Photos: F2 Media Service / LAT Images

Formula 1’s Asian grands prix had a high-profile support series of their own between 2008 and 2010. Those support races continued for several years after that, just not in the way originally envisioned

To understand the story behind GP2, you need to understand that Formula 1’s former chief executive Bernie Ecclestone had his fingers in many pies. While Bruno Michel is the face commonly associated with GP2 and its successor Formula 2 today, it was in fact coined by Mr Ecclestone and former Renault F1 team boss Flavio Briatore (another man with many interests).

It aimed to be more cost-efficient for teams than its predecessor International Formula 3000 by being a totally spec series, but more importantly forming a synonymous relationship with F1 and basing itself almost entirely in its support paddock.

The long-established European grands prix were the obvious place to start when forming the GP2 calendar, as it picked up mostly from where F3000 had left off, was the cheapest arrangement for the all-European grid of teams and were circuits with years of experience and the best infrastructure to support multiple high-profile racing series on one weekend.

GP2 had two years of immediate success, with high-quality grids, big-name champions in Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton, and a car that was successfully tested to its limits mechanically (from the off as electrical problems afflicted the first ever event) and as a safety structure in a scary crash for EJ Viso at Magny-Cours in 2006.

Ecclestone expected nothing less than the series proving its credentials, and he even trademarked the GP1 name for a potential series as a result of its success. His eyes were on making money, and a new rival to his own F1 product would do him no good, especially when it was finally making inroads into the Asian market and aiming to expand its calendar.

But there was another single-seater series that had already cracked that continent though and its growing economies: A1GP.

The ‘World Cup of Motorsport’ invited the world’s nations to compete, very different to the eurocentric F1 and GP2 paddocks, with 25 countries from all six habitable continents competing in the first season in 2005; the same year GP2 was born. A1GP raced on five continents that campaign, although its return to China in 2006 on the streets of Beijing was an embarrassment.

Despite that ill-fated trip, and a slow-burn on marketing and broadcast deals, A1GP had done a better job than F1 in making Asia viable. But the series existed on shaky financial ground, and Ecclestone saw his chance to take up the mantle with an entity of his own. He had always been looking east when it came to new avenues for profit, as far back as the 1980s when he pushed to get F1 to race behind the Iron Curtain on a Hungarian street circuit, realised instead with the creation of the Hungaroring. His first ventures into Asia with the world championship were Malaysia (1999), Bahrain and China (both 2004).

Rather than base a global series in Asia, Ecclestone knew to engage with that audience directly it needed an F1-endorsed series of its own. The races could run on F1’s support bill for several rounds, then probe some of Ecclestone’s (paying) target countries for F1 with the rest of its calendar. He wanted Asian drivers in the series too, primarily for marketing reasons. Local drivers would attract more trackside fans and more television deals (the rights all owned by Formula One Management), and the hope was that enthusiasm would then bleed into F1 despite the lack of local representation.

Ecclestone’s plan went public in early 2007, with rumours having already been swirling that he wanted GP2 to trial the winter racing format that A1GP had successfully used. After all, F1 teams testing during that time didn’t bring him in any money.

The teams that signed up for the inaugural GP2 Asia season in 2008, 12 from the main series and one from Malaysia in Meritus (now behind F4 South East Asia), were all asked to field a driver from outside of Europe and the Americas.

Excluding Russia and established racing nation Japan, there were six Asian drivers on the ’08 grid. One of those, Karun Chandhock, actually went on to race in F1 and was a race-winner in GP2. Four of the others also racked up main series experience, although admittedly Chinese star Ho-Pin Tung was half-Dutch and two of the drivers – Adam Khan and Jason Tahinci – were born in Britain.

The United Arab Emirates held two rounds to warm up for its F1 hosting duties, and its season two slot had the unexpected drama of floods in the desert. Rain had already caused havoc in the other ‘exploratory’ round in 2008, when changing weather and a deteriorating track surface at Sentul in Indonesia required teams to equip cars with protective devices for wings.

Bahrain, Chinese and Malaysian GP support slots featured in 2008, with Qatar joining the fray as a standalone event in 2009. The Middle Eastern nation wanted to join the F1 fray, and had waited for its Bahrain neighbour’s exclusivity clause for the region to expire before putting its cards on the table – with a night race – in GP2. Ecclestone never signed a deal.

There were seven drivers from the east in the 2008-09 season, with two Kiwi talents proving the best. Bahraini F3 graduate Hamad Al Fardan was next best, while the others did not score. The teams with all-Western line-ups had to concede eligibility for prize money with one of their drivers -? a way of Ecclestone avoiding paying out for teams not enhancing the brand.

While the main series had already moved on to a second generation car, GP2 Asia used 2005’s Dallara GP2/05 through to its 2009-10 season and that limited its relevance when A1GP was boosting its reputation with a Ferrari partnership and Formula Renault 3.5 increasingly became seen as a series of equal pedigree to GP2 when it came to being the final step before F1.

Not a single Asian driver raced in 2009-10, although Meritus ended its time in the series with a first win. It had no intention to race in the main series and therefore didn’t enter the 2011 Asian season, where the Dallara GP2/11 was introduced.

GP2’s new teams now saw the Asian championship as a way of getting a head start, but their plans were curtailed by a later start date (so the new car could be delivered to all 13 teams), anti-government protests in Bahrain cancelling two rounds through force majeure among themselves, and the cars then being stuck in Bahrain. An unusual standalone event at Imola concluded the season.

Criticism had already come in for the series essentially moving entirely to the Middle East, with the 2009 Malaysian GP slot being the last race in the Far East. But there was some nice symmetry in that GP2 Asia ended at the same circuit GP2 began.

Except GP2 Asia didn’t actually end in Northern Italy in March 2011, with a rather incomplete aim of bringing in new names, tracks and teams to the main GP2 series and F1. It actually kept on going under a different name.

While the mess of the Bahrain cancellations was being sorted, GP2 organiser Bruno Michel was already well into planning the next season, which would return to the two-year winter format now it wasn’t acting as a test bed for a new car. The Abu Dhabi GP was certainly going to appear, but there was not a single rumour about supporting Ecclestone’s new races in Korea and India. Michel admitted he wanted a Bahrain return, despite the continuing civil disruption and general frustrations at racing in a desert in front of empty stands. The teams saw limited commercial gain in spending their winter racing there.

As expected, that was the calendar, with a return to Malaysia’s Sepang circuit with the F1 circus even being added. But with the line-up of teams being the same in both series, and those teams wanting to hire the same drivers for both such was the competitiveness in the main championship, Michel decided in mid-2011 to put the two series together for the next year.

The GP2 Asia season opener in Abu Dhabi instead became the 2011 GP2 Final, won by Racing Engineering’s Fabio Leimer. The Spanish team had avoided GP2 Asia while the old car was in use, freeing up the spots that enabled Meritus to race.

In December 2011 the calendar for 2012 was revealed, with Sepang as season opener, and the two Bahrain dates penned for the Asian series now acting as rounds two and three before the cars were shipped back to Europe. A surprising addition at the end of the year was a support slot at the Singapore GP, and no appearance of Abu Dhabi.

The standalone Bahrain event was dropped in 2013 to regain Abu Dhabi, with Malaysia and Singapore departing in 2014 in a cost saving measure that introduced a Russian GP support slot in Sochi instead. Continuing with the GP2/11, rather than bringing in a new car, also saved money but rising budgets and the short shelf live of F1’s new Asian races showed that a series based solely in the East may not have lasted long on its own anyway. Ecclestone even contemplated an active return, in response to the rising costs, by entering a team under his ownership.

In 2015 the German GP fell off the F1 calendar too, and GP2 kept its calendar at 11 rounds by supporting the World Endurance Championship in Bahrain late in the year. It also strengthened its F1 relevance by adding the Drag Reduction System.

A reshuffle of F1’s own calendar for 2016 then put GP2 in a tricky situation for maintaining a pre-season, with returns to Germany and Malaysia in the second half of the year replacing Bahrain and Russia. The European GP’s revival on the Baku street circuit in Azerbaijan, very much a Eurasian location, added another long-term venue for the series.

Bahrain returned again in 2017 as the 9950km trip to Malaysia was dropped and the series was renamed F2.

Formula Scout poses the question of what if GP2 had continued with the Asian series as a winnable title within the series? Euroformula did the same for many years with Spanish Formula 3 after outgrowing its domestic roots, and any extra prizes for drivers to win is always an incentive for entries. Even Formula E ran a ‘European Races Cup’ in-season last year.

For FS’s calculations, each of these subsequent Asian seasons have taken place in one calendar year, meaning they take Asian races from the start and end of each GP2 season. As a result, a separate ‘main series’ can also be calculated.

The first change is in 2013, where Russian Time’s Sam Bird would have comfortably been ‘main series’ champion rather than Racing Engineering’s Leimer, and down in sixth for the eight-race Asian season. Carlin’s Jolyon Palmer was Leimer’s closest opposition in the East, and he finished second again to ART Grand Prix rookie Stoffel Vandoorne a year later.

Prema’s Pierre Gasly and Antonio Giovinazzi had to share the titles in 2016, with the latter claiming the Asian crown. The Italian team was unbeaten again in 2017, with Charles Leclerc taking both titles. His DAMS rival Oliver Rowland suffered from a disqualification in the short Asian season and ended up sixth in the points, behind his team-mate Nicholas Latifi. Alex Albon, 10th in the main series after missing a round through injury, was a far more representative fourth in Asia for ART.

The Thai driver, who made it to a Red Bull Racing seat as a F1 rookie last year, is the most high profile Asian driver who’s raced in GP2/F2 since Chandhock almost a decade before. In total 16 drivers with Asian licenses, excluding Japan and Russia but including New Zealand, competed in the main GP2 series from 2005 to ’17, and an equivalent 12 drivers in GP2 Asia.

Only seven GP2 Asia events were F1 supports; 10 were standalone events, six of which at non-F1 circuits. If current F1 owner Liberty Media wanted to revive the idea of an Asian support series, then it needs to learn where GP2 Asia failed.

Features from the archives
The top 10 GP2 drivers that F1 missed out on
Crunching the numbers from 2020 F2 pre-season testing
F2: Chasing the Dream series review
When the Singapore GP was run for junior single-seaters
Why Europe needs a series to rival IndyCar and Super Formula

The post The strange story of the support series that supported itself appeared first on Formula Scout.

Raffaele Marciello returned to a single-seater cockpit on Sunday with Mercedes ally HWA in FE testing. He tells Josh Sutill why F1 wasn’t his final destination.

While one Mercedes junior is arriving on the Formula 1 scene in 2019, another looks set to depart it. Neither are guaranteed a future race seat with the manufacturer and are unlikely to taste the kind of success that Mercedes-contracted Raffaele Marciello enjoyed in 2018. His talent is certainly deserving of an F1 seat, and not too long ago he was Ferrari’s next big thing. Instead, he’s sweeping the floor in GT racing with its F1 rival.

Last year, the Swiss-born Italian became the first driver to win all three Blancpain GT Series titles in the same calendar year before a penalty appeal by a sister Mercedes trio post-season cost him his Endurance Cup. He also finished third in the Intercontinental series, which included dominating the inaugural Suzuka 10 hours. In just his second year in GTs, it was a prime example of what can be achieved by drivers who don’t make it in F1.

Back in 2012, 17-year-old Marciello announced himself as a future star by taking a rookie Pau Grand Prix win by over 13 seconds, prompting Prema boss Rene Rosin to say he had “speed in his heart”. He then won five European Formula 3 races in a row, an achievement only bettered by Max Verstappen. He lost out on the title, but a year later came back to beat Felix Rosenqvist, winning 13 of the 30 races.

“For sure, it was a good year when I won F3, it was an FIA championship, and it was really big at that moment,” Marciello tells Formula Scout.

“After winning this championship, everyone in Italy, and in Europe, thought that I was going to be the next Italian star in Formula 1 and this kind of thing, a real home star.

“It was good in F3 if you’re with a top team but like in every category, if you’re not with a team like Prema or Carlin, you can’t compete. When I won the championship, it’s also thanks to the car – because I had the best car, quite easy to be quick.

“I think without counting this year, it was the best year of my career. Winning 13 races and on the podium 19 times was amazing.”

Marciello had attracted the support of Ferrari three years prior when he entered Italian Formula 4 predecessor Formula Abarth. He won his first race and finished third in the standings, and was a winner in Italian F3 a year later. Ferrari’s support seemed to waiver after his European F3 success though.

He made his GP2 debut in 2014 with Racing Engineering and finished eighth in the standings. He won the feature race at Spa-Francorchamps after triumphing in a thrilling duel with Stoffel Vandoorne, but just weeks earlier had been publicly panned by Ferrari for his performances.

Marciello demonstrated raw speed throughout the season, achieving one of the best qualifying records, but suffered from horrible luck, ranging from a collision with Daniel Abt in the Barcelona feature race to transmission failure at Silverstone, where he’d secured his maiden pole position and was fighting for victory. It took until round four at the Red Bull Ring to score his first points – a pair of podiums.

“I was still pretty young, I was only 19 when I did GP2 in the first year,” Marciello adds.

“My speed was pretty good because I was the only driver to qualify top eight in every session. My race pace was also quite good. I made some rookie mistakes, many mistakes at the start of the race, some during the pitstops, I didn’t have the best year but I learned a lot in it.”

Marcello moved to Trident for his second year in the category, and he found much greater consistency, but with a team that had only once finished inside the top five of the teams’ championship since the series launched.

He scored 110 of the team’s 111 points that year, including four podium finishes. The only comparable example of one-upmanship is Romain Grosjean at DAMS in 2011. The Trident deal made it clear that Ferrari wasn’t willing to spend on top seats.

“The driving was just too difficult, the car was not there,” Marciello recalls.

“The other teams were stronger. I tried my best, I think I had a pretty good year and I didn’t make many mistakes.

“Podiums and a pole position in Monte Carlo in the wet [Marciello was fastest in his group but not overall due to differing weather] – the wrong moment in the wrong team.”

In 2015 he did make his F1 grand prix weekend debut, driving for Sauber in the free practice 1 in Malaysia. He’d also done well driving a Ferrari in a post-season test the year before, and was being courted by Mercedes’ DTM programme.

His relationship with Ferrari was breaking down though, with management restructuring leading to the previously arranged plans for Marciello changing.

“I think I was in the wrong moment with wrong person lets say,” Marciello says.

“In this year, all the mess with Ferrari came up. [Stefano] Domenicali and [Luca] di Montezemolo left, they had some plan but when [Marco] Mattiacci and then [Maurizio] Arrivabene came in, and they didn’t want to respect this plan.”

In January 2016 he split with the Ferrari Driver Academy, and his deal as Sauber reserve driver ended. He signed with Russian Time for a third GP2 season, partnering Artem Markelov and keeping himself on the F1 radar.

He enjoyed his most successful season to date, finishing fourth in the standings, taking six podium finishes and remaining in title contention until the penultimate race. Mercedes recognised his potential and snapped him up.

“In my final year in GP2, I finished behind the two Premas and level on points with [Sergey] Sirotkin. It was the best I could do with Russian Time, but they [Mercedes] believed in me, I’m happy to give something back to them.”

Marciello was put into a Blancpain programme with the French AKKA ASP team and had to learn how to drive the front-engined Mercedes-AMG GT, a very different machine to an F2 car. They quickly became a formidable combination and excelled last year. At the Hungaroring, Marciello mastered changeable conditions to come away with second and a win in two sprint races – performances that proved crucial in winning the sprint and overall title.

In the FIA GT World Cup at Macau, Marciello took a stunning pole, repeating his qualifying-topping performance from his Grand Prix appearance in 2013.

With Mercedes entering Formula E next year, there’s an opportunity for Marciello to return to single-seaters, but he affirms that although he tested in the series with Mercedes’ long-time DTM partner HWA in Marrakesh, it is out of his hands.

“[In 2019] I will still be a Mercedes driver, so I’ll do more or less the same stuff as 2018.

“We still need to plan the next season, whatever they ask me to do I’ll do it, if it’s GT4 I will do GT4, if they ask me to do Formula E, I’ll do FE.

“FE can be the future, if Formula E gets bigger than F1 or close to F1, then sure it would be nice to be in F1 and race for Mercedes. Whatever they ask me to do, I’ll do my very best.”

Marciello believes his GT success shows junior drivers shouldn’t waste too many years chasing a drive in F1.

“It’s difficult, it will always be about money,” Marciello admits. “The guy with money can buy the team and then a ride in F1. Talent, in the end, will always show up, if not in F1, then in FE, GT or whatever.

“I just would like to see the mentality changing about what’s outside F1. At the moment, everyone will only watch F1 and think they’re the best drivers, but it’s not true because there are many drivers in GT3, Formula E, LMP [Le Mans Prototypes] etc. that are very good or even better than the F1 drivers.

“There won’t be space in F1 for everyone. There are too many drivers for only 20 seats. In other categories, there are so many good drivers who don’t receive the right media feedback, the right Instagram likes or whatever because they’re not racing in F1.

“This is not fair, everyone is good, I just hope one day that people will watch other categories in the same way they watch F1.

“We need the same respect as the F1 drivers. At the end of the day if you put someone like Dries Vanthoor in F1, he will be as quick as a [Pierre] Gasly, because we’re talented like them.”

Audi duo Vanthoor and Robin Frijns, Red Bull test driver Jake Dennis, and McLaren-backed Ben Barnicoat are some of the highest profile junior single-seater talents of late that are now making money in GT racing.

“I think drivers need to be more realistic because so many talents who can waste too many years in GP2 because they really want to make it to F1. It’s not always easy, and sometimes it’s better to focus on something else. I can say I’m working as a factory driver, and not many drivers can say that.”

Undoubtedly Marciello is one of the best drivers to have raced in the outgoing generation of Dallara F3 machinery, which he adores, and to say he’s failed in reaching F1 would do an injustice to the tremendous success he’s achieving at the top of another branch of motorsport.

The post The European F3 champion making the most of a Mercedes seat appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: Andrew Ferraro/FIA Formula 2

The Russian Time squad is to continue in Formula 2 after all this season, while both Racing Engineering and Fortec Motorsports have backed out of their commitment to the series.

Russian Time was absent from the initial 2018 F2 entry list revealed last November, before the outfit beat DAMS and Prema to win the 2017 teams’ title.

It has now recommitted to the series for 2018, when it will run cars #1 and #2 courtesy of its teams’ title.

It is unclear whether team protege Artem Markelov, the runner-up to Charles Leclerc in the 2017 standings, will be involved in Russian Time’s continuation, having previously looked set to move on from F2.

While Russian Time has returned to the fold, both Racing Engineering and Fortec will now not take part this season having featured on the original entry list.

Racing Engineering has quit the series having been involved since its inception as GP2 in 2005, taking Giorgio Pantano and Fabio Leimer to titles in 2008 and 2013 respectively.

The Spanish squad’s run to eighth last year was its worst performance in the teams’ championship.

It has made an entry to the European Le Mans Series this year with its 2016 race-winner Norman Nato.

Thanking team boss Alfonso de Orleans-Borbon, F2 chief Bruno Michel said: “I?m looking forward to renewing our fruitful collaboration in the near future.”

Fortec had been set to join the championship for the first time, coinciding with the end of the Formula V8 3.5 series.

“I?m also sorry to see Fortec Motorsports step back this season, but this was a joint decision,” said Michel.

“We will reconsider their entry when the conditions are more favourable.

“I feel it best for our championship to limit the number of teams in 2018 to ten. I know they will provide yet again an incredible show.”

Formula 2 2018 entry list
1/2 Russian Time?(TBA/TBA)
3/4 Prema Racing?(Sean Gelael/Nyck de Vries)
5/6 DAMS (TBA/TBA)
7/8 ART Grand Prix (Jack Aitken/George Russell)
9/10 MP Motorsport (TBA/TBA)
11/12 Arden International (Nirei Fukuzumi/TBA)
14/15 Campos Racing (Luca Ghiotto/TBA)
16/17 Trident (TBA/TBA)
18/19 Carlin (Lando Norris/Sergio Sette Camara)
20/21 Charouz Racing System (Louis Deletraz/Antonio Fuoco)

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