NOVEMBER 4, 2004

Farewell to the Nissan World Series

The Nissan World Series meets for the last time this weekend at Jerez de la Frontera. After seven years the series is being cancelled to make way for the Renault World Series, which will kick off on May 1 next year at Zolder before moving on to a race supporting the Monaco GP.

The series kicked off in 1998 under the name of Open Fortuna by Nissan and was won by Marc Gene, who went on to become a Minardi F1 driver. The following year Fernando Alonso won the title and moved into Formula 3000 from where he switched in 2001 to Formula 1. In 2000 the title went to Spaniard Antonio Garcia who is now a factory BMW driver in the European Touring Car Championship. The title in 2001 went to Franck Montagny but in 2002 it was the turn of Ricardo Zonta, who used the series to rebuild his career and get back to F1 as a Toyota test driver. Montagny won the title in 2003 and this time was made Renault test driver in F1. This year's champion is Heikki Kovalainen who is expected to test for Renault next year.