Formula 3000

INTRODUCTION

What made Formula 3000 special?

Everyone has their own story about their first time in a Formula 3000 car. Drivers that had only previously sampled Formula 3 power levels were regularly blown away upon sampling the bigger cars on the junior single-seater ladder’s last rung before Formula 1 between 1985 and 2004. This applied whether the machines in question heralded from its open chassis glory era or followed the move to single-make machines built by Lola in 1996. As 1993 International F3000 champion Olivier Panis puts it, “from F3 to F3000, the gap was huge. To use the car on the maximum takes time”.

Érik Comas, champion in 1990, agrees that from F3 to F3000 was “the biggest step” an aspiring grand prix driver could take. But it was worth it because the leap into F1 was, for a time, comparatively small. “In terms of performance, downforce, feeling, feedback, it wasn’t a huge difference, so I was ready to jump in,” affirms Gabriele Tarquini, a three-year F3000 veteran from 1985-87. “It was a good category to prepare yourself for F1,” adds Comas, who adapted quickly to the altogether different philosophy of driving that F3000 required compared to F3 by winning twice in his 1989 rookie season.

“An F3 car is very much a momentum car, whereas in F3000 cars you have a lot more power, so you drive in a different way,” explains 1986 British F3 champion Andy Wallace, who came close numerous times to F3000 podiums in 1987. “It’s just not something that you’re familiar with if you’ve only done F3. It’s quite a culture shock.”

That certainly applied from a physical standpoint. For this reason, 2003 British F3 champion Alan van der Merwe will never forget his maiden outing in Lola’s B02/50: “When I drove out of the garage, I was still in my F3 head, using one hand. I realised, ‘I literally can’t turn the wheel, it’s so heavy!’” The observation is one multiple title-winning engineer Mick Cook heard many times. “You needed a bit of muscle to drive them,” he reflects. José María López recognised “I had to literally change my body” before racing the B02/50 in 2004. A similar realisation struck 1991 champion Christian Fittipaldi: “It was the first time in my life that the physical side called my attention”.

The category’s taxing reputation should come as no surprise. F3000 cars were rudimentary by modern standards, even as electronics became increasingly prominent. “You were most of the time only one hand on the steering wheel because the other one is shifting,” remembers Yvan Muller, champion of the British championship in 1992 before graduating to International F3000 for 1993.

Racing in F3000 was a true test, in every sense. “Competition was on the limit at all times,” states 1996 runner-up Kenny Bräck. “It was the toughest championship below Indycars and F1”. But like most F3000 graduates, including those who didn’t reach F1, Bräck is appreciative of its value in his development. He especially relished how limited data acquisition made driver input invaluable for engineers. “You learned so much from the technical side, it wasn’t only the driving,” the 1999 Indy 500 winner remembers. “It was the full package.”

Team bosses, engineers and mechanics all benefitted too. Would Jordan Grand Prix have been so effective without Eddie Jordan’s grounding in F3000? Likewise, “Helmut Marko and Christian Horner are direct products of F3000 moulding,” notes former Lola chief designer Ben Bowlby of two key figures in Red Bull’s F1 success, whose RSM Marko and Arden teams won three titles between them.

Long-time Nordic engineer and team manager Chris Mower estimates that for every F3000 driver who graduated to F1, six mechanics made a similar career progression. This was a factor in the regularly fluctuating competitive order, which made the category unpredictable and compelling in equal measure. “There was potential for lots of teams to lose an enormous amount of their talent pool over one winter,” adds Mower.

For Bowlby’s predecessor Mark Williams, F3000 prior to 1996 “was mini-F1 without the massive budgets”. It provided “great training for people to run large design teams in F1” maintains Williams, who latterly did just that at McLaren, since there existed the freedom to bring new components to races. The subsequent career of Gary Anderson, Roberto Moreno’s engineer when he won the 1988 title with Bromley Motorsport, proves his point. “It prepared me very well for F1,” considers Anderson, who latterly had design roles with Jordan, Stewart and Jaguar. “It allowed me to take a car created by quite clever people and do something a bit better here and there.”

F3000 also proved “a very good school” to those who already had F1 experience. Enrique Scalabroni had stints as a designer with Williams and Ferrari on his CV before taking the plunge as a team owner with BCN Competition in 2003. His time in F3000 “increased my circle of comfort” beyond engineering, from organising travel to managing contractors and sourcing sponsorship.

Such was the professionalism required both of drivers and teams that Max Papis, a race winner in 1994, “never felt that I was in a development series”. He points to the fact that certain teams could hire drivers who didn’t need to bring money to underline that “it was a very different environment” than in modern-day Formula 2.

“I felt that I was part of an amazing championship that could stand on its own feet, like Super Formula [in Japan] nowadays,” he explains. For that reason, Papis believes its name had a detrimental impact: “I never understood why they called it Formula 3000, the name diminished what an amazing championship it was.”

Robert Doornbos had similar thoughts when chasing sponsors. “It’s more logical that you have Formula 2 to F1, instead of International F3000,” opines the Dutchman, a winner with Arden in 2004.

DFV retirement home

F3000 came into being largely thanks to F1’s move towards turbo engines. This left a large quantity of the previously ubiquitous Cosworth DFVs facing obsoletion. But it wasn’t the result of a specific push from F1 teams to repurpose their old V8s, according to Onyx Racing boss Mike Earle. “There was good sense behind it,” he relates, since the European Formula 2 championship’s sophisticated two-litre engines made it “very expensive for what it was. We ran three cars, and BMW would turn up with 12 engines! We used to change them after practice and put new ones in for the race. It was nonsense.”

By 1984, BMW had pulled its works support for the four-cylinder M12/7. “When you get a company as big as BMW saying, ‘We’re not carrying on, it’s too expensive’, it’s a clue,” reasons Earle. His engines continued to be prepared by Heini Mader, but costs remained “horrendously expensive” and for little return against Honda’s unrelenting domination. “They made everybody look silly,” Earle adds.

After Ralt-Honda drivers won 1983’s last six races, the V6 engines prepared by John Judd’s Engine Developments company exclusively for Ron Tauranac were only defeated twice in 1984. The near-monopoly was unsustainable. Inaugural F3000 champion Christian Danner couldn’t compete with BMW power. “It was about time to do something,” he says. “F2 couldn’t continue like that”.

So it was that the outline for a new category took shape. The raucous 3000cc DFV engines used by the entire grid in 1985, around 150bhp more powerful than the outgoing F2 cars, gave F3000 its name. The cost benefit was immediate, as Earle found “our engine bill was cut by an enormous amount”.

It wasn’t until December 1984 that F3000 technical regulations were published, including a stipulation that chassis should have a flat bottom (F2 had allowed for ground effect). The sporting regulations only followed in June. Ian Phillips, writing in Autocourse, correctly described F3000’s birth as “difficult and premature”. But to Earle, there was no cause for regret once cars hit the track. Since the heavier machines worked more conventionally than their predecessors and had largely similar engines capped at 9,000rpm, “more teams could operate at a higher level” than was previously possible. “As a spectacle, it was much better,” Earle contends. “The noise from a three-litre V8 immediately made the scene more exciting.”

“It wasn’t a bad thing to do,” agrees Judd, who prepared DFVs for Tauranac’s Ralts in 1985. “There was a reasonably-priced engine available, without a massive performance disparity. It was a good home for all those old engines and there were plenty available.”

Grids quickly grew, yet the teams that had success weren’t always the works outfits that had dominated F2’s latter years. Nor were they the most polished with presentation or awash with sponsors, March engineer Tim Holloway remembers: “In those early days, the budgets were very low, it was good racing for what people had to pay. And it wasn’t one of these where ‘if you haven’t got the most money, you’re not going to win’.”

Two glory eras

Now with engine parity, the previously one-sided Ralt versus March battle enjoyed renewed vigour. What could be described as a ‘big three’ was joined belatedly by Lola in 1986, after a terrible 1985 with an adapted Indycar chassis, and between 1987-90 there were 14 different drivers on the podium each year. Three manufacturers won races in 1986-89.

The open era can be considered in three distinct chapters; March’s monopoly, Reynard’s revamp and Lola’s gradual recovery. The first seismic shift came in 1988, when Reynard won on debut and swept to the title. March drivers had captured the crown in each of the first three seasons, while Ralt and Lola threatened, but after 1988 March and Ralt only won once apiece. Aside from 1990, Lola’s sole open era title, Reynard won more races than any constructor in every season it contested.

A third chapter began in 1993, when Lola’s T93/50 was boycotted in Europe despite winning 1992’s final round. Reynard remained the marque to beat upon Lola’s return, but it steadily fought back. A 21-race drought was ended at Hockenheim in 1995, before Lola won the tender to supply the whole field from 1996.

By now, F3000 was established as “the natural avenue”, as Fittipaldi puts it, for all national F3 hotshoes whose chances to race against each other were limited to invitationals. “After you left F3, it doesn’t matter if you were doing British, Italian, German or whatever, you had to do F3000,” he asserts. And if you could cut it there, on circuits ranging from Pau’s sinuous streets to the perpetual chaos of Enna, it was a good indicator to F1 teams – and talent-spotters elsewhere – of a driver’s ability. Fittipaldi suggests that Alex Zanardi “would have never gotten his opportunity in Indycars” after a tough stint with Lotus in F1 without his F3000 showings in 1991, while Bräck believes it “didn’t matter whether I won the championship or not, people saw what they needed to see”.

“F3000 was a great formula and attracted the right drivers,” reflects Martin Donnelly, three times a race-winner in 1988-89. “It was the proving ground. If you could consistently perform at the front, there would always be a drive for you somewhere.”

Finishing top of the pile was no small feat and was recognised as such. Every champion between 1985 and 1993 was on the F1 grid for the start of the following season. F3000’s success was underlined by Japan dropping F2 regulations for 1987, a British offshoot following two years later and an Italian version that began in 1999. Its third champion, Felipe Massa, graduated directly to F1 in 2002.

After taking the single-make plunge, grids again swelled. There were over 40 cars regularly attempting to qualify for races in 1999. But dropping chassis competition remains a point of contention today. Cook is far from alone in contesting that F3000 “lost a lot” of its interest and technical appeal as a result. Instead of development, he found that attention was taken up by petty squabbles “because that’s all people have got to worry about”.

Yet Earle’s assessment that “it was a cracking formula, until it went one-make” isn’t universally held. Those who didn’t know any different still laud single-make F3000. “I fell in love with the car big time,” recalls seven-time podium finisher Max Wilson of his first test in Lola’s T96/50 at Jerez.

The very fact that set-up possibilities were limited, putting more emphasis on fine-tuning and drivers getting the maximum from a common package, is why Bruno Junqueira regards becoming F3000 champion in 2000 more gratifying than taking pole for the 2002 Indy 500. “That championship showed me at that point in my career that I was one of the world’s best drivers,” he explains. “It was ultimate racing; the same chassis, same engine for everybody. You couldn’t do much, so it was about the driver, the engineer and mechanics.

“Everything was simple; find the [best] springs or ride height or wing level or gears – and race. Other series like F3, you have different engines, aero packages, you needed the right car to win. In F3000, a good driver could always do well.”

Some will view that as an oversimplification, given the discrepancies between teams. But as a rule of thumb, Mower notes, “most of the drivers that were good in F3000 turned out to be very good in F1”.

It was evidently not without flaws and many believe the category could be even more successful. The view that F3000 worked despite Bernie Ecclestone’s role as promoter, rather than because of it, is still widely held. Super Nova boss David Sears cites respected journalist Simon Arron, who attended all bar two of the 206 races, as “the biggest promoter of F3000 and drivers when he walked around the F1 paddock”.

“The biggest problem was just a total lack of promotion,” argues Madgwick boss Robert Synge. “It just didn’t have the TV following to make it attractive enough.”

Allan McNish agrees that “as a championship it was not promoted as part of a staircase to take you to F1. It was more of a hindrance in some people’s eyes”. The three-time Le Mans 24 Hours winner identifies the 1992 Albacete meeting as a prime example of the championship visiting “some really rough tracks”. Even when F3000 supported F1, McNish adds, it wasn’t always treated favourably as sessions were scheduled “when nobody was at the circuit and had no interest”.

Another stick that can be used to beat F3000 with is the mixed hit rate of its graduates at motorsport’s pinnacle. Damon Hill and Fernando Alonso progressed through F3000 to win world titles, but only three of its champions became F1 winners. Junqueira is one of four champions who never made an F1 start.

But fault for this cannot be laid squarely at F3000’s door. Notwithstanding a dependence on paying drivers that F1 teams have only recently shaken in the cost cap age, the limited availability of seats as smaller teams that habitually afforded chances to young talent bit the dust and an inclination for conservatism from the bigger fish can be blamed for some prospects slipping the net. That Formula 2 champions of 2021-23 all spent the following season kicking their heels proves it was never an F3000-specific problem.

Sometimes, circumstance dictated a different course of history than one which might have painted F3000 more positively. Assurances given to Comas from his Elf backers that a Williams seat awaited him for 1991 became worthless when Nigel Mansell abruptly departed Ferrari. Mark Williams believes Comas, for whom a bulky Ligier represented the only feasible route onto the grid when Elf refused to stump up for a seat at Jordan, would have been a world champion in the FW14B used so effectively by Mansell in 1992. What 1999 F3000 champion Nick Heidfeld might have achieved as Mika Häkkinen’s successor at McLaren, the team that had groomed him for stardom since F3, will likewise never be known thanks to Peter Sauber plucking Formula Renault standout Kimi Räikkönen from obscurity.

Amid increasing competition from rival series and decreasing grids, F3000 was replaced in 2005 by GP2. But from the first to the last, its depth of talent was consistently strong. There is no doubt that F3000 made a mark. “Cars were great, engines were great, it was a stepping stone for a lot of good drivers, so it had a lot going for it,” Synge remarks. “It was a great experience, I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”

This is its story.