series (which evolved into Formula 2) it made champions of Nico Rosberg, Stoffel Vandoorne, George Russell and Nyck de Vries.

After an uber-successful 2009, ART GP started work on an entry into F1 for the 2011 season. However by summer the financial pressures of both the start-up costs to enter and also those being applied by the global recession meant the French squad withdrew its application to the FIA for a place in F1 and it instead continued its focus on junior single-seater series.

The announcement said ART GP’s F1 “will have to postpone its project until a later date”, but there’s been no pick-up in the decade since and its two lead men have moved on to the F1 paddock in different roles. Vasseur is team principal of Alfa Romeo Racing, while Todt is a driver manager through his All Road Management company.

Super Nova
Titles: Int. F3000 (2000), A1GP (2006-07), Auto GP (2012 & ’13)

Photo: GP2 Series Media Service

In a rather chaotic and comedic interview with Formula Scout, 1990s F1 backmarker Taki Inoue revealed his involvement in the found of the initially Japanese but then Norfolk-based Super Nova team and how it came to conquer the levels below F1.

Its first sniff at the top level was directly linked to Inoue, possibly providing the platform he needed to make his F1 debut, but in partnership with an existing operation in the world championship.

With each year in the 1990s the team grew as a force in International Formula 3000, while also picking up correspondence with struggling F1 entities to see if it could make its way onto the grid. Nothing came to fruition with any of the teams that Super Nova spoke to, and when the FIA opened up F1 to several new teams for 2010 there was strong rumours once again that Norfolk’s finest were interested.

By that point its focus was on keeping its GP2 squad competitive though, as well as racing in the F3000-based Auto GP series. In 2012 the team went global as GP2 absorbed its Asian series into its main F1-supporting championship and Auto GP expanded from its European base to race in Africa, North and South America.

The good times wouldn’t last, and Super Nova ended its time in racing by running the Trulli GP team through the first season of Formula E in 2014-15.

DAMS
Titles: A1GP (2005-06), GP2 Asia (2008-09 & ’11), Auto GP (2010 & ’11), GP2 (2012 & ’14), FR3.5 (2013 & ’14), F2 (2019)

Photo: DAMS

Under its new ownership led by Charles Pic, an entry into F1 is back on the map for a team that in addition to substantial success in Int. F3000 and the series that succeeded it was also the original pacesetter in FE.

In partnership with Renault, DAMS won three teams’ titles in a row and since partnering with Nissan in 2018 has won two ePrix races. While it did get to race in FE once the series was awarded world championship status, it has recently given up operational responsibility of its FE team to Nissan following a season-and-a-half of poor results.

A very long time before that, DAMS sought to race at a world championship level by designing (with Reynard) a car that it could enter into F1 in 1995. A lack of finances prevented the creation under its own name being raced, and by the time it was being tested on track over a year later it was a redundant design in F1’s fast-paced technical world.

Pic, an F1 driver himself, is also involved in the CAP Racing team which holds similar ambitions of moving up the single-seater latter. But having eggs in multiple baskets, and considerable financial clout too, probably won’t be enough to bring him back into the F1 fraternity – particularly when one of DAMS’ F2 rivals is known to be eyeing up F1 right now too…

iSport International
Titles: GP2 (2007), GP2 Asia (2009-10)

Present from the start of GP2 in 2005, iSport had most of its success with Timo Glock as he won two races in a half-season with the team in 2006 and then won the title in 2007. The team continued winning races until its place on the grid was taken by Russian Time in 2013, but a year later it was back in the series as it became the operation behind the Russian squad.

Its team founder Paul Jackson announced its F1 interest in April 2009 when the FIA revealed the tender process for new teams to join under a £30 million budget cap. But with that budget cap not actually being applied it killed off the bids to join of iSport and many other teams, with former GP2 team Campos Racing ending up as one of the three teams being chosen to race in F1. However Campos, which had sold its top junior single-seater operation to Addax, had its planned ‘Campos Meta’ F1 team collapse pre-season and instead Hispania Racing Team made it onto the grid as a phoenix of Campos.

While iSport only returned to GP2 for the one year, Campos’s own 2014 return continued into the series’ evolution to F2 and it still races there today. What’s more, it’s once again linked to a bid to become F1’s 11th team.

Carlin
Titles: FR3.5 (2011), GP3 (2014), British F4 (2015, ’16, ’17 & ’20), Indy Lights (’16), F2 (2018)

Photo: LAT Images / British F3 International Series

Trevor Carlin’s eponymous outfit was created in the late 1990s and has actually made it to professional single-seater racing as it ran in IndyCar from 2018 to 2021, and is supporting Juncos Hollinger Racing’s entry this year, while in FE its services were called upon to run the Mahindra team in the championship’s inaugural season.

Back in 2006 it lodged its application to join F1 for 2008, at a time when it was racing in Formula Renault 3.5 (the rival to GP2 in the secondary tier of single-seaters) and British F3 under its own name while running Lebanon’s car in A1GP.

It too hinged its F1 hopes on a reduction of costs being enforced in the championship, but was confident it had the infrastructure required to compete and also that is financial model at the time was sustainable enough to be looked upon by the FIA as suitable to F1.

Ultimately the Carlin to F1 story didn’t go any further than paperwork and factory preparations, with the team not chosen by the FIA. But it’s windtunnel experience and move to America, first in Indy Lights and then in IndyCar where it had to do its own damper development and develop the Dallara DW-12 car, makes it one of the best prepared entities in junior single-seater racing for a present-day step into F1.

Durango
Best result in teams’ championships: 3rd in 2003 Int. F3000

Last year Durango ran Enzo Trulli to the Formula 4 United Arab Emirates title in partnership with Cram Motorsport, but its racing focus in the past was usually at the level just below F1 while it occasionally tried to make it into that series too.

Its first serious bid was in 1997, when it had a car designed to support its plans, but months of work went to waste when contracts couldn’t be signed and it returned its focus to Int. F3000. Durango tried again to make it to F1 in 2010 and ’11, with its outlandish bids attracting the support of none other than 1997 F1 world champion Jacques Villeneuve who wanted to put his name on the team.

The FIA said no to the GP2 race-winning outfit, which soon disappeared entirely before reappearing in single-seaters some years later via Il Barone Rampante founder Giuseppe Cipriani (pictured above) in Formula V8 3.5. He scored twice as a single-car entry in the 2016 season, then the team vanished again along with its F1 ambitions.

Epsilon Euskadi
Titles: FR3.5 (2005), FR2.0 Italy Winter Series (2006), FR Eurocup (2007), FR West European Cup (2009)

Photo: Renault Sport / DPPI

There’s a very messy financial story behind Euskadi, which did actually end up manufacturing its own top-class prototype sportscar and had a windtunnel model of its planned 2011 F1 car even though the FIA hadn’t given the team a grid spot.

For 2010 it had also bidded to join and got onto the reserve list, but it wasn’t oversight from the FIA to choose other teams as scandal emerged around the team in the years after. The team founder Joan Villadelprat went to court under allegations of corruption and negligent management of public funding, as his team had received money from the local Basque Country government, and administrators had to take over Euskadi (then known as EPIC Racing).

In addition to its manufacturing capabilities and windtunnel, the team was for a few years a big-hitter in junior single-seaters. It ran Robert Kubica to the 2005 FR3.5 title then claimed two FR Eurocup crowns with Brendon Hartley and Albert Costa before its shaky finances caught up with it.

BCN Competicion
Best result in teams’ championships: 2nd in 2004 Int. F3000

Photo: GP2 Series Media Service

Another Spanish outfit, BCN was harbouring F1 ambitions as far back as 2004 but it wasn’t until the FIA’s opening of an application process in 2006 to join the grid two years after that did the team commit to F1 as an idea.

Unlike many on this list, it actually found success hard to come by in the junior single-seater series it competed in – namely Int. F3000, GP2 and Spanish F4, but its boss Enrique Scalabroni was always thinking big and in 2004 there was an opportunity to be best of the rest behind the dominant Vitantonio Liuzzi in F3000 and BCN driver Enrico Toccacelo took it, winning one race and coming second in the points.

When the next bidding process to join the F1 grid came about ahead of 2010, BCN was out of contention as it had sold to former F1 driver Tiago Monteiro, relocated to Portugal and become Ocean Racing Technology. He described the team as “under construction” when he purchased it late in 2008, which is no position to be in for a wannabe F1 entrant if it’s already racing in GP2. In its four years as Ocean, the team won two GP2 races and also spent a year in GP3.

Shannon Racing
Best result in teams’ championships: 10th in 1996 Int. F3000

Irish-registered and Italian-funded, Shannon rocked up to F3000 in 1996 by buying out the Danielson team and entering the first two rounds with future sportscar legend Tom Kristensen and Italian F3 champion Luca Rangoni.

Kristensen did both the Nurburgring race and the Pau Grand Prix with the team, taking pole but retiring in the latter, while Rangoni only did round two in Pau and finished sixth in what would be his sole appearance of the season.

At the same time, Shannon was getting its fingers into F1 by buying into the struggling Forti Corse team which was frequently failing to qualify for races. But by the second half of the season there was no Forti F1 team left and instead a big argument over Shannon’s involvement in its downfall and ownership status of the Italian brand as founder Guido Forti had tried to take back control from an organisation that now had major fraud allegations against it.

All the while there was a Shannon presence in Italian F3 (although not as a team entry as it were in F3000), and then an attempt to get into F1 under its own name after the Forti chapter had been closed legally and financially. It failed.

Litespeed

Photo: Readro

A part-time British F3 entrant in 2008 with its own car, although one admittedly it had not designed itself but rather bought from the people who conceived it, Litespeed was early to the mark in announcing its interest in joining F1 in 2010 and its bid actually attracted some serious attention.

Its four weekends in British F3’s National Class in its rookie season resulted in a best overall finish of 16th and a class podium, while in 2009 it ran the full campaign with one car and had a second do three events. Full-time entrant Victor Correa claimed a National Class win by coming 12th in race one at Hockenheim, while one-off team-mate Aaron Steele got a class podium in 16th place at Snetterton. Litespeed also supported Jay Bridger in the top class, and he had a best result of seventh.

Former F1 technical director Mike Gascoyne supported its F1 bid, and its car design was touted as going to be ready by the time the FIA made its decision in June 2009 on who would be joining the grid. What occurred instead by that date was Litespeed made public its plan to race under the name of a fellow Norfolk-based brand, Lotus, and later on Malaysian backing turned that pipedream into a reality. So while the infrastructure of Litespeed’s bid was effectively given approval by the FIA, it was in fact much like Campos’s collapsed plans as it was ‘Lotus Racing’ that was racing in 2010 instead.

The post 10 junior single-seater teams that tried, and failed, to enter F1 appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photos: Roger Gascoigne

Much has been written about Oscar Piastri’s 2021, earning a third successive junior single-seater title by becoming F2 champion as a rookie and with six wins. But his five poles in a row was what really set him apart

Alpine (and McLaren) Formula 1 reserve driver Oscar Piastri can look back at 2021 with pride, and what he achieved in a highly competitive field was without doubt impressive. It more than justified a graduation to an F1 seat, something which might occur this weekend, but his qualifying achievements were not unique in the history of F1’s premier feeder series.

Piastri put it on pole at Silverstone, Monza, Sochi, Jeddah and Yas Marina Circuit in succession last year, and converted all but the first of those into wins.

A look back through the records does provide some comfort to Piastri, as all the drivers who had similar periods of uninterrupted success have progressed to F1. However, dominance over one lap in F2 (or its predecessors European F2, International Formula 3000 and GP2) offers no guarantee of success at a higher level, as only two drivers as consistent in qualifying as Piastri became grand prix winners.

The list of drivers who have been able to rack up consecutive poles doesn’t include too many F1 heavyweights, nor does the list of drivers who racked up main race victories in European F2, were on top weekend-in, weekend-out in F3000 or always got the job done in feature races in GP2. Of course when GP2 was created, reversed-grid sprint races arrived with it and those are not considered in this tally – not the heat races or individual legs of the main races in European F2 events.

Photo: Formula Motorsport Limited

Bruno Giacomelli ITALY 1978 European F2
5 poles Mugello, Vallelunga, Rouen, Donington, Nogaro   4 wins Nogaro, Enna, Misano, Hockenheim

In 1978 Bruno Giacomelli matched Piastri’s run with four wins and five poles in succession, though interestingly not at exactly the same events.

The works March-BMW driver actually concluded the 1977 season with victory from pole at Donington Park in a prototype-spec car, then kicked off ’78 by doing the same at Thruxton and Hockenheim. An electrical issue that caused an engine misfire prevented him from turning his fourth pole in a row into victory in the iconic Eifelrennen race on the Nurburgring Nordschleife, and in Pau the Hart-powered March of Brian Henton was able to outqualify him by 0.41 seconds to take pole. Chevron’s Patrick Tambay also slipped ahead by 0.020s, putting Giacomelli third on the grid.

It didn’t hurt him too much, as he won the Pau Grand Prix by a big margin once leader Tambay’s engine expired on the last lap, but had he topped qualifying on the French streets then he would have had 10 poles in a row after what followed.

Pole went to Giacomelli in all five of the next rounds, although it was only the French rounds at Rouen and Nogaro where he was able to turn those into victories. At Mugello he was passed for the lead on lap one by Derek Daly, then at Vallelunga it was on the last lap as he ran into engine trouble again. At Donington meanwhile it was a crash that ended his victory hopes.

He didn’t take pole in any of the last three rounds, but did comfortably win each to complete a dominant season with a four-race winning streak. Giacomelli got to race in F1 with McLaren on occassion on the side, but his career at the top level didn’t flourish even when he was a Alfa Romeo driver for three years. There was one podium, and he got a top-five in IndyCar too.

Ronnie Peterson SWEDEN 1971 European F2
5 poles Jarama, Crystal Palace, Rouen, Mantorp Park, Tulln-Langenlebarn

Another works March driver, another dominant title campaign and another five-round run of poles. Even more similarly, Peterson started his vein of form with pole in the previous year’s finale.

The 27-year-old was only beaten once in qualifying through the first eight rounds of 1971, and he was only eight tenths of a second off pole around the fiersome 22.8 kilometres of the Nordschleife. He crashed out halfway through the race, and engine issues forcing him out of the race at Jarama meant his first win didn’t actually come until the season’s second half.

But three victories in a row at Rouen, Mantorp Park and Austria’s Tulln-Langenlebarn airfield track put him in a healthy points lead, and after being beaten to pole a 0.1s and finishing a lapped sixth at Albi he responded with victory at Vallelunga. He was denied pole by 0.23s there, but it didn’t matter as he’d done enough to skip the final round at the circuit a week later and still be crowned champion.

That same year Peterson was remarkably F1 runner-up, in his first full season, and after moving to Lotus in 1973 he earned his first world championship wins but never becane champion.

Charles Leclerc MONACO 2017 F2
6 poles Bahrain, Barcelona, Monaco, Baku, Red Bull Ring, Silverstone

Photo: Zak Mauger/FIA Formula 2

Leclerc graduated to F2 with Prema in 2017 as reigning GP3 champion. Despite being a rookie he dominated from the start, taking until the seventh round for him to be beaten in qualifying. But Leclerc was actually the fastest qualifier in round seven at the Hungaroring.

He had pole taken away from him due to an illegal brass shim in his differential. Normal service was resumed at Spa-Francorchamps, as Leclerc was on pole again. So it was actually round nine at Monza where Leclerc was finally beaten.

And so for good measure, he added an eighth pole in the penultimate round at Jerez.

Leclerc also took seven victories, five of them in feature races, although his longest uninterrupted run was only three.

At his home race in Monaco he lost a comfortable lead due to a safety car mix-up, then suspension damage terminated his race early. Without that misfortune, he would almost certainly have scored five successive feature race wins.

He lost a further feature race win at Spa to an excessively worn skid block, which meant an instant disqualification, but despite those lost points he had a 72-point title-winning margin. More than a third of that gap came from points for poles.

The Ferrari junior graduated to F1 with Sauber, then was in a Ferrari car by 2019 as he replaced Kimi Raikkonen as team-mate to Sebastian Vettel. A first pole was claimed in his second race with the team at Bahrain, but engine issues left him with a maiden podium rather than a win. He was able to delight the tifosi later in the year with back-to-back wins at Spa and Monza, but hasn’t won since as Ferrari had an awful 2020. Leclerc is still seen by many observers as a champion-in-waiting.

Stoffel Vandoorne BELGIUM 2014-’15 GP2
6 poles Spa, Monza, Sochi, Yas Marina, Bahrain, Barcelona   5 wins Yas Marina, Bahrain, Barcelona, Monaco, Red Bull Ring

Photo: Sam Bloxham/GP2 Media Service

Vandoorne is the only driver on the list to have achieved his run of poles and wins across two years. The 2014 GP2 runner-up dominated 2015, and in 22 feature races over the two years he made the podium 17 times and won 10 times.

He won what is now French Formula 4, and was Formula Renault Eurocup champion too before being signed as a McLaren junior for his step up to in FR3.5. He was runner-up to fellow McLaren junior Kevin Magnussen, so moved sideways to GP2.

Vandoorne won first time out at Bahrain with ART Grand Prix, and was the in-form driver of the season’s final third as he took pole four poles in a row. He added to his Bahrain win with feature race success at Monza and Yas Marina too.

The dominant streak continued into 2015, as the first four feature races all went to Vandoorne and poles in the first two rounds took his unbeaten qualifying run to six. There was no question of who would be champion that year.

But with no full-time F1 seat available, Vandoorne moved to Super Formula for 2017 and was the top Honda-powered driver with two wins. He also scored a point on his F1 debut as a substitute for Fernando Alonso, then partnered him at McLaren through 2017 and ’18. Two seventh places were the highlight before he was replaced and found a new home in Formula E.

He has two wins there and was 2019-20 runner-up for Mercedes-EQ, leading to him now being part of its F1 fold as reserve.

Vitantonio Liuzzi ITALY 2004 International F3000
8 poles Monaco, Nurburgring, Magny-Cours, Silverstone, Hockenheim, Hungaroring, Spa, Monza

Nobody has ever come close to the overwhelming dominance of Liuzzi in the final season of International F3000.

The series sophomore took an incredible nine pole positions out of 10, only missing out on a clean sweep by 0.29s courtesy of Enrico Toccacelo in round two at Barcelona.

Underlining his dominance, Liuzzi won seven races. However, as a result of Toccacelo’s victory in round four at the Nurburgring his run of successive wins is ‘just’ three. A tardy start and a collision-induced damaged wheel dropped him to 11th in Germany, marking the only time he did not finish first or second – his result at the Hungaroring and Spa.

Expectations had been high when Liuzzi stepped up to single-seaters after a stellar karting career, including winning the 2001 World Karting Championship against the likes of Lewis Hamilton, Nico Rosberg and, famously, a guesting Michael Schumacher in the finale at Schumacher’s family-run track in Kerpen.

Liuzzi raced in FR2.0 Germany that year and came just short of the title as a car racing rookie, then stepped up to German Formula 3 in 2002 with Bertram Schafer’s works Opel team and Red Bull support. Error-prone and inconsistent, an awful season left him ninth in the standings, his only win of the year coming in a cameo appearance in Italy.

But Red Bull kept faith, aiding his graduation to International F3000 in 2003 with Scuderia Coloni, and he came fourth in the championship with a crushing pole at the Hungaroring. Red Bull saw enough to switch him to the reigning champion team Arden, then run by future Red Bull Racing boss Christian Horner, for what would be his dominant title season.

With the benefit of hindsight, it is fair to point out that the 2004 F3000 crop was not the strongest in the series’ history, but Liuzzi was virtually faultless in his execution.

A promised Sauber drive after didn’t materialize, and so he ended up in a shared seat at the new Red Bull Racing team. He scored on his debut, but only got four races and got put in Red Bull’s new second-line team Toro Rosso for 2006 and ’07, where the arrival of Sebastian Vettel quickly removed what remained of his lustre.

Liuzzi’s extrovert, partying persona had matched perfectly with the image Red Bull wished to project. Alas, his potential never came close to being fulfilled. He moved on to Force India, first as a test driver while winning in the Speedcar stock car series, then raced for HRT in 2011.

After F1 he was runner-up in the Superstars touring car series, raced prototype sportscars, came 16th in SF and raced in FE’s inaugural season. Now he’s a resauranter and F1 driver steward.

The rampant winners

Emanuele Naspetti ITALY 1991 International F3000
4 wins Enna, Hockenheim, Brands Hatch, Spa

Photo: Stephen Bounds

The only driver to have failed to win the title despite their run of dominance. The 1988 Italian F3 champion scored twice in his first two seasons in F3000, the latter campaign particularly poor as it was with reigning champion team Eddie Jordan Racing.

He moved back to his F3 team Forti Corse for his third crack at F3000 in 1991, but the choice of a Lola proved disastrous and after both he and team-mate Fabrizio Giovanardi failed to even qualify for round three at Jerez, Forti switched to Reynard chassis.

A crash in qualifying meant he missed the next race at Mugello, but, armed with a new chassis, took pole and victory (after Jean-Marc Gounon had been penalised for a jumped start) at Enna-Pergusa. And then Naspetti was unstoppable, winning the next three rounds.

The sudden dominance, particularly at high-speed venues, was regarded with suspicion. Rumours circulated of exotic fuel concoctions being supplied by Agip to certain teams.

Naspetti led the championship on win countback against Alex Zanardi going into the final two rounds at Le Mans and Nogaro, but struggled for pace on the twistier tracks and scored one point as Christian Fittipaldi swept to the title.

Naspetti returned for a fourth season, winning the Pau Grand Prix, before accepting an F1 drive with March for the final five races of 1992. He claimed a best finish of 11th, and a one-off with Jordan in 1993 was the end to his brief F1 sojourn. Four years later he was Italian Touring Car champion.

Mike Thackwell NEW ZEALAND 1984 European F2
4 wins Thruxton, Vallelunga, Mugello, Pau

The now elusive Kiwi spent seven years racing in the rung below F1, and only ever contested two F1 races. When he had a dominant factory Ralt-Honda car at his disposal he was simply unstoppable in European F2, and quickly built on the two wins he had claimed from his first four seasons.

His 1984 campaign started with dominating the BRDC International Trophy at Silverstone, then he came second to rival and team-mate Roberto Moreno in the Deutschland Trophy.

Thackwell turned two poles into wins at Thruxton and Vallelunga, then was beaten to pole by a tenth at Mugello but dominated the race. Next was Pau, where qualifying is crucial, and Thackwell nailed it by 0.6s. The grand prix win was also his.

At Hockenheim he did claim pole, his sixth in F2, but finished ninth. The rivalry with Moreno looked to be at its closest when the paddock came to Misano as they matched each other to the hundredth of a second in qualifying but Moreno was awarded pole. Thackwell’s response was victory in the Adriatic Grand Prix by a full lap. A week later he claimed victory, pole and fastest lap in Enna-Pergusa’s Mediterranean Grand Prix.

The title was secured, and Thackwell scored three more points (and claimed another pole) in the remaining two rounds.

Jonathan Palmer ENGLAND 1983 European F2
5 wins Donington, Misano, Enna, Zolder, Mugello

There were only four poles from 12 rounds for Palmer, now the owner and promoter of several circuits and series through his MotorSport Vision company, but with the same Ralt-Honda as Thackwell a year later he was able to win half of the races in 1983 and set a record for consecutive podium finishes in F1’s primary feeder series that only Thackwell has beaten since.

Thackwell was in fact Palmer’s team-mate, but his suprerior experience only helped Palmer to become a better driver.

A fuel system issue meant Palmer started his year with a retirement at Silverstone, then was third at Thruxton. He won at Hockenheim, and finished the Eifelrennen in a distant fourth but capping off what was still a strong start to the season. The 26-year-old wasn’t off the podium in the nine races after, with a second, third and a third at Vallelunga, Pau and Jarama preceding his five-race winning spree which stood as a record for a long time.

Palmer spent the next six years racing in F1, and also came second in the 1985 Le Mans 24 Hours.

Pastor Maldonado VENEZUELA 2010 GP2
6 feature race wins Istanbul, Valencia, Silverstone, Hockenheim, Hungaroring, Spa

To many F1 fans, Maldonado has gone down as a crash-prone pay-driver who somehow managed to win a grand prix in a Williams in 2012, a season where it seemed possible that every driver might win at least once.

In 2010 he was a fourth-year GP2 driver with four wins (three of them in reversed-grid sprint races) to show from his first three campaigns. But there had been little to indicate he would show the consistency needed for a dominant title campaign.

He was racing for Rapax, which had bought out the Piquet Sports team Maldonado had driven for in 2008, and had just come off a 2009 season with ART GP where scored only 36% of the points of champion team-mate, and rookie, Nico Hulkenberg.

And Maldonado’s 2010 got off to a slow start, before he embarked on a remarkable record run of six feature race wins from May to August. Unusually, he did so without taking a single pole position.

There were some inevitable incidents but Maldonado comfortably saw off the challenge from some strong rivals such as Sergio Perez, Jules Bianchi and Sam Bird.

Incredibly, given his reputation for accidents, Maldonado was always something of a Monaco specialist. He won the feature race as a rookie in 2007 and made the podium in the same race in 2008 and ’10, and won the ’09 sprint race in GP2.

Funding from Venezuelan state-owned oil company PDVSA took him into an F1 seat with Williams for 2011, where he was far from disgraced up against team-mate Rubens Barrichello. His 2012 win was not a turning point though, being outpaced by his new team-mate Valtteri Bottas in 2013 and then spending two tricky years with Lotus.

The post The longest pole and win streaks in F1’s primary feeder series appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: Roger Gascoigne

To celebrate Formula Scout’s 10th anniversary, founder Peter Allen looks back a decade further to one of his earliest junior single-seater memories.

Before Formula 2 there was GP2, and before GP2 there was Formula 3000. And in the year 2000, it was F3000 that first got this writer hooked on single-seater racing below Formula 1 – thanks to highlights that went out on ITV on weekends when there wasn’t a grand prix on.

I remember being captivated by that year’s title fight between Bruno Junqueira and Nicolas Minassian, seemingly convinced that one or both would end up in F1. This seven-year-old was presumably unaware they were relative series veterans compared to the two rookies that finished the season in third and fourth: Mark Webber and Fernando Alonso.

With his win in the final race of the season at Spa-Francorchamps a few weeks after his 19th birthday, in only his second year of car racing, Alonso would be the youngest winner in F1’s primary feeder series until Lando Norris took his first and only F2 win in 2018, and he propelled himself into an F1 drive with Minardi. As for Junqueira – already passed over for Jenson Button’s Williams seat the previous winter – and Minassian, they would have to make do with rides in the United States.

The driver who finished fifth that year was rather overlooked, but he would change that in 2001. Justin Wilson had signalled his promise when he became the first 16-year-old to win a car race in Britain when he took victory on his debut in the Formula Vauxhall Junior winter series, but was unable to kick on in the following years. Jackie Stewart, whose son Paul ran Wilson’s team, advised that his 6ft 4in (1.93m) frame would be better suited to racing touring cars.

Undeterred, Wilson was to find some rather more encouraging support from another ex-F1 driver when he signed up for the new low-cost Formula Palmer Audi series in 1998 and won the championship’s prize of a fully-funded drive in F3000. Series founder Jonathan Palmer was impressed and took his backing a step further by becoming Wilson’s manager.

Driving for Astromega in 1999, Wilson scored a point by finishing sixth in his first race at Imola, which was no mean feat given the leap in car performance. Although he only scored one further point over the remaining rounds, he earned credit as one of only seven drivers to qualify for every race, at a time when over 40 drivers had just half an hour to secure one of 26 grid spots.

That earned the attention of Nordic Racing – a British team run by father and son Derek and Chris Mower – for 2000, when Wilson finished third at Silverstone and second in Austria. Now 22, he stayed on with the team for 2001 but this didn’t necessarily make him one of the title favourites. For one thing, Nordic was only the third most-fancied F3000 operation in its home county of Norfolk.

David Sears’ Super Nova Racing had been the team to beat in the 1990s, and also had a satellite operation in the Petrobras Junior Team – headed up by Paul Jackson, who went on to found iSport International when F3000 became GP2. Junqueira had won the 2000 title driving for Petrobras against Super Nova’s Minassian.

Moving over to Super Nova for his second season in F3000, Webber was the obvious title favourite. Also hotly-tipped was Petrobras rookie Antonio Pizzonia, fresh from blitzing the British scene with back-to-back titles in FVauxhall Junior, Formula Renault and Formula 3.

Nordic meanwhile hadn’t won an F3000 race since 1995. What it did have was new title sponsorship from Coca-Cola, courtesy of its central European division which welcomed the arrival of Wilson’s new team-mate Tomas Enge, a proven race-winner in F3000 with the now-defunct McLaren junior team West Competition.

The 2001 season began with the first ever championship round to be held outside of Europe, at Brazil’s Interlagos circuit. It was easy to see why: In contrast to now, the nation was incredibly well-represented in the European junior ranks with a whole generation of drivers inspired to race by the heroics of Ayrton Senna and often carrying big-money sponsorship to match. In qualifying, the locals absolutely dominated, locking out the front two rows.

Photo: Ron McQueeney

On pole wasn’t Pizzonia, who rounded out the quartet in fourth, nor his team-mate and Italian F3000 champion Ricardo Sperafico who was second. Nor was it Sperafico’s twin brother Rodrigo who claimed third after a late deal to join Coloni, nor Webber’s team-mate Mario Haberfeld, who had to make do with ninth. Instead it was future Ferrari GT star Jaime Melo with returning team Durango who made the most of his circuit experience from three seasons racing in his domestic F3 series.

Giorgio Pantano, the German F3 champion and highly-rated since karts, managed an impressive sixth for Astromega, with Wilson lining up seventh directly behind team-mate Enge. Webber meanwhile was only 10th after spinning.

Undaunted by the huge Brazilian GP crowds, Melo got away well from pole position, but Ricardo Sperafico was slow away and almost rear-ended by team-mate Pizzonia. He then got tagged by Pantano’s front wing on the apex of the first corner, causing him to crash into the barriers on the outside of turn two. That brought out the safety car boards, for which Melo slowed abruptly on the approach to Juncao, while Pizzonia, the other Sperafico and Enge all went charging past him.

That led Durango boss Ivone Pinton to protest to race director Charlie Whiting, but Melo would soon lose another place when Wilson passed him on the restart. Further down the order, the two Red Bull Junior Team cars of Patrick Friesacher and Antonio Garcia collided, taking both out of the race and no doubt earning them an earful from their team boss Helmut Marko.

Pizzonia led comfortably on his F3000 debut but, after some deliberation, received a 10-second stop-go penalty for his pass on Melo, as did Enge and Rodrigo Sperafico. That gave Wilson a clear track which he used to pull away from Melo en route to his maiden win. His only scare came right after the finish line when, in a combination of excitement and surprise at seeing yellow flags on the approach at the first corner, he spun and only narrowly kept his car away from the pitwall. Behind him, Webber had pressured Melo into a mistake and got by for second place, only to later be penalised for passing before the start-finish line at the restart. That relegated him just out of the points and meant Wilson headed back to Europe with a healthy early advantage over all of his expected rivals.

Webber struck back in round two at Imola, leading from pole position in what was a far more processional affair at the front. Squeezed onto the grass at the start as he tried to get past Webber, Darren Manning took second place for Christian Horner’s Arden team. Having hoped to fight for the title himself, Manning wouldn’t make the podium again all season, but later went on to precede fellow Yorkshireman Wilson’s underdog performances in IndyCar with a few of his own. While Enge was third and Pizzonia fourth, Wilson had to make do with a solitary point in sixth behind Friesacher.

Race three of the season at Barcelona would also be settled at the first corner. The good news for Wilson was that he was on pole for the first time, leading Enge in a Nordic one-two. But after an initially good start, a bad gear change cost Wilson on the run to the first corner and Enge edged ahead, before Bas Leinders stole second.

Third was still a positive result for Wilson relative to Webber, who qualified 11th after a mid-session crash and was unable to break into the points after leaping to seventh on lap one. Indeed, it was Enge who was now Wilson’s closest title rival, just one point adrift, and the pair enhanced their relationship a few days later by sharing a Coca-Cola-backed Porsche in an FIA GT race at Magny-Cours.

It was the two Nordic drivers and KTR’s interloper Leinders who came to the fore again at the A1 Ring, even though none of them made the grid’s front row. On his and the Red Bull team’s home track, Friesacher lost it under braking for the first corner and took out poleman Sebastien Bourdais, additionally triggering a midfield pile-up that accounted for Webber and seven others.

Leinders escaped with the lead, but succumbed to Wilson on the restart. Perhaps surprisingly, Wilson couldn’t simply pull away and instead spent the rest of the race under pressure from Leinders, who did get back down his inside at one point only for Wilson to out-drag him once again. Less than a second covered Wilson and third-placed Enge at the finish, but the points gap between them was up to seven.

Webber reignited his title hopes with the first of his three career wins around the streets of Monaco. Both he and Wilson rose to the occasion and were fairly closely matched throughout. Their weekends could have come undone at the first corner when third-placed Manning couldn’t get stopped and nerfed the rear of Wilson, but the main damage done was to Manning’s own front wing. Wilson was just 0.893s behind Webber at the finish.

Drafted back in to F3000 for a one-off outing by the Prost team, for whom he was F1 test driver at the time, Stephane Sarrazin completed the podium ahead of compatriot Bourdais. After crashing in qualifying, Enge was only seventh, denied a point by surprise Red Bull recall Ricardo Mauricio, but he took his chance to rebound next time out at the Nurburgring, when he drew level with Wilson and Webber on two wins from the opening six races. This was even more straightforward than his Barcelona victory as this time he led from pole. Webber was second, and Wilson missed out on points for the first time when a sheared brake disc bell while in eighth place sent him into a spin and ultimately retirement.

Enge started from pole again at Magny-Cours – this time by a massive 0.573s. But, just as Wilson did at Barcelona, he fluffed his shift from first to second gear after the lights went out. This time Webber was in a position to pounce, and he turned that opportunity into a commanding win. A pre-race setup change caused Enge to drop back with heavy tyre wear into the clutches of Wilson, who dived past for second place on the last lap to ensure he held onto the standings lead by a point over Webber.

Nordic’s drivers had appeared friends up until now but tensions showed at Silverstone. Enge upstaged Wilson in qualifying, outpacing the home favourite by 0.373s to take his third consecutive pole, and led a Nordic one-two in the early laps.

Wilson looked to be playing the long game but was given an opportunity when Enge erred at Becketts and was slow onto the Hangar Straight. Wilson got on Enge’s outside into Stowe but found himself run into the gravel trap on the exit. He rejoined in third behind Sebastien Bourdais and raised a hand in protest.

Justin Wilson’s career stats

Halfway through, not unusually for Silverstone, rain showers began to blow in. First onto the scene whenever the track got more slippery, Enge went off at Copse, dropping himself down to third. Bourdais, who was able to stick with the Nordic pair and leave Webber behind at the start, was now in the lead and duly claimed his maiden F3000 win for DAMS. And while Wilson took second, Enge fell to fifth – behind Pizzonia and Webber – after losing power out of the final corner on the last lap.

That was Pizzonia’s first F3000 podium and he followed it two weeks later with a maiden victory at Hockenheim in an entertaining final race on the flat-out old layout. Team-mate Ricardo Sperafico looked far more likely to be the one breaking his duck after claiming pole, but he was hounded on the first lap by the Nordic pair behind him and Wilson snatched the lead on the way into the stadium section. From sixth on the grid, Pizzonia then stormed around the outside of Sperafico in the Sachs Curve, and he aggressively forced his way by Wilson on lap three.

Wilson could be satisfied with a third successive second place finish, after Enge spun trying to set up a pass through turn one, then ran through the gravel trying to take third back from Sperafico later on and ended up fifth once more. Webber failed to score at all after tangling with Manning on the first lap, rueing a damaged damper that left him seventh on the grid.

Hockenheim set the tone for the end of the season. At the Hungaroring, Wilson took pole by 0.659s over Webber and was untroubled on his way to his third win of the year. While Mauricio took a surprise second to justify his recall by Marko, Enge and Webber did battle over third place until 13 laps to go. Then, Enge ran wide into the final corner and hit Webber’s sidepod when he tried to shut the door – earning him a stop-go penalty that dumped him out of the points and ending his title hopes for good. Webber continued and set after Mauricio, only to spin into retirement on worn tyres.

Wilson now led Webber by 20 points with a maximum 20 available from the final two rounds, and thus went to Spa needing just one point to seal the title. In the end, it was after another second place that Wilson could celebrate in Belgium. But the title was already decided on lap two by another Webber retirement, this time a far more spectacular off at Raidillon following a safety car start in mildly damp conditions. Petrobras was running one-two after dominating qualifying, but Pizzonia spun out of second trying to warm his tyres behind the safety car, leaving Sperafico to get his first win.

2001 Int. F3000 standings

With Mauricio on the podium again, Enge finished fourth in what would be his final F3000 race of the season. Come Monza he was an F1 driver for Prost: the opportunity came about after Luciano Burti was injured in a big crash at Spa, but the Coca-Cola money was a sweetener for a team that ultimately lasted just three more races before folding. Enge would return to F3000 for 2002 with Arden – notably being stripped of that year’s crown for failing a drugs test.

Wilson meanwhile ended the 2001 season with a sixth second place from 12 races. His consistent season allowed him to break Juan Pablo Montoya’s series points record and with a record  gap to second place too, as Webber crashed out for the fourth race in a row – colliding with former Sauber F1 driver Norberto Fontana in a remarkably chaotic start to the race. Webber had already been sent to the back of the grid as one of several to stall across two aborted starts. This after heavy rain and winds on Friday led qualifying to be run just before the race.

When it did get going, pole-sitting Pizzonia forced a fast-starting Pantano onto the grass to keep the lead. Pantano’s late-season team-mate Enrico Toccacelo then triggered the first-corner melee after braking too late and cutting to the inside. Despite his speed, Pantano had scored just two points all season up to now but was in inspired form at home, coming back from fifth to take victory – replicating Alonso’s Spa win from Astromega a year earlier – after Pizzonia was penalised for his opening-lap swipe.

For Wilson and Webber, despite the very different ways their seasons ended, the focus now was the same: finding a way onto the F1 grid for 2002. For Webber, the odds had always seemed better after Benetton boss Flavio Briatore took a liking to both he and Alonso during their strong rookie F3000 seasons in 2000 and made Webber his team’s test driver. After impressing with Minardi, Alonso was moved to the test driver role at the renamed Renault squad for 2002, but Briatore wanted Webber on the grid. The chance came with Minardi through Australian owner Paul Stoddart, who had given Webber his first F3000 chance with his own European Racing team. Webber repaid his faith with a dream fifth place on debut in Melbourne, and while he would never actually race for Renault, he would go on to win nine grands prix for Red Bull.

Photo: Minardi

All through the 2001 season, the question was whether F1 teams were taking any notice of Wilson at all. Eventually the interest came, including from McLaren and Williams, but it was Jordan that gave him his first tests. Eddie Jordan was on the lookout for a young driver who could go on to challenge the dominance of Michael Schumacher, and was also talking to 2001’s other record-breaking junior series champion, Takuma Sato. It was eventually Sato that got the drive, undoubtedly pleasing engine supplier Honda.

Wilson was also considered by Minardi, only to lose out to Webber, forcing him to spend a season in the World Series by Nissan. Later in 2002, when Minardi benched the struggling Alex Yoong for two races, Wilson went for a seat fitting – but couldn’t squeeze into the car and the drive went instead to the somewhat shorter Anthony Davidson. But Stoddart wanted Wilson to replace Jaguar-bound Webber for 2003 and made sure his team’s car was built to fit him. He wanted sponsorship too, and Palmer raised it through an innovative share offering.

Now given his chance, Wilson impressed to the point that he earned a mid-season switch to Jaguar – where he became Webber’s team-mate, in place of the underperforming Pizzonia. For 2004 he had to make way for Red Bull’s F3 Euro Series runner-up Christian Klien. Wilson moved to Champ Car, finishing runner-up to series dominator Bourdais in 2006 and 2007 before taking the Frenchman’s Newman/Haas Lanigan seat when he got his own deserved chance in F1.

Champ Car was immediately merged into IndyCar and Wilson was once more the underdog, but he thrived in that role, earning victories with the plucky Dale Coyne Racing team – as well as the respect of his peers and fans for his efforts behind the wheel and his kindness out of the car. When Wilson was killed by debris striking his helmet during a race at Pocono in 2015, he was contesting a part-time schedule with Andretti Autosport – an opportunity that might just have led to his talent getting a full-time go at a championship once more.

The post Memories of 2001: When Wilson won out over Webber appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: Enrico V Vezzaro

36 years ago today, the stars of Formula 1’s primary feeder series headed off to the Caribbean not for a holiday, but to do battle on the streets of a country that had never seen motorsport on its shores before

Saudi Arabia proved racing on its streets was possible by joining the Formula E calendar in 2018, and is now set to host a Formula 1 grand prix for the first time this December. That one has happened after the other is not a coincidence.

Countries bidding to host major sporting contests often hold some kind of ‘warm-up’ to prove they’re up to the task, and when the Lesser Antillean island of Curacao invited the International Formula 3000 grid along in October 1985 it did so with F1 in its sights. If it could make a success of hosting its understudy, then attracting the world championship should be possible.

At that point it was a territory within the Netherlands Antilles, only gaining autonomy within the Netherlands in 2007, and had financial prosperity through the discovery of oil fields nearby mined by the likes of Dutch Royal Shell and then PDVSA.

There was an air of mystery about the grand prix even until the week of the race itself, with a long-haul flight taking F3000’s European crews over to the island and only getting there in the very early morning. Bleary-eyed drivers and mechanics stepped off the plane to a wall of humidity, sand and a massive, billowing oil refinery.

The track wound its way around the streets of downtown Willemstad, the beach-side capital city on the southern coast where for tourists and the Venezuelan oil workers a common street saying was: “So cheap, give me two!”

Once the track was completed on the Thursday morning of race week, it was time for the first track walk. Expectations arose of chaotic scenes due to the narrow straights and corners where there was not immediate marshal access, but with the local marshals trained by Sports Car Club of America, who were helping to run the event, it was agreed that disruption could be regulated with black flags being waved to summon everyone to the pits as soon as a car came to a stop anywhere on track.

Across the weekend that only occurred a few times, with two one-hour practice sessions (with no recorded times) on Friday preceding Saturday’s action that centered around qualifying. Being by the Caribbean Sea, with just 70 meters separating the track from the water at some points, it meant the asphalt was coated in a fine layer of sand half of the time and when exposed was instead being weather-worn by the salty sea air and sun. It made for a super low grip surface similar to what Sochi is infamous for, but with the chemical binding agent simply evaporating in the tropical heat rather than ‘pooling’ on the surface as bitumen does in cooler climates to create slippery surfaces.

As a result of this battle against grip, and as F3000 was a totally open formula at the time, teams realised that to avoid wheelspinning they would need to play with the gear ratios. This shook up the competitive order as the heavier cars had more traction, particularly in undulating sections where downforce was essential to keeping planted to the track.

Factory Ralt driver Mike Thackwell, the 1985 title runner-up, was quickest to adapt and took pole by over a second. He was using half of the gears available, and while his talents were obvious his Ralt RT20 also had a competitive advantage as tuning had got its bottom-end power lower than its rivals and therefore making it more driveable once the right foot was on the throttle pedal.

The lack of squirming as the New Zealander threaded his car about was helped by using Bridgestone’s qualifying tyres, which were quicker to warm up the core of than the lighter equivalent tyres supplied by Avon. While the two brands brought a different compound for race use, the need for grip was so much that drivers chose to race on the stickier qualifying tyres.

Lola’s factory team ran on Avons, but the T950 chassis’ weight meant Alessandro Santin and Gabriele Tarquini were also pretty rapid. The star of qualifying behind Thackwell though was Genoa Racing’s Ivan Capelli, second fastest in a March.

Thackwell set the pace in warm-up too, but the electrics in his Ralt fried when sat in the October heat and left him stranded on the grid during the wam-up lap of the grand prix. Capelli therefore inherited the front starting spot for the 58-lap race.

Qualifying results

The young Italian led the opening laps too, with Thackwell’s team-mate John Nielsen applying the pressure. Eddie Jordan Racing’s Claudio Langes slotted into third in what was just his third F3000 race, with the recently crowned champion Christian Danner immediately a distant fourth for BS Automotive as he gambled on using Bridgestone’s harder race tyre.

Being unable to build the core tyre temperature meant he suffered from rear-end instability over the first few laps, and then once he was up to speed (which was still a massive challenge around the Curacao track) he had already lost too much ground to fight for the win. It’s remarkable that 35 years on, F2 drivers were saying the exact same thing on Pirelli tyres.

Danner was still at least in fourth, while the Avon runners had no luck whatsoever in getting their tyres turned on and they were gapped from the get-go. It wasn’t until a quarter of the way through the race did Tarquini start showing his true pace.

Nielsen’s pursuit of Capelli was paused by an error he made a few laps in, but then a mistake by the leader – literally sliding the rear of the car onto the pit straight – brought Nielsen back onto his gearbox and he soon slipstreamed past. Capelli stayed in his wheeltracks until he pushed too hard and spun, somehow avoiding the barriers, and from then on had to settle for second due to flatspotted front tyres while Nielsen raced away to eventually win by 21s after 101 minutes of racing.

At one point his lead had been closer to half a minute, but lapped traffic meant he had to be extra careful through the second half of the race. There were 10 cars that officially met the chequered flag, while former ABBA drummer Slim Borgudd broke his ex-F1 Arrows A6 early on and had to pit for suspension fixes which put him many laps down.

Langes, Danner and Onyx Racing’s Alain Ferte completed the top five that finished on the lead lap, with Danner being the one with more, rather than less, rear-end grip by the end of the race as his harder tyres lasted longer. He chased down Langes but couldn’t pass him, although was comfortably clear of Ferte whose handling was limited by his Avon tyres.

Future IndyCar driver Fulvio Ballabio finished ninth in the race in a car sponsored by fellow Caribbean nation Haiti, and, despite a physical altercation with San Remo Racing team-mate Aldo Bertuzzi, had great memories of the day.

“It was the hot streets!” Ballabio recalls of the shaken up order. “Because you had people running very good knowing exactly this input in the tyre is very, very different atmosphere to [generate the heat] inside, unlike any other track.

“But the track in Curacao was very exciting. It’s noisy, and it’s very fast in the hilly zone. But for me, it was perfect, the organisation, I liked very much the race on this track”

Ballabio compares the layout to Monaco, Long Beach and Circuito Guadalope that used to run around Alxaniz in Spain.

“I had Avon tyres. The best for this track was obviously Bridgestone. Because I think the people from Bridgestone know exactly what is the problem [for grip]. For example, I remember the race before Coracao, I raced for Lola at Donington Park.

“At Donington, the car is not very competitive. When [Martin Birrane] or who were the people of Lola at this time, go to Curacao, the Lola, especially on Avon, is very, very fast for Tarquini and Sandini. It completely changes the car. It’s not the same to Ralt, or the March from Eddie Jordan. Langes was very good, also very good for Capelli. The tyre was one very big roulette.”

Suspension set-up was key to finding mechanical grip too, and Ballabio remembers the compromise of that too favouring the Bridgestone runners as there was a “little danegerous” chicane that required harder spring settings.

“It was a very strange opportunity to race there but I liked it. I have a very good souvenir in that I finished ninth. We had many problems because the team had three cars. One for Guido Dacco, one for Bertuzzi. My car is the third and no spares, but fine!”

And after a long 12-round season, and then the non-championship Curacao GP, the paddock then got to unwind that Sunday evening with the biggest afterparty imaginable.

Ferte, Capelli, Ferte, Pirro

A tyre crew getting ready to party

“Ahh, yes!” Ballabio recalls. “People brought me directly into the swimming pool. A very strange time. Very relaxed. Because no championship [to decide], and also the team managers [could relax too]. I remember Eddie Jordan without hair. It was very strange. They were playing music too, it was crazy.”

Spectators had turned up in the 10,000s for the race, and so the afterparty by the beach was suitably populated. While “playing music” may not sound crazy at first, the internationally charting and Gloria Estefan-fronted Miami Sound Machine performed live and there was a truly eclectic mix of people dancing including international dignitaries.

Two of the Lola crew said to Formula Scout the party was more memorable than the race, and even provided some pictures of themselves and the drivers enjoying the fun.

Jean Robert van Hutten was the track manager for the grand prix, and it was a five-year journey for him to turn the event into reality. It started with surveying roads that would be appropiate for racing, then designing the track, getting permission to use those roads, finding dates they would be allowed to use them, and of course finding funding to do any of it at all.

“The nice thing [about the circuit] was it had elevation of almost 45 metres. The race was run partly in downtown, the challenge was get everything ready on time,” van Hutten, pictured below [R] with track communications director Jerry De Vries [L] at the moment race control opened the Curacao circuit for the first ever time, reveals.

“We had over 450 people working on the track. Also the grandstands were built on the main roads, we had a big circus tent for all the race cars behind the pits. We were a staff of 25 working for five years to get ready for that race.

“We went to Detroit and Dallas’s F1 races to work and learn everything, and study the rules of the FIA. Like when we ordered the guardrails we knew exactly how many bolt and nuts we had to order and how many rails. We even had marine rescue divers on stand by.”

The moment the circuit was opened for the first time

Working flatout on circuit design

The preparation was truly global for what was expected to be an event that would establish itself on the world stage.

“We were preparing on all departments for the race in three years. We went with groups of 50 to the F1 races [in the USA] to learn three years before the Curacao race. And yes, we were aiming for F1 [to visit after F3000].”

After the successful first running, the plan was to appear on the F3000 calendar again – possibly as a points-scoring round – for 1986 and then become part of the F1 world championship. However, Curacao’s geographical politics meant the second edition didn’t go ahead, and the F1 hopes were dead in the water soon after before the circuit upgrades were even considered.

“The thing was we are a part of Holland and all the permits had to go through KNAC (the Kingdom of the Netherlands’ Automobile Club). The first race we ran it through SCCA, and we had to bring in extra officials from the USA.

“But the second race we were too late for 1986 race [to bring in extra trained marshals and stewards] as it had to go through Holland.

“The nicest thing was that [F1’s executive and International F3000 commercial rights owner] Bernie Ecclestone believed in the promoter. He was in Curacao after the Brazilian Grand Prix for a meeting and to see Curacao.

“We even were dealing with the cruise ship companies to stay for a week as floating hotels. We had more plans.”

While 36 years have been and gone since the only ever running of the Curacao GP, the country now has a drag strip and there were plans to build a permanent circuit on a private property.

A year after the grand prix, neighbouring island Aruba exited the Netherlands Antilles and as its own constituent country within the Netherlands started on its own plans for a similar race. Known to have been involved was Ralph Sanchez, who as a promoter was behind the Grand Prix of Miami for IndyCar and sportscars.

Final results (58 laps)

The post Curacao Grand Prix 1985: Revisiting the Caribbean F3000 adventure appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: www.rickautosportpictures.com

Today marks 24 years since the sad death of Alfonso de Vinuesa, a driver who could have been Spain’s next Formula 1 star before a life-changing injury. Ida Wood searches for memories of the man, and some answers

I first heard of Alfonso Garcia de Vinuesa in 2020, and he was a driver whose career was an immediate source of fascination. Firstly it was the variety of cars he drove, a truly brilliant mix and with great liveries too, but the more research I did the more I realised his story resonated on a personal level, although sadly for him life was surrounded by and ended in tragedy.

De Vinuesa was born in Madrid in 1958, became a tinkerer from a young age and was firmly in the belief by the time he reached his 20s that he could one day be a Formula 1 driver. He had other commitments in life, such as education, but the only school he was interested in was the one of racing.

And as it had it, de Vinuesa was a student in the first ever course of Emilio de Villota’s eponymous racing school in December 1980. This experimental endevaour, for both parties, was centred around testing the Image FF5 car raced in Formula Ford 1600 in the UK.

FF1600 immediately attracted de Vinuesa’s attention, but there was no Spanish championship and so he spoke to Image’s sales manager (and FF1600 racer) Robert Synge about driving for the manufacturer in England. He didn’t have the money, but then the next year de Vinuesa contacted Arturo Marcos, co-founder of de Villota’s racing school, with a plan.

“At the beginning of the summer of 1981, Alfonso came to me and said ‘listen Arturo, I have a little bit of money and I want to do at least a couple of races’,” Marcos recalled to Formula Scout.

“So I went investigating teams in England, and I phoned Clive Wood of Pine City Racing.”

de Vinuesa and Dennis Rushen

With sponsorship from White Label whisky, the cost-concious de Vinuesa struck a two-race deal in a Van Diemen RF81.

“I don’t think they were major championships, because a major championship would mean more testing and more expensive,” Marcos adds. “But what is for sure if that it didn’t matter in which race he ran, he always took it very, very seriously. He had a very professional mentality and approach, and in 1982 we were rivals.”

The next year, de Vinuesa had his first car racing campaign in Spain’s entry-level Formula Fiesta series, which used Van Diemen chassis and 1.3 and 1.1-litre engines built in Ford’s relatively new Valencia factory. He came second in the points to Antonio Albacete, who was being run by Marcos, after a season-long neck-and-neck title battle decided in the final race.

“In the summer we all coincided, because in the summer there is no racing in Spain,” Marcos explains. “So Antonio and Alfonso went to England with different teams, they did some FFord races there. We were running a RF82 with Madgwick Motorsport (founded by Synge), as by then Image had disappeared. Alfonso continued with Pine City Racing with the RF81.”

Soon de Vinuesa was on Madgwick’s books too, as he joined the team for British FF2000 in 1983, but the combination didn’t last and he left the team not on the best of terms. Marcos remembers the next move as being to Rushen Green Racing.

Intensely focused on his racing goal, but also stubbornly cost-aware, de Vinuesa mostly ‘did his own thing’ from 1983 onwards. After bringing Marcos in for assistance to make his racing debut, he’d made clear after that the more people who were involved in his racing efforts, the more money he’d have to spend (and therefore find) to reward their assistance.

He spent a second year in F2000, but went continental and joined Madgwick again, and also entered the FIA European Formula 3 season finale at Jarama in October with Eddie Jordan Racing. Driving an older Toyota-powered Ralt RT3, de Vinuesa qualified an incredible third place and 0.17 seconds off pole on his debut but then crashed out on the opening lap.

For 1985 and ’86 he competed part-time in German F3, picking up one win at the Wunstorf airport track and coming seventh in the standings. De Vinuesa had difficulties finding sponsorship to race full-time, so spent sparcely but what he thought was wisely, and ended 1986 with a deal to contest the International Formula 3000 finale at Jarama. Could 1984 repeat itself?

This time he qualified 18th, in a car that had failed to even qualify a few times in the hands of countryman Adrian Campos, then avoided trouble and was on for his team’s best result of the year before an accident put him out on lap 43 of 58.

Luis Perez-Sala was also representing Spain in the series, winning that year’s Mediterranean Grand Prix and Birmingham Superprix, and the media latched onto the pair as having a rivalry when both returned for the 1987 season under the same manager, and both driving factory Lola T87/50s, but at different teams. Perez-Sala was a works Lola driver, while de Vinuesa joined BS Automotive.

Alfredo Filippone, a journalist who followed their careers closely, explained to Formula Scout why some saw a rivalry.

“They were of course the top rising stars of Spain,” said Filippone. “Very different one from the other. There wasn’t that level of rivalry, it was more in the press. There was no animosity between them. Knowing that the two were very different as personalities. As much Luis is quite a cool guy, Vinuesa always gave the impression of a very intense person.

“Completely and exclusively focused on racing. Very calm, but not laidback. He was always very focused, very determined. A little bit like Ayrton Senna, who was like that in a sense. Senna had more of an ego though.”

From a journalist’s perspective, what was de Vinuesa like to work with?

“It was not difficult to talk to him, but it was difficult that he would open up to people,” revealed Filippone. “So it was a strange personality. But precisely because of the personality I think everybody was convinced that we would sooner or later get to F1.

Photo: www.rickautosportpictures.com

“You see these kind of people that are really mono-focused, and ready to make any sacrifice for reaching their goal. Certainly he didn’t come from a wealthy background like Luis. He would send some notice that he was keeping every penny for racing.”

To warm up for a proper step up to F3000, de Vinuesa did contest a few races of the inaugural F3 Sudamericana season though. It seemed to do the trick, as he then begun his F3000 campaign with sixth at Silverstone while Perez-Sala crashed.

The pair shared the second row of the grid in round two at Vallelunga, but their podium battle was ended by an engine failure for de Vinuesa. They got even closer next in the next race at a wet Spa-Francorchamps, but it was too close.

De Vinuesa qualified sixth, with Perez-Sala down in 20th, but a drying track and subsequent switch to slick tyres meant they ended up battling for position. On lap 17 the pair went side-by-side into Raidillon, locked wheels and were both thrown into the barriers at Eau Rouge. While Perez-Sala was uninjured, de Vinuesa was unconcious and trapped in his car.

He was thankfully saved from the wreckage, and transferred to hospital with concussion. Cognitive neurosciene has improved significantly in the 34 years since (this writer can attest to that), but there simply wasn’t the means at the time to measure the true extent of the injuries inflicted to de Vinuesa’s head as it decelerated from racing speeds to a standstill in a second.

“After the accident he was… he looked like something had happened,” Filippone recalled. “And I suspect also he didn’t get the right treatment, nobody realised the extent of the damage. And he probably was the first one not to, he was probably the first one to misjudge the effect of the damage.

“So he tried to minimise because he didn’t want to lose the momentum, he didn’t want to lose time. He came back after three races, which was [crazy].”

Less than three months after the crash, de Vinuesa was back with BS Automotive in F3000 at Brands Hatch, still utterly committed to his racing dream. However, the positive momentum that had been starting to build fell apart.

In an oversubscribed grid, de Vinuesa failed to be among the fastest 26 drivers who would qualify to race, and the same happened in Birmingham. The comeback was put on pause, but de Vinuesa didn’t think his form had been affected by the crash and he actually co-ordinated with Marcos for old rival (and new Spanish FFord champion) Albacete to debut with GA Motorsport, which used the same Lola chassis, in the Jarama season finale. If Albacete could make it into the midfield on pace on his debut, then de Vinuesa would have a clue if it was his own driving that was letting him down.

But Albacete failed to qualify, and so de Vinuesa went searching for budget to return for the 1988 season convinced he still had the ability to be as competitive as before his crash. While science couldn’t neccessarily aid his cognitive health, love could in a different way and the 28-year-old’s partner is said to have been crucial in his rehabilitation and racing return.

Domestic peace was going alongside further racing turmoil, though. He started ’88 with Onyx Racing, but quit the team after three rounds and three consecutive DNQs. He didn’t find his way back onto the grid until the second half of the season, joining Tamchester Racing to drive its Reynard 88D. Again, things didn’t work out.

At Brands Hatch he didn’t qualify, and while he did in Birmingham it was of no great value as any hope of a strong result was ruined by having a crashed Russel Spence block his way early on, and then having to sit and watch the Briton (in his car) be craned up and down while the leading pack came to lap him.

He then retired from the race anyway, and after failing to qualify at Le Mans he left Tamchester too. Marcos picks up the story from that point.

“By the end of the year he came to me, and because he knew I had a close relationship with Magwick Motorsport, and their [Reynard 88D] car seemed to be working, and because he did not talk to Robert Synge, he came to me. He said: ‘Listen, you know I’m not on good terms with Robert, would you mind to set up an inbetween because I want to know if the problem is the cars I’ve been driving, or it’s me? I know that Magwick cars are working, so I would like to make a deal with them, but obviously I have nothing with Robert, would you mind being an inbetween?’.”

Marcos helped his friend, sealing a deal with Madgwick for de Vinuesa to do the final two rounds at Zolder and Dijon.

“I went with them to the Zolder race and things didn’t work out. And it was a funny situation because we were staying in the same hotel, and he didn’t qualify [for the race]. I remember we were staying in the bar, and it was Alfonso, his manager, Robert from Madgwick, and myself. And even racing in his team he was not talking to Robert!

“So in the bar in the hotel, he tells me:

Arturo, tell your friend that the problem is not the car, it’s me.

“Four people there, and the driver and the team owner not talking to each other. And it was like a film because he was telling me what to tell him. 

“But that day he was very self-committed, because I always liked Alfonso on a personal level. He was an incredible person. And I could see that when he told me ‘tell your friend the problem is not the car, it’s me’.

“So he had to admit that [to himself], and then his racing career was over. And it was that moment that he had to admit it, and it was really sad for everybody close to him.”

De Vinuesa in his last F3000 race in 1988, Photo: John Clewer

De Vinuesa failed to qualify at Dijon, and that was the last time he sat in a single-seater. That one conversation in the hotel bar, that facing up to a hard truth, was a braver decision than putting his life on the line again in 1989.

“The next time I met Alfonso was when he was running in Spanish Touring Cars in 1991, in a Fiat,” Marcos adds. “And he had found his new girlfriend, and he was happy at the time, but he knew that his days in single-seaters were gone forever.”

After touring cars he ended his motorsport involvement via the Porsche 968 CS Cup, run by the same man who had helped start his career: Emilio de Villota.

But after saying goodbye to his F1 dream, it appeared de Vinuesa entered a depression. And life around him only got worse.

“I remember there was a string of tragedies surrounding him,” says Filippone.

“I know that everything seemed to go wrong for him. And that there were tragedies all around him. I remember that his fiancé got killed in a car accident, and that was really the end of [him] because she had been there [when he got injured], very supportive of him and she was really his last anchor to life.”

The loss of the closest person in his life and his closest passion, racing, came after losing his income when his own business had gone under and losing a member of his family. Many years earlier, his first partner had also died in a skiing accident.

De Vinuesa’s own tragic death on May 24, 1997 came not long after his fiancé’s, occurring as he got out of his car on a busy road to check it for faults, and being struck by a truck. Ruled as accidental, many have suspected it could have been suicide.

Unfortunately de Vinuesa’s story is mainly only known for its ending, but he was a talented driver, well liked by his peers and got to F3000 on merit. With a little more steering from his manager, who got his other two clients Campos and Perez-Sala into F1, it wouldn’t have been a susprise to see a third Spaniard knocking on the door of the sport’s top level too.

D.E.P Alfonso.

The post The tragic tale of Alfonso de Vinuesa appeared first on Formula Scout.