OCTOBER 17, 2003

Will there be Formula 3000 next season?

There are fears that there will not be a sufficient number of entries next year it warrant an International Formula 3000 Championship. The F3000 Sporting Regulations state that an event may be cancelled if fewer than 12 cars are available for it and thus if the entry sinks that low the entire championship must be considered to be in jeopardy. This year there were nine regular competitors although not all were able to field cars in every race and on occasion the entry dropped as low as 13 cars. Of the official entries Brand Motorsport and Den Bla Avis both pulled out completely while Astromega and ISR Charouz was forced to single cars on occasion. There are also doubts about the future of Enrique Scalabroni's BCN F3000 operation.

"At the start of the season we had 20 cars in International F3000, around 25 in the Nissan World Sseries, about 18 in Formula Renault V6 and about 15 in Euro 3000," said Astromega team boss Mikke Van Hool . "You have just too many cars for the available driver market. All these championships can claim to be a good place from which a driver can try to get in F1."