IndyCar teams are at the circuit today (December 6), and one-time Formula 1 starter and Formula 2 race-winner Jack Aitken is driving for Ed Carpenter Racing as he homes in on a part-time race seat with the team for 2022.

Indy Lights has the track for December 7/8, with the short layout being used. There will be 13 drivers in action with five teams, including the five drivers already signed for next season. The rest of the entry list gives a clue to who will be filling the remaining seats on the 2022 grid.

Andretti Autosport is running Hunter McElrea and Sting Ray Robb, both already announced, with Matthew Brabham and Christian Rasmussen in its other two cars and widely expected to be racing for the team as well next year.

HMD Motorsports has already poached Danial Frost from Andretti, is believed to be retaining Manuel Sulaiman and looks like it has Christian Bogle as a contender for a 2022 seat as he joins for Sebring.

The car HMD co-runs with Global Racing Group will be filled by Benjamin Pedersen for a second season, with the American-Dane recently outlining his title ambitions.

TJ Speed is in action with Kyffin Simpson, and its second car will be on track too. Artem Petrov, James Roe Jr, who recently did a GT3 test with Lamborghini team Imperiale Racing, and Ernie Francis Jr are also on the entry list but have not been named to teams, and Abel Motorsports is out with Jacob Abel but yet to confirm it will join the series.

Reigning Indy Lights champion Kyle Kirkwood, stepping up to IndyCar with AJ Foyt Racing next year, will continue with Vasser-Sullivan Racing in IMSA’s endurance rounds for 2022. He will share one of the team’s Lexus RC F GT3s with Jack Hawksworth and new arrival Ben Barnicoat.

Euroformula race-winner Barnicoat announced a week ago he has left his job as a McLaren factory driver after spending most of his car racing career with the brand.

Further down the American racing ladder, Cape Motorsports has made its second signing for the next USF2000 season.

Jackson Lee will move to Cape from Jay Howard Driver Development, with whom he finished 18th in his rookie campaign, and partner former NASCAR driver Jagger Jones.

Lee debuted in single-seaters in 2019, winning in Lucas Oil Formula Car Race Series and in F1600 Championship Series a year later before winning the Team USA Scholarship.

“I am beyond excited for the opportunity to race with Cape Motorsports,” said Lee. “After testing with the team, I felt like this was the best place for me. What I learned last year, combined with the help of Dominic and Nicholas Cape and the rest of the team, will give me a great opportunity to compete for the championship in 2022.”

The post Aitken does IndyCar test at Sebring as Indy Lights grid firms up appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photos: Fotospeedy

The Euroformula champion of 2020 may have scored 146 points more than the runner-up, but the standings belied a title battle that was actually way closer and was compromised by a pandemic-hit calendar

Before the Barcelona season finale, Lukas Dunner had actually outscored CryptoTower Racing Team team-mate Yifei Ye by 24 points in the 10 races they had been up against each other. But with the finale being expanded into a four-race round, it meant that if one driver had a clear advantage at the Catalan circuit then there was no coming back.

As it happened, Ye was in a class of his own at Barcelona and outscored his rival by 62 points with a perfect run of four wins, four poles and four fastest laps from the weekend. This, combined with the 108 points he scored in the two rounds that Dunner was absent from through FIA Formula 3 Championship commitments, meant he was champion by 121 points once dropped scores came into consideration.

Such a dominant margin of title success isn’t unusual in Euroformula, as in the era of the Dallara F312/317 there would often be drivers who just clicked with the car and romped to title success. But the introduction of the halo-shod Dallara 320 this year should have levelled the playing field, especially with the limited pre-season testing teams were able to undertake after the coronavirus pandemic arrived.

But Dunner’s two seasons of series experience and Ye’s time in FIA F3, Asian F3 and the Formula Renault Eurocup put the pair above most of their opposition when it came to learning the demands of Dallara’s latest single-seater design.

Dunner showed a record pace in the only ‘official’ pre-season test at Hockenheim, but his absence from the Hungaroring season opener – only after it and FIA F3’s second Silverstone round got pushed back by lockdowns to be on the same date – meant Ye got a head start that he made the most of with a perfect score.

That dominance came as no surprise when his experience was factored in, but it was actually Van Amersfoort Racing’s Andreas and Sebastian Estner who looked faster on a greener track surface and were cleaner too before Ye’s very different and Motopark-influenced driving style came to the fore in qualifying and the races.

But Dunner’s arrival for round two at Paul Ricard would provide a proper challenge, and also be the start of a working relationship that was pushed to its limits like Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg’s was in Formula 1 a few years ago.

In France there was little that could separate them besides the wind direction down the Mistral Straight, which ultimately decided how effective the slipstream effect was, and Ye had the upper hand on pace by 0.133 seconds. As a percentage of the absolute pace, that was a 0.117% difference between the two.

Dunner was gone again at the Red Bull Ring, as he prioritised the FIA F3 finale at Mugello, and Ye returned to dominance with another perfect score and a 111-point lead over Dunner after the first six races. At this point Andreas Estner was his closest rival in the standings, but he had less than half of Ye’s tally.

Two weeks later the paddock headed to Italy for back-to-back rounds at Monza and Mugello, and the fight between the two CryptoTower team-mates was unbelievably close once more.

Ye was fastest at Monza, this time by 0.096s over Motopark’s Niklas Krutten. Dunner was only 0.117s behind in the fastest of the qualifying sessions though, and that equated to a 0.113% difference. Qualifying at Monza is all about strategy, and CryptoTower’s one was to have Dunner and Ye giving each other tows after each lap. It worked for one session, however a loose moment for Dunner in Q2 threw the plan into disarray as it enabled Motopark driver Manuel Maldonado and CryptoTower’s third driver Rui Andrade to draw in and try to gain the same benefits.

What ensued was madness, with Ye defending from Maldonado when he tried to pass but then not letting Dunner through until later in the lap than usual, then Andrade spinning off after he made a pass. Ye ended up quickest, but was penalised for his aggressive defence against Maldonado and it was Dunner who was put onto race two pole.

The plan just about remained in operation in Q3, in what was Euroformula’s first triple-header weekend, but Dunner was aggrieved that poleman Ye was the beneficiary of the tow at the very end of the session and the strategy was unformalised by the time they reached Spa-Francorchamps two rounds later.

In the first two Monza races each driver won from pole, with Ye not losing the lead once in a slipstream thriller in race one, but in race three it was Dunner who stood on the top step after he and then Krutten passed Ye mid-race and the Chinese driver had to fight his way back into second place.

There was limited dry running at Mugello the next weekend, and Sebastian Estner’s free practice benchmark ended up being the fastest lap of the weekend. In that session Dunner bettered Ye by 0.117s (0.121%) and had the upper hand over Ye in the wet and greasy conditions that inflicted most of the on-track action. It was quite likely an advantage gained by Dunner’s time spent in rallying and ice driving last year.

Dunner finished 15s and four places up on Ye in a storm-hit race one, then was almost 10s ahead in the damp race two.

Spa was another triple-header, and the fight at the front was the closest it had been yet – eventually too close – as there was a minuscule 0.016s (0.012%) difference between their respective pole laps for races two and three.

It was the marginally faster Dunner who claimed the pole for race one, but he could do nothing to stop being slipstreamed down the Kemmel Straight on the opening lap of the race and it took a few laps for him to come back at Ye for the lead. On most occasions he used the slipstream and then tried the outside of Les Combes, but couldn’t pass when Ye braked later, and on the one occasion he did get through he cut the chicane and allowed Ye back past. They finished 0.448s apart.

Dunner kept the lead for the whole of the opening lap of race two, but was passed by Ye just before a safety car interruption a few laps in. The lead swapped hands a further three times before Ye got right onto Dunner’s gearbox as they went up Eau Rouge. They were already too close to each other at the start of the Kemmel Straight given the speed advantage Ye would have behind, and they ended up making the slightest contact that pitched Ye into a spin and left Dunner with a puncture.

The chief beneficiary of this was Double R Racing’s debutant Louis Foster, whose mileage had been limited by crashing in practice, and he went on to take a surprise win – Double R’s first in Euroformula – as Ye and Dunner came 11th and 13th.

Race three was another dominant Dunner win as Ye had to fight his way back up to third after a frantic opening lap, but he now had one hand on the title with 108 points left to score and a 94-point lead.

The cancellation of the Jarama season finale led to Barcelona’s bursting schedule, and Foster remained in the series for the new finale as Drivex School brought along Formula 4 racer Rafael Villagomez and Motopark tester Matthias Luethen finally made his race debut.

The closest Dunner got to Ye in qualifying was 0.238s, but he was 0.315% off Ye and Maldonado ended up being the closest opponent on pace. With each race Ye became more dominant, even overcoming a five-second penalty for another defensive move to win race three, while Dunner only made the podium once and admitted he was making more errors than usual.

Had the Jarama round – on a circuit none of the drivers had tested on in F3-level machinery – been able to go ahead then possibly the final two races of the season would have looked a little different to two Ye wins and a fourth and a seventh for Dunner.

But there’s lots of what-ifs from the 2020 season. The Pau Grand Prix and the revival of the Mediterranean Grand Prix at Sicily’s Enna-Pergusa circuit both would have provided very different driving challenges had they not been cancelled as a result of the pandemic, and Hockenheim was also lost from the calendar as the circuit prioritised negotiations to bring back the German Grand Prix for F1 once the events it originally was hosting all had their dates cancelled during the pandemic.

On average Ye was just 0.082% faster than Dunner, and while it looks like the latter is set for a second season in FIA F3 it does not seem likely that the Euroformula champion’s single-seater dream will continue in 2021. He’d had interest from Super Formula teams for the post-season rookie test there, but is prioritising his budget at the moment on an Asian Le Mans Series title attack after starring for Rebellion Racing and Williams in the Virtual Le Mans 24 Hours this year.

Besides outright pace, was there much to distinguish Euroformula’s top two of 2020? Dunner won races he was outqualified in twice to Ye’s once, and two of the three circuits where Ye wasn’t dominant happened to be the best for overtaking. At Paul Ricard, overtaking was scarce and their respective race performances reflected that.

However, if Formula Scout had to pick a top five drivers of the season…

Formula Scout’s Top 5 Euroformula drivers

5. Louis Foster

After his free practice crash at Spa, Foster made up for it by lighting up the series with his qualifying and race performances. The obvious standout was winning on his second start, but he was also a canny overtaker – up with Maldonado for making exciting racing on charges up the order – and it was no surprise that he was the driver in position to benefit from Ye’s Barcelona penalty. He didn’t have the pace to do it, but two podiums from seven starts was a brilliant job.

4. Niklas Krutten

The German, who contested three rounds last year with Motopark, didn’t start the season as strongly as he was expected to but he was one of the cleanest and the quickest in the field and claimed four podium finishes in a row before two well-deserved fourth places at the soggy Mugello. His Barcelona weekend cost him fourth in the points, but he certainly looks ready to move into FIA F3 or come back and win the Euroformula title (or both) in 2021.

3. Ben Barnicoat

McLaren factory driver and former single-seater racer Barnicoat got called up by Carlin to race at Mugello, and demonstrated exactly what the world had been missing when he moved into sportscars after a single year in FIA European F3 back in 2015. He was second fastest in free practice, and disappointed to be only sixth in Q1. He was the raciest in the wet first race and made it to the podium though, then used all his experience to take pole and win the following day. There was a possibility he could have made a second appearance but that didn’t happen, and single-seaters’ loss is sportscars gain.

2. Lukas Dunner

On dent of having two seasons of Euroformula, and leaving the question of what if on the weekends he was absent, Dunner takes second place on this list. He did have a downturn under pressure at Barcelona, but was otherwise Ye’s match. He didn’t have as many spell-binding performances as his rival either, but then he came into the year without a single-seater win to his name and so victories was new and long-awaited ground for Dunner. Over inn FIA F3 he struggled, but then so did Ye in 2019 so he can’t be marked down for it.

1. Yifei Ye

A season that includes 11 wins, 13 qualifying-topping performances and 12 fastest laps is definitely the one of a champion, and on many occasions Ye was simply unbeatable. An otherwise unquestionable first place on this list does get brought back by how close Dunner was to him much of the time, and that when Ye did come under some pressure his defending wasn’t always the cleanest. However, it was a season where he improved in many areas and after losing out on the Eurocup title at Barcelona in 2018 and then having a torrid time there in FIA F3 in ’19, his 2020 bounceback was very impressive.

The rest

Manuel Maldonado could be stellar on his day but also overly messy on others, and the same can be said of Carlin’s Zane Maloney, who debuted as the reigning British F4 champion. His season was also hampered by mechanical issues, but the inclusion of Barnicoat at Mugello was a direct response to the frustrating season Maloney had been having with the Dallara 320 car. His Israeli team-mate Ido Cohen fared better, but wasn’t as quick, and kept his nose clean to earn two podiums at Spa along with Drivex School’s similarly consistent and sometimes rapid rookie Glenn van Berlo.

Andreas and Sebastian Estner clearly had the pace at many of the tracks, but just could not put it together in the races and often lost spots on the opening lap. Both claimed podiums, and the older brother Andreas was third in the points, but it was definitely a question of what could have been for both.

Cameron Das returned to Euroformula again but only made the podium once with Motopark, while Ayrton Simmons‘ half-season with Double R didn’t attract the same results but was definitely character-building and laid down important foundations for if he is to return in 2021. Rui Andrade looks like he could do the same with CryptoTower, and will need to be aiming for a first podium if he goes for a third season in the championship.

More on Euroformula
FIA F3 and Euroformula teams continue winter testing at Algarve
The exciting oversight that could rob top talents of a F1 future
Euroformula to race at Imola in 2021, opts for single Winter Series event
Pau Grand Prix organiser calls off next year’s race
Macau GP emerges as likely addition to 2021 Euroformula calendar
The McLaren super-sub who answered a three-year long ‘what if?’

Points tables

The post Euroformula season review: The super-close battle that dominated 2020 appeared first on Formula Scout.

In 2017, Formula Scout asked what might have been on Ben Barnicoat’s then-recently ended junior single-seater career. As it turned out, after making his name with McLaren in sportscars, we got the answer in 2020

Name a British talent whose teenaged years ended with a McLaren race seat and most would look to Formula 1’s Lando Norris. But there was another junior single-seater racer just a few years prior who was handed the same opportunity with the brand. Like Norris he picked up at least one title a year in his first three years in cars, and had also impressed in the assessments for the then-McLaren-backed Autosport BRDC Award (MABA) for young drivers.

The difference here is that while Norris became a McLaren junior as the F1 team’s new management started to solidify its hold, a 19-year-old Ben Barnicoat left it as its relationship with Honda changed how the team – and its junior ranks – operated.

Barnicoat’s McLaren story didn’t end there though, as within a year he had been signed once again by the brand and given a lucrative race seat in its expanding sportscar arm. His single-seater story didn’t end there either, as earlier this year he made two appearances in the F1-supporting FIA Formula 3 Championship with Carlin.

He was then called in by the team again for a Euroformula cameo earlier this month, and ended up taking a pole and a win. The ‘what might have been?’ that Formula Scout asked when Barnicoat made his sportscar move was firmly answered.

While the McLaren relationship continues to this day, it was the support of another prominent supporter of young talent in British motorsport that actually launched Barnicoat’s career. The now-23-year-old explains:

“I was very lucky at the end of 2010 was when I got my big break I would say. That year I raced in the British Karting Championship with Mick Barrett Racing, and I was up against Jake Dennis, who was part of the Racing Steps Foundation (RSF). I really took it to him that year in the title fight, and that caught the eyes of both McLaren’s junior team and RSF.

Photo: CIK/Bastin

“McLaren was the first one that I signed to, and RSF shortly afterwards. Initially McLaren had taken me on and they were going to fund and guide my career, but then RSF also showed a lot of interest and I think McLaren knew that RSF would be able to do a very good job for me, which they did. They put me all through my international karting career, with ART Grand Prix, and into Formula Renault with Fortec Motorsports.”

Barnicoat’s single-seater debut with Fortec came at the very end of 2013 in the three-race FR2.0 BARC Autumn Cup at Rockingham, and occurred in part because of one bad karting result. That year the CIK-FIA World Karting Championship took place over two rounds rather than one, and a retirement from the final in round one at PFI (a track his family now manages) meant his title hopes were all but over. That led to a switch in focus to preparing to step up to single-seaters for 2014 in, all likeliness, the club-level FR BARC.

Barnicoat’s triple pole and two wins at Rockingham impressed McLaren, who switched his focus instead to a campaign in a newer car in the higher-level FR Northern European Cup for 2014. It was a title he also won at his first attempt.

“So I guess a lot of McLaren’s work was done by RSF, to be honest, it’s more those guys at RSF that I have to thank for my single-seater career and bringing me up to be a professional racing driver at McLaren. And because the way it works like that, although I was always associated as a McLaren young driver and I had their support in terms of fitness and guidance, there was never such a strong connection there in terms of doing sim work and stuff like that.

“Then when the Honda [F1 engine supply] came about, the McLaren young driver programme sort of merged into a Honda young driver programme and that was kind of the end of the road for me. Which at the time at a young age, I was very upset about, F1 was always my dream.

Photo: Jakob Ebrey Photography

“But when the RSF was then coming to an end at the end of 2016, I was looking towards GTs, and McLaren were the first people to offer me an opportunity, and I saw a future there to become a professional, and I took it. That’s why I am where I am today. Even though I was upset about losing the F1 young driver programme, it always just proves to never burn your bridges because, no matter what, you can always call upon old people to open new doors further down the line.”

Between his two spells at McLaren, Barnicoat’s 2016 was spent primarily in the FIA F3 European Championship. Pre-season he had signed with the often-dominant Prema outfit, but instead he lined up for his rookie season with the inexperienced Hitech GP. He ended up seventh in the points with two wins, including one on the streets of Pau, but Prema drivers won 20 of the 28 other races on the calendar. Had he been at Prema, perhaps there wouldn’t have been a ‘what if’ of his single-seater career going further.

“The RSF managed all kind of contractual situations between teams and I just had my contract with RSF,” Barnicoat explains.

“It was very set in stone that I was going to Prema on the back of a strong FR2.0 Eurocup campaign. I’d already done a first few tests and done a very good job with the team, and obviously I was super excited to go to the best team there was. Then I just remember it all going quiet, missing a lot of winter testing, and then next thing I knew I wasn’t part of Prema anymore and we had to find somewhere else to go.”

Some have suggested that Prema investor Lawrence Stroll, whose son Lance was racing for the team at the time, was involved in Barnicoat’s departure from the Italian team’s line-up. Barnicoat has no idea if that was the case.

“I can’t, hand on my heart, answer the question as to what happened there. That would be a question for the likes of Derek Walters and Graham Sharp, who were the main men at RSF.

Photo: FIA Formula 3 European Championship

“We didn’t really have a lot of time left to choose a team, a lot of the seats were already gone, and Hitech was one of the only available places. At the time it looked like a great place to be, so we decided to go there and the start of the year worked out very well, but we sort of had a few issues along the way. Norisring we were having a really tough time of it and I had a bad crash and badly damaged my car.

“I used the team’s spare car from that race onwards and just never really seemed to have a good run-in from there on in. That was probably the darkest days of my junior single-seater career, and unfortunately it came to an end after that.”

A move into Indy Lights was eyed up for 2017, but without the financial support of RSF it proved impossible, and it was a combination of his impressive GT car performances in MABA assessments in 2014 and ’15, and meeting some of McLaren’s GT personnel during a GT World Challenge Europe cameo with crack Audi squad W Racing Team (earned in a shootout test between RSF drivers) that led to his motorsport future being secured with McLaren at the end of that year instead.

“I didn’t really feel like I ended my first single-seater career on a great note, which is another reason why it’s been so good to get back in one and kind of prove I can do it even after such a long time away.”

So how did Barnicoat’s race-winning return to F3-level competition come about two weeks ago?

“It was a last-minute call again [to do Euroformula at Mugello]. I drove for Carlin in the European and Asian Le Mans Series in 2019 and early part of 2020, and Carlin has been a team that I’ve always been kind of quite close to but haven’t actually driven for up until last season. I just did a very good job there, and they were very happy with me, but I still didn’t really expect it to bring back any single-seater opportunities.

“But earlier this year when they had the issue [with Enaam Ahmed leaving his FIA F3 seat] I jumped in there, I did a good job, I helped the team and I guess although the result wasn’t great at Silverstone, it was looking like we were on for a good one in the final race. And then, you know, I’d kind of proved that I could still do it.”

Before a mechanical issue struck, Barnicoat was on course for a podium in the last of his four FIA F3 starts, having started the race from reversed-grid pole and defended hard against drivers with faster equipment.

“They’ve been having not the smoothest time in Euroformula, they’ve got two guys who definitely have talent but lack experience, and I think they just need someone with experience to go and kind steer the ship a bit and see where they were at. I was able to do a great job, my first pole since 2015 and first win since 2016 in a single-seater, so it was great to be able to achieve that with them.”

Barnicoat was second fastest in dry free practice, in his first day in the series’ Dallara 320 car, then a “disappointed” sixth in the wet qualifying session that set the grid for the first race.

“In some ways it was Carlin putting that work in off-track between Monza [the previous weekend’s round] and Mugello that kind of made me look very good, really. Because I was able to turn up and have great pace from the word go.”

Barnicoat’s experience showed though, especially in the races, and he rose up to finish on the podium in race one. In similarly wet conditions the next day, he took Carlin’s first pole and win of the year while his rookie team-mates struggled.

“Zane [Maloney] had a fifth, Ido [Cohen] qualified fifth for race one, so we all showed potential throughout the weekend and I guess my experience was what allowed me to hook it up and get the win.

“It didn’t quite work out that well for the other guys, but I guess that’s why they need someone like me there just to help them and guide them and kind of leave the development of the car to me. And they concentrate on improving their driving.

“I’ve already been through that stage of having to learn the new techniques and stuff throughout my junior career, and also in sportscars, and that allows me to be able to focus more on the car and everything else comes a little bit more naturally.”

Photo: Fotospeedy

The mix of conditions at Mugello helped Carlin “get information across all boards” for car development, and would have helped Cohen and Maloney in being able to observe new team-mate Barnicoat’s wet-weather workings; his two F3 wins from his first junior single-seater career both came in the damp.

Barnicoat admits the process went the other way too, saying: “When we were debriefing I’m listening to what they’re saying about the car and what they’re saying they’re trying because I’m very down to earth in the sense that I know I can always be better and I can always learn. So even one or two small things that those guys might say, I know will help me go better.”

While that benefit will mostly be felt in GT racing, with the McLaren commitments always coming first, the door is open for Barnicoat to race more with Carlin “if they want me to be back and feel I can bring more again to the table”, and his Euroformula cameo in particular was drawn from the team’s need to speed up its set-up knowledge on the new-for-2020 car when rival outfits are regularly running at least three or four drivers to Carlin’s usual two.

Any improvements to his own driving would also be beneficial for his karting, as Barnicoat still competes at a world championship level in the discipline and is becoming one of Britain’s most accomplished karters of all time. For more on Barnicoat’s continued karting career, and his take on the headline-grabbing violence between Luca Corberi (and his father) and Paolo Ippolito, check out the latest episode of the Formula Scout Podcast (see bottom of article).

From Mugello, Barnicoat flew to Barcelona for FIA F3 post-season testing to fulfil the same duty for Carlin, whose best result in that series is two podiums in two seasons (disregarding the non-championship Macau Grand Prix).

It’s not the first time Barnicoat has been living job-to-job this year without going home, as his start to 2020 was as busy as a driver’s can get.

“This season I was due to have 24 race weekends, before COVID-19. I had an extremely busy start to the year,” he explains.

“I left the country on December 29, 2019, and was away – I had the first round of Asian Le Mans in Australia the second week of January, and I stayed in Australia until the Bathurst 12 Hours, and had a couple of test days at Philip Island in between there. I went straight from Bathurst to Malaysia, where I did the third round of Asian Le Mans and then on to Thailand for the fourth and final round at Buriram. I came home from there, went immediately to a McLaren fitness camp in Madrid, and then from that fitness camp I went straight to America to do two weeks testing with Compass in the McLaren GT3.

“I flew back from America the day they announced they were locking the American borders – I came back and I did one two-day test at Snetterton with 2 Seas Motorsport, a team I was supposed to be doing GT World Challenge Sprint series with, and very shortly after we went into lockdown.

“Right up until the point that COVID hit us well and truly, I think I’d probably spent four or five nights in my own bed in England. I’d been super busy and that was kind of the year I had in front of me.

“I had ELMS as well, Le Mans 24 Hours, and all the Intercontinental GT Challenge races, GTWC Endurance and Sprint. I wouldn’t have really had any time for karting. And they’re just all the race events. That’s not including the tests we do before the race, or the development work. It would have been extremely busy, which is what we want to be doing as factory drivers at the top end of our game.

“We just want to be racing every week and doing what we do best and fighting for wins. As well as constantly improving the products, for our customers, and giving them the best car on the grid and helping them win what they want to achieve, and attracting new customers to the brand. There’s a lot to it, and it is something I very much enjoy doing, and I want to be doing for as long as I can.”

While recent performances suggest Barnicoat would be a success if he made a full-time return to single-seaters, it’s clear his ambitions lie with wherever McLaren Customer Racing goes next. And while there isn’t yet talk of McLaren designing its own prototype sportscar for the Le Mans 24 Hours’ upcoming LMDh class, Barnicoat knows staying fit enough to race single-seaters will put him at the front of the queue if the brand does commit to such a project.

“It’s always keeping my skills very much in check for those kind of opportunities that may come in the future.”

You can listen to the extended interview below (through Anchor) as the latest episode of the Formula Scout Podcast, or find it on Breaker, Google Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, RadioPublic, Castbox, Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

The post The McLaren super-sub who answered a three-year long ‘what if?’ appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: Fotospeedy

McLaren factory driver Ben Barnicoat let from lights-to-flag in Euroformula’s second race at Mugello to take Carlin’s first win of the year.

The 23-year-old single-seater returnee had to fend off several cars off the start, which took place on a damp track due to pre-race rain but with a grid of drivers all using slick tyres.

CryptoTower Racing Team’s season dominators Lukas Dunner and Yifei Ye were the fastest drivers besides poleman and race leader Barnicoat, and on lap four of 19 the CryptoTower drivers simultaneously made passes around the outside of the first corner to move up into second and fourth respectively.

By the end of that lap Dunner had reduced Barnicoat’s lead, primarily because of a major off-track moment for the Briton that took quick car control to recover from.

Ye passed Van Amersfoort Racing’s Andreas Estner for third at the start of the next lap, and closed in to make a three-car lead train.

It was Dunner who had the fastest car for the drying track, and it took some expert defending from Barnicoat – some of which left Dunner with little time to react – at various points of the lap to prevent the Austrian from coming through.

At halfway distance they were seperated by just 0.015 seconds, but Dunner still couldn’t get through as Barnicoat left him hanging on the outside of the first corner.

At this point rain started to fall on the track, prompting several of the drivers further down the order to gamble on pitting for wet tyres. It ended up being the wrong choice, with the slick tyres proving adequate but the cars that were set up for greasier conditions being the fastest.

Barnicoat started to pull away at this point, and didn’t come under attack from Dunner again until several of the drivers that had pitted started to appear in his way as lapped traffic.

After navigating the backmarkers, Barnicoat crossed the line to beat Dunner by 0.663 seconds and take his first Formula 3-level victory since winning in Pau four years ago in FIA European F3.

Ye dropped back significantly as the track got wetter, and then drier again, and beat Motopark’s Niklas Krutten to the final podium place.

Carlin’s Zane Maloney overtook Motopark’s Manuel Maldonado to secure fifth, with his team-mate Cameron Das rounding out the non-pitters in seventh.

Glenn van Berlo finished a lap down but got his pitstop timing better than the others to finish eighth, while Carlin’s Ido Cohen and Estner dropped to ninth and 10th.

Race results (19 laps)

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Photo: Fotospeedy

Ben Barnicoat continued his successful 2020 junior single-seater return by taking pole for the second Euroformula race at Mugello.

The McLaren sportscar driver joined Carlin for two FIA Formula 3 Championship rounds this summer, then was called up by the British team to aid its Euroformula squad for this weekend.

He led Sunday morning’s wet qualifying session from the very start, with his provisional pole lap dropping from 1m57s territory down to 1m55.833s with 10 minutes of the 25-minute session left to go.

While he didn’t improve on that lap after that, an unbeatable final sector time meant that even as the track dried and other drivers surpassed him through the first two sectors of the lap, he remained in first place to the very end of qualifying.

Van Amersfoort Racing’s Andreas Estner was in second place for much of the session, and on several occasions was able to go faster than Barnicoat through the first two splits but then lost time in the final sector. His front row spot was then lost to points leader Yifei Ye in the final minute, with the CryptoTower driver taking second place by 0.044 seconds.

Ye’s team-mate Lukas Dunner was quick throughout and he ended up in fourth, ahead of VAR’s Sebastian Estner, while Motopark’s Manuel Maldonado made a late improvement to jump up the order and qualify sixth.

His team-mate Niklas Krutten had an off but was seventh fastest, just pipping Cameron Das (Motopark) and Ido Cohen (Carlin).

Zane Maloney rounded out the top 10 in the third of Carlin’s cars, just pipping VAR’s Alexandre Bardinon to the position.

Qualifying results

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Photo: Fotospeedy

Euroformula points leader Yifei Ye was quickest in the opening free practice session at Mugello, which marked the first time the series has run at the Italian circuit.

Carlin’s Ido Cohen was the first to set the pace, before CryptoTower Racing Team driver Ye took over at the top on the first runs.

The fastest lap was then taken down by several seconds by Cohen’s debuting team-mate Ben Barnicoat, who also cameoed with Carlin in FIA Formula 3 Championship earlier this year and races for McLaren in sportscars, and he was three quarters of a second clear of the rest of the field at the mid-point of the session on his first time driving the Dallara 320.

On the second runs it took a while longer for him to make further improvements though, while Ye and Motopark’s Niklas Krutten reeled in several laps to bring themselves close to and then eventually surpass Barnicoat’s pace.

Ye became the first driver to break the 1m38s mark, and Van Amersfoort Racing’s Andreas Estner then beat that time with two minutes to go. After one cool-down lap, Ye was back on the pace for his final two efforts and he met the chequered flag with a 1m37.483s lap to reclaim top spot.

Sebastian Estner crossed the line a few seconds later to beat brother and team-mate Andreas to second place, and CryptoTower’s Lukas Dunner also went sub-1m38s to demote Barnicoat to fifth.

Krutten ended up in sixth as the last driver to lap sub-1m38s, and Cohen headed Carlin team-mate Zane Maloney in seventh.

Motopark’s Manuel Maldonado and CryptoTower’s Rui Andrade were both several seconds off the pace and set fewer laps than their opposition. At the end of the session, they seemed to have their best laps deleted, leaving them with no recorded laptimes.

Double R Racing’s Ayrton Simmons meanwhile was absent, with budget issues ruling him out of action.

Free practice results

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The 23-year-old Englishman, who races for the team in prototype sportscars, got called up in August to replace Enaam Ahmed in the team’s FIA Formula 3 Championship line-up for the two Silverstone rounds, four years on from last competing in the category.

After two years in Formula Renault 2.0 as a McLaren junior and one season in FIA European F3, Barnicoat moved into sportscar racing in 2017 and was resigned by McLaren as one of its factory drivers for GT racing. He required permission from the manufacturer for his starring FIA F3 cameos, and has needed the same again for his upcoming Euroformula debut.

• Feature: The most surprising junior single-seater returns

“I’m really excited to have the opportunity to race in single-seaters again with Carlin this weekend,” Barnicoat told Formula Scout.

“Mugello is a track I’ve never seen before, but it looks like great fun and very challenging at the same time. It will be great to work with the Carlin team again and provide them with as much feedback as possible to help push their package forwards.

“Once again thank you to McLaren Customer Racing for allowing me to take part in these single-seater events.”

In his time at McLaren, Barnicoat has won in British GT4 and raced regularly in GT World Challenge Europe. He won two races in his original spell in F3, and was denied at least a podium on his return this summer due to a mechanical fault.

Barnicoat brings Carlin’s Euroformula line-up up to three cars for this weekend, with reigning British Formula 4 champion Zane Maloney and Ido Cohen occupying the other two seats. The pair started off the season strongly, but various mechanical issues and set-up quandaries has limited recent results.

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Photos: Getty Images

The FIA Formula 3 Championship season has already been and gone, and the data left behind tells an interesting story on how a title destined for a driver from one team almost ended up with one from another

By consensus, Prema was expected to win both of the titles available in FIA F3 this year, and that’s exactly what it did. In the inaugural season it had a clear pace advantage not only with its trio of quality drivers, but because the team itself had got on top of the Dallara F3 2019 quicker than anyone else. This wasn’t a small advantage either, and there was only one circuit where it didn’t look like the team to beat. To the gratitude of its opposition, that same circuit stood as its weakness this year.

And despite its drivers filling three of the top four places in the final championship standings, and winning the teams title by 209 points (a points tally that only two other teams even reached), Prema was not the fastest team this year.

The most obvious method of pace comparison is looking at each team’s gap to the absolute pace set at each round. And more often than not, Prema was not the fastest team.

Logan Sargeant took three consecutive poles for the team in the middle of the year, but two of these came at Silverstone and therefore there was only two circuits out of seven where a Prema driver set the fastest lap. It did that four times out of a possible nine in 2019 (if the non-championship Macau Grand Prix is included), which is what Trident achieved this year.

The Italian neighbour of Prema set the pace in qualifying at Spa-Francorchamps and Mugello with Lirim Zendeli, who was second fastest overall across the two Red Bull Ring rounds but the quickest of all on the second visit, and his team-mate David Beckmann was the best at the Hungaroring.

That only translated to two poles though, a loss of crucial track position in a grid of wide high-downforce cars, and that’s because Hungaroring qualifying took place in the wet (leaving Beckmann 14th on the grid) and the second Red Bull Ring session was so stop-start that laptimes didn’t get back up to the level reached in free practice by Zendeli.

Prema’s Frederik Vesti was the driver who benefitted to take pole at the Red Bull Ring, which he converted into a win in a rain-shortened race. That only awarded half-points though, which punished Trident in the standings. Had it counted for full points, then Beckmann would have been up a spot to fifth, and Zendeli up a spot to seventh come the end of the year.

Sargeant would have overtaken ART Grand Prix’s Theo Pourchaire as well to be title runner-up, and while they had a pace advantage over eventual champion Oscar Piastri, it was the latter’s consistency that earned him the title.

Taking the best times of each driver and expressing them as a percentage of the absolute pace means an average of that absolute pace can be calculated across the nine rounds. The performance of Trident in those two early season practice sessions helps put it on top, with Zendeli leading the way with a pace that was on average 0.263% away from the fastest lap at any given round. Or on a lap with a 1m40s pole lap, he was on average 0.263 seconds away.

Beckmann is second best and just 0.029% off his team-mate, with Sargeant and Pourchaire third and fourth fastest on average. HWA Racelab’s Jake Hughes and Liam Lawson are next up, both within 0.5% of the pace, while champion Piastri was only 10th fastest of the 35 drivers to compete this season. In fact, he recorded a rare feat of winning a title without ever making the front row.

There is a caveat to this data though, as using fastest laps from free practice rather than qualifying isn’t totally representative. Track conditions in FIA F3’s single practice session on a Friday morning is a world away from the grip level available later in the day in qualifying, after several Formula 1 and Formula 2 sessions have taken place, and the tyres used in those sessions aren’t always the same set that end up in use for qualifying.

To complicate matters further, practice is also used for bedding in brakes as well as tyres, and the two Red Bull Ring rounds used completely different compounds of tyre from Pirelli. The medium compound was used for round one, and practice for round two was the first time the teams even saw the hard compound they were to use.

Single-lap ‘supertimes’

By removing the Hungaroring round from the equation, given there wasn’t even a dry qualifying session there to compare to the free practice times, then it’s Sargeant who was fastest on average at 100.253% of the absolute pace.

Zendeli is just behind in second, followed by Beckmann and Pourchaire, while Piastri is now the fifth fastest driver. While quite a leap up the order, it makes sense as Piastri spent much of Hungaroring free practice in the garage and when he did take to track he ran shorter stints than the rest of the grid and set significantly fewer laps than the pacesetters.

Piastri wasn’t lacking in one-lap pace across the season, as by applying the same calculations to the fastest laps from races then he was second best on average. The driver to beat on this front, even before HWA’s change in set-up direction that turned around the fortunes of all three of its cars, was Hughes.

It was the same names filling the next spots behind these two, with Carlin’s Ben Barnicoat up in 10th from his two-round Silverstone cameo that marked a return to single-seaters for the Briton after moving to sportscar racing in 2017.

Clement Novalak actually set fastest lap on two occasions for Carlin, but the team was hugely inconsistent and had swings of 2% between races in its gap to the front. As a result, Novalak was 16th fastest on average and 0.97% off the pace.

The opposite of Novalak’s picture was Hughes’ team-mate Enzo Fittipaldi, who made the most of HWA’s mid-season fix to score four times in the last seven races and kept arguably a more level pace than anyone on long runs, even as tyre life decreased.

Admittedly Fittipaldi was only 13th fastest on what Formula Scout would consider ‘race pace’; the best 10-lap rolling average achieved by a driver in races where that was achievable without safety car interruptions or anomalous laps (where a single laptime is disproportionately slower than the stint average due to traffic, an off or yellow flags).

Only 11 of the 18 races fitted this criteria, but it did include at least one race at every circuit and showed just how close FIA F3 is when one team isn’t dominating. The top 19 were covered by just one percent on race pace, with the remaining 16 drivers all within the 102% mark.

While Prema did start the season as the top team on race pace, improvements by ART, Hitech and HWA meant drivers from those teams got closer to the front. ART and HWA matched Prema in being the fastest team at two different circuits, and the improvements by ART propelled Pourchaire into title contention.

Piastri was down in eighth, only narrowly ahead of old Formula Renault Eurocup rival and Monza race two pacesetter Alexander Smolyar. The race pace gap between Piastri and his team-mate Vesti at the top, whose own title hopes were undone by two retirements in the higher-scoring Saturday races and a qualifying deficit that was similar to Piastri’s, was larger than what covered Piastri down to Fittipaldi.

Were it not for Barnicoat’s starring cameo, then Alex Peroni would have got Campos Racing into the top 10 on qualifying pace, race pace and peak race pace on the season averages.

Beyond the drivers usually fighting for wins, it was the Australian’s abilities that stood out the most when his team-mates were usually back row prospects. Peroni claimed two fastest laps and three podiums, but his team just got slower and slower as the season went on.

Over the first rounds he was only 0.2% off the front in qualifying, but that gap had more than quadrupled by the final rounds in Italy. Only once did one of his team-mates get within 0.5% of him though, and he ended up contributing the entirety of Campos’s points haul – enough to put it ahead of Carlin, Jenzer Motorsport and Charouz Racing System in the standings.

FIA F3’s rolling race pace average

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Photo: Formula Motorsport Limited

Carlin called up McLaren GT driver and ex-European F3 racer Ben Barnicoat for the recent FIA F3 rounds at Silverstone after losing one of its drivers. It’s not the first surprise return to junior single-seaters

Most returns seen in sport are attempts by athletes to recapture former glory with an old partner or team in a familiar series, or because there is unfinished business in need of attention before a career can move on to its next step.

But sometimes there are totally random moves that are logical but would not have been predicted by anyone, are too last-minute to have any gameplan behind them, or come about more for the benefit of the PR department than for the sporting challenge the athlete faces.

Drivers racing in junior single-seater cars are supposed to be in the development stage of their career, bar maybe Formula Ford 1600 where value-for-money and historic tournaments keep competitors coming back for sometimes decades.

Some drivers do reach a professional status and quickly return to the junior ranks when they realise they require more learning, and more results, to genuinely establish themselves at the top level.

GP2 champions Timo Glock and Giorgio Pantano are excellent examples of this, having both made it to Formula 1 with Jordan in 2004 and then Champ Car/IndyCar in 2005. They couldn’t keep themselves in either series, so sought to find a second way in by landing seats in GP2.

They finished fourth and fifth in the 2006 points, then first and third in 2007. Glock earned a solid F1 seat at Toyota for 2008, the year in which Pantano won his GP2 title. He secured a Superleague Formula drive off the back of his success, but then raced in Auto GP in 2010 as he still aimed for F1. After four further IndyCar starts in two years, his hopes dried up.

For the purposes of this article, such junior single-seater returns aren’t considered. Ideally a driver should have spent at least two years outside of the junior sphere, preferably having gone on to race at a professional level in that gap, and their return cannot be down to a pre-existing development or test driver role.

Mathias Lauda AUSTRIA 2014-15 MRF Challenge
Junior career: 21st in 2005 GP2, 9th in 2004 Auto GP, 13th in 2004 Int. F3000   Return: 6th in 2014-15 MRF Challenge

At the end of 2014, M&N Racing’s Jose Pottamkulam Ootta attracted two very big names to the India-based MRF Challenge. Neither driver was actually massively known in motorsport at the time, instead signed up due to the reputation of their fathers and the movie-making possibilities of their single-seater exploits.

Mathias Lauda actually skipped karting at the start of his career and went straight into single-seaters in World Series Lights (formerly Formula Nissan). He didn’t embarrass himself, and picked up two podiums in his second season in the series. Already in Formula 3000 by his third year in motorsport, Lauda seemed to adapt quickly and was 13th in the F1-supporting International series.

After his three-time F1 world championship-winning father Niki bought him a A1GP seat for winter, he then contested the new GP2 series in 2005 but was firmly at the back. Regardless, he landed a place in professional racing with a four-year stint in the DTM. That was followed by a move to sportscars, where he’s had a long-term role with Aston Martin.

Lauda’s MRF appearance came around after his friend Freddie Hunt, whose father James famously beat Lauda Sr to the 1976 F1 title, called him up on behalf of Ootta. Hunt had previously raced in British Formula Ford and ADAC Formel Masters.

The first MRF round took place at former GP2 Asia venue Losail in Qatar, with Lauda and Hunt qualifying sixth and eighth on the 14-car grid. Lauda challenged for the podium in the first race, while Hunt scored a point in 10th after starting from the pitlane due to a formation lap stall.

A photo finish denied Lauda a podium in race two, and sixth in race three put him on race four pole. After being deposed of the lead, he dropped to ninth with a mechanical issue, while Hunt crashed heavily. Neither were competitive in Bahrain, but Lauda did pick up a reversed-grid race win. He skipped the Chennai season finale but came sixth in the standings.

Antonio Felix da Costa BRAZIL 2016 Macau GP
Junior career: 3rd in 2013 FV8 3.5, 2012 Macau GP winner, 3rd in ’12 GP3, 4th in ’12 FV8 3.5   Return: 2016 Macau GP winner

In the first six years as a professional driver, recently crowned Formula E champion Antonio Felix da Costa only won six races. It was this barren run that he immediately referred to upon taking the 2019-20 FE title in Berlin last weekend.

Two of those race wins came in the 2016 Macau Grand Prix, when he made a surprise return to F3 after having already established himself as a BMW factory driver in the DTM and as a giant killer with former F1 minnow team Aguri in FE.

“There is no aim as such in going back for me,” da Costa said ahead of his Macau return, having won the event for Carlin in 2012. “I’m just doing it for the love of the sport, so when I got the call from Trevor [Carlin] a few weeks ago I couldn’t say no.”

Unlike many of the quick drivers, da Costa had a trouble-free first qualifying session of the Macau weekend to put him on provisional pole. In the second session he also made it to the top of the times until the very end, when Hitech GP debutant George Russell and Van Amersfoort Racing’s Callum Ilott surpassed him.

The qualification race was delayed due to the heavy braking zone at Lisboa being wet, and there was immediate chaos once it got underway. The safety car came out, and da Costa slipstreamed into the lead once action resumed. He then held off Ilott for the rest of the race.

Sergio Sette Camara passed his Carlin team-mate da Costa for the lead at the start of the main race, and the latter once again benefitted from a the long run to Lisboa on a restart to move back into first. After fending off an attack from Sette Camara into Lisboa on the next restart, da Costa managed his race to win the FIA F3 World Cup.

Ben Barnicoat BRITAIN 2020 FIA F3
Junior career: 9th in 2016 FIA European F3, 2015 BRDC British F4 Autumn champion   Return: currently 19th in 2020 FIA F3

For almost all of Ben Barnicoat’s career he has been representing McLaren, and it was a great shame that after four titles in four years in karts and cars he parted company with the F1 team before his single race-winning season in FIA European F3 in 2016.

In karting he kept Charles Leclerc and Max Verstappen on their toes, and moved into single-seaters with the financial aid and management of British driver support programme Racing Steps Foundation behind him. He debuted in Formula Renault BARC’s three-race Autumn Cup at Rockingham, where he took two wins and a second to top the points.

Sticking with the Fortec Motorsports team he debuted with, Barnicoat concentrated on the FR Northern European Cup for his first full year in cars in 2014 and won the title. Fourth in the Eurocup followed – a season which underwhelmed until he changed engineers, and he also won BRDC British Formula 4’s Autumn Trophy.

It wasn’t enough to retain McLaren’s support, but he became one of its young drivers again when he moved to sportscars in 2017. That evolved into full factory status, although success with the brand has been hard to find bar a sole British GT4 win despite showing plenty of speed. Last year he fronted Carlin’s first foray into prototypes, and just missed out on the Asian Le Mans Series title. That set up the relationship that led to him being called by the team two weeks ago to replace Enaam Ahmed in its FIA F3 line-up.

McLaren had to give permission for Barnicoat to race twice at Silverstone, and he may have driven at Barcelona too had it not summoned him back. He started and finished 20th on his single-seater return after his progress was thwarted by contact, and improved to 12th the next day. On the second weekend he fared even better, qualifying in ninth (Carlin’s best result this year) and scoring a point with a 10th place finish. That put him on pole for race two, where he was in contention for a podium before retiring with a fuel pump failure.

If he returns to FIA F3 again at Spa-Francorchamps, it will be more proof his single-seater career should have gone further in the first place.

Antonio Pizzonia BRAZIL 2007 GP2, 2012, ’14 & ’15 Auto GP
Junior career: 6th in 2001 Int. F3000, 2000 British F3 champion   Return: 27th in 2007 GP2, 1st in 2015 Auto GP

Antonio Pizzonia worked his way up the British junior single-seater ladder in the late 1990s, winning a third title in as many years in British F3 in 2000, and the Brazilian showed his credentials to the F1 paddock in two seasons in International F3000.

First he bagged a Williams test role, then a race seat at Jaguar for 2003. But after scoring no points, he was dropped with fives races to go. Williams rehired him, and he stood in for the injured Ralf Schumacher for four races in 2004. He was far more competitive this time, admittedly in a race-winning car, but demoted back to test driver status for 2005.

Once again injury enabled an F1 race chance in place of Nick Heidfeld, and he finished seventh on his return before four disappointing races. Pizzonia didn’t want out of the top level, so raced part-time in Champ Car in 2006. That wasn’t going to bring him back to F1 though, so he stepped down to GP2 for 2007 with Fisichella Motor Sport but was replaced after three rounds.

A return to Brazil beckoned, and it looked like Pizzonia would be giving up on F1 for good. After three years in Stock Car Brazil and Superleague Formula, where he represented local team SC Corinthians, he returned to the junior ranks again.

Auto GP had grown from an Italy-based series to a global championship by 2012, and Pizzonia joined the field with the Zele Racing team when it headed to Curitiba in Brazil. Two problems for Adrian Quaife-Hobbs meant a double win for Pizzonia, and drove him to find a way on to the grid for the Sonoma season finale. He qualified third there, but a crash with Quaife-Hobbs ruined his weekend. He was invited back by Zele for the 2014 season finale and another podium made him pursue a full-time seat alongside his Stock Car duties.

Pizzonia topped 2015 pre-season testing, and a last-lap pass denied him a double win to start the year at the Hungaroring. He dominated the first race at Silverstone, but a stall meant he had to start the second from the pitlane and could only recover to third place. A lack of entries forced Auto GP called off the rest of the rounds, but points leader Pizzonia wasn’t awarded the title.

Emma Kimilainen FINLAND 2019 W Series
Junior career: 5th in 2009 FPA, 10th in 2008 ADAC FMasters, 2nd in 2006 FFord NEZ   Return: 5th in 2019 W Series

The second run at junior single-seaters for Kimilainen is notable in that it’s been considerably more successful than the first.

In her youth, the Finn was a race-winner in Formula Ford but did not get the same sort of results when she moved into slicks-and-wings championships. She actually went into open-top sportscars between FFord and the next level of lower formulae, which started with an ADAC Formel Masters campaign in 2008 as a Volkswagen-Audi junior.

She claimed one podium and 10th in the points with Van Amersfoort Racing – only two places behind a young Daniel Abt – before moving across to Formula Palmer Audi for 2009. The opposition in the British series was weaker, but she visited the podium four times and was fifth in the standings, and only twice across 20 races did she finish outside of the top 10. Admittedly those kinds of results in a series such as FPA don’t set the world alight, and when the global financial crisis hit Finland her career was done.

Kimilainen used her time out of racing to earn a degree and start a family, until a phone call several years later drew her back into motorsport in the Scandinavian Touring Car Championship. But she originally only had eyes on single-seaters, so W Series was a no-brainer move when it was created last year.

Arriving as the oldest in the series, Kimilainen turned out to be the surprise of the season. A clumsy crash from one of her rivals in the season opener reaggravated a neck injury and forced her out of two rounds, but she returned with fifth at the Norisring, victory from pole at Assen, second place at Brands Hatch and three fastest laps. Had she not missed races, she would likely have been right in the title hunt.

An even greater ‘what if’ is if W Series hadn’t cancelled its 2020 season, which Kimilainen was one of the title favourites for.

Roberto Merhi SPAIN 2014 FV8 3.5, 2018 F2
Junior career: 2011 F3 Euro Series & Int. Trophy champion   Return: 3rd in 2014 FV8 3.5, 4th in ’14 Macau GP, 12th in 2018 F2

Photo: Zak Mauger / FIA F2

One of the lesser-known stories of Mercedes-Benz’s young driver patronage is the case of Roberto Merhi, whose time in F3 and the DTM was supported by the manufacturer.

Merhi made his F3 debut aged 16 in 2007, and was winning races a year later while also fighting Daniel Ricciardo for Formula Renault titles in his main programme. As a Mercedes-supported driver, much in the same way Felix Rosenqvist was a few years later, he earned a seat at Manor in the F3 Euro Series. He made the podium on his debut, but he scarcely replicated that form and struggled in particular with reversed-grid races. A move to Mucke Motorsport for 2010 was an improvement, but he limited his potential by also juggling a part-season in the new GP3 series.

Returning his focus solely on F3 for 2011, and with the lead Mercedes-powered team Prema, Merhi dominated the Euro Series and won the only ever running of the FIA F3 International Trophy despite start-line crashes in both the Masters of F3 and Macau Grand Prix. He reportedly turned down a GP2 drive to move to the DTM for 2012, forming part of a revived Mercedes Junior Team under the mentorship of Michael Schumacher, who was part of the Junior Team in the 1990s.

The results in Merhi’s two-year DTM spell were pretty damning bar a wet-weather podium at Hockenheim from 21st on the grid in his last start.

So came Merhi’s first junior series return. The Spaniard signed up to race in Formula Renault 3.5 for 2014, and despite his talent was not tipped for title as he was with unfancied Russian team Zeta Corse. The season started with a second place, and a mid-year charge to three wins in five races against eventual champion Carlos Sainz Jr catapulted him right onto F1’s radar. Before he knew it, he was contesting free practice sessions for Caterham and being linked heavily to a race drive.

That didn’t come about, and he ended up third in the FR3.5 points, with his focus on securing an F1 seat for 2015. That too didn’t materialise, so he signed a deal with Pons Racing to stay in FR3.5. Then a few days later, Manor signed Merhi for the upcoming F1 season. At first he juggled both, with each sapping momentum out of the other, until a Red Bull Ring crash earned him a FR3.5 race ban. Two months later, his F1 seat became only a part-time gig too that he had to share with Alexander Rossi.

Manor Motorsport founder John Booth moved to the World Endurance Championship for 2016 and brought Merhi along, with the Spaniard claiming its first class podium at Spa with a last-lap move. Like Pizzonia, Merhi wanted back in to F1 – and he took his limited backing and re-stitched 2015 overalls over to Campos in GP2 successor Formula 2.

A failed one-off at Barcelona didn’t put him off, as he landed a part-time with Rapax late in 2017 and scored 16 points. A new car for 2018 meant a new start, and Merhi brought a brand new plain-black racesuit as he joined MP Motorport. He stood on the feature race podium twice, but his victory ambitions were unrealistic and he left the team before rejoining Campos for the final two rounds. He intended to race in 2019 too, but re-obtaining an FIA superlicence was by then an unlikely reality.

And one that didn’t quite happen…

Nelson Piquet Jr BRAZIL 2016 Pau GP
Junior career: 2nd in 2006 GP2, 2004 British F3 champion, 2nd in 2003 Masters of F3   Return: two races in 2015 Indy Lights

After being shown the door in F1 in 2009 and being involved in the ‘crashgate’ scandal, Nelson Piquet Jr sought to rebuild his career in as many avenues as possible. Which inevitably did not miss out junior single-seaters.

Piquet won the British and South American F3 titles as a teenager, then spent two years in GP2 and was second to Lewis Hamilton in the 2006 title race. After a year on the sidelines he entered F1 with Renault, and took a podium as a rookie.

His first post-F1 activity was NASCAR, and he worked his way up the junior ranks there too, with two years with wins in American stock cars’ third tier, and then a full season in its equivalent of GP2. He also started a rallycross career at this point, and it wasn’t until 2014 that he returned to single-seaters with the Campos-run Team China Racing in FE.

Ahead of the London season finale where he would claim the inaugural FE title, Piquet was called upon by Carlin to race in Toronto for its new Indy Lights setup. The British outfit had entered the North American series with Euroformula champion Ed Jones and former F1 driver Max Chilton, whose father Grahame is Carlin’s CEO, and wanted a driver of equivalent experience to Chilton due to his Le Mans 24 Hours debut with Nissan falling on the same weekend.

Piquet took pole on his Lights debut, but was denied victory when RC Enerson hit his rear tyre and flew over the top of him, causing him to retire. A less spectacular but similar incident ended his second race too, but his street circuit form was rewarded with the FE title a few weeks later.

The reunion with Carlin, which ran him to the British F3 title, kept junior single-seaters in the back of Piquet’s mind. Further street circuit experience was only going to be beneficial for FE, and a shot at the 2016 Pau Grand Prix in European F3 opened up when Raoul Hyman couldn’t take up his Carlin seat. It was intended to open up the possibility of entering Macau too.

An opportunity to race against his younger brother Pedro, driving for VAR, was denied by the FIA through a line in the series’ sporting regulations that stated “any driver application to participate in the Championship will be studied by the FIA and accepted or rejected at its absolute discretion”.

FIA Single-Seater Commission president Stefano Domenicali’s reasoning was Piquet’s entry was against the spirit of the championship, which had already moved to reduce the age of drivers in the series and how long they could spend in it.

The winner of the first race in Pau that weekend was Barnicoat, and thankfully his F3 return wasn’t denied by the rulemakers.

The post The most surprising junior single-seater returns appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: Joe Portlock / LAT Images / FIA F3 Championship

Carlin has signed Leonardo Pulcini as its next FIA Formula 3 Championship stand-in for this weekend’s Barcelona round, following Enaam Ahmed’s departure from the team last month.

Pulcini finished eighth in FIA F3 last year with Hitech GP, winning once at Silverstone after starting the season as title favourite. It was the Italian’s fifth full year at an F3 level, having won the 2016 Euroformula title and come fourth in GP3 in 2018.

The 22-year-old is now a Lamborghini junior and is racing for Vincenzo Sospiri Racing in Italian GT. He replaces Silverstone stand-in Ben Barnicoat, who required permission from McLaren Customer Racing to join Carlin and is now required on sportscar duties again.

“This was something of an unexpected call up to return to the FIA F3 championship but of course I am excited to get back in the car again and assist Carlin this weekend in any way I can,” said Pulcini.

“As a driver, you want to race at every opportunity so it’s exciting to be back on track in an F3 car in Barcelona. The team have obviously made some good progress in recent weeks and we will be working hard to continue that trend this weekend.”

Carlin team boss Trevor Carlin added: “We’d firstly like to thank McLaren for allowing Ben to race with us at Silverstone but of course his McLaren programme remains his priority so we understand he can’t be with us in Barcelona.

“Leo will be a fantastic asset to the team this weekend. He has great experience in the series, is a proven race winner and will provide useful feedback as we continue our upward progression. We’re grateful he was able to join us this weekend between his Italian GT commitments.”

Barnicoat is also contracted to Carlin to race prototype sportscars, but his current European Le Mans Series campaign has been put on halt, and he last raced in single-seaters in 2016 before his surprise FIA F3 call-up.

He finished 20th and 12th in his first two races back, then scored a point in the first race of the second Silverstone weekend. This put him on reversed-grid pole for what currently stands as the final race of his return, and may have resulted in silverware as he was running in third before a mechanical issue led to him retiring.

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