[Mr Jinxx]

I have a feeling I agree with just about everything Mathias said above, so I must be contradicting what I wrote earlier. Except for governing bodies bit, I think.

Teams charge what they want. If the rules of the championship give them open testing, then you will always get the teams who test every day possible, use several sets of tyres, have open (F1 F3 style) formats, who use wind tunnels, rigs, manufacture their own parts, etc, and they will always be crucifyingly expensive. Not necessarily because the top team owners are greedy folk, perish the thought, but because if you do actually do all this work and research and testing, you will have the best car and best data, and a driver who can pay for this, will win through the efforts of the team and the fortuitousness of that driver's ability to pay the Team's charges.

I guess that's what I meant when I said it was always thus. The top teams will charge the most money to do the best job. They do the best job, they make the fastest car, most likely to win. So the good drivers with the most money will try and go there. So the team will charge top whack, attract the top drivers with top money, and you have the elite. Fortec, Carlin, Arden, etc. I don't see how governing bodies can ever break that spiral (which actually boils down to the quality of the team and its engineers, first and foremost - you have to spend that top dollar wisely) whilst still having classes like F3. Even one-make formulas/formulae don't do it. Formula Renault had limits, but it didn't stop the wealthier teams/drivers buggering off to test/race abroad and get whatever advantages they may stumble across in so doing. Does a governing body govern, or police?

Coming back to topic, it is difficult to see Formula Superfund kicking off this year - those people who don't have a drive by May, will be in that position because they haven't got the money. So the smart money in my book would be for Superfund to take this year off, watch how GP2 fares, develop the car, find another backer for the proposed championship, if it needs one, and launch next year in comfortable time, everything sorted. Anyone who was trying to raise sponsorship on the back of the Formula Superfund proposals for this year will be looking rather foolish now, as the premise on which you make your pitch has been pulled from under you like a rug.

GP2 was always going to attract the "better"/richer drivers, for all the well documented reasons. But if sponsorship/backing were easier to come by, then GP2 would have been seriously oversubscribed, and Formula Superfund would have had a healthy grid too. The problem was never with Superfund being "irrelevant" or diluting the market, etc ... it was down to the fact that, in today's climate, too many drivers don't have access to that sort of money. If the financial situation was better, then both championships would have been full, GP2 would be the foremost of the two (as it was with Int F3000 v Euro F3000). No problem.

So I'm sad for Superfund, and hope they can relax and get it together in good time for next year, watching and learning as the year unfolds.

Going back to this oft-quoted idea of the ladder, there have surely always been ladders - different rungs maybe, and also different ways to get to the top without treading on every rung, but a clearly defined ladder is a good thing, in the abstract. Of course, that just ups the cost of any championship which can get itself perceived as a rung, because all the comments I made at the start about the costs/top teams then become of paramount importance to drivers who want to scale the ladder. So you need alternative routes to get from one rung to another, and that's where I think championships like Superfund or others can still play a part, IF they are sufficiently attractive from a sponsors/backers point of view. That's why I still see a problem in BF3, because we couldn't find a soul who felt it was value for money to stump up getting on for half a million UK pounds sterling to race at Knockhill and Croft, when it it would be cheaper to race at Monaco and Estoril in WS, for example. But those are details ... the point is that there NEEDS to be a ladder, and it will always be the costliest way up. But there also NEEDS to be alternative routes to the top, other than that ladder, for the drivers who may be able to shine, but haven't got the money to compete/shine on that regular ladder. You need alternative, cheaper championships, which should still attract good competition, maybe not the glam and glitz of the "rungs", but enough to make headlines if a driver can prove him/herself. Superfund would have filled one of those alternative steps IF the cost was cheaper than GP2, and the series recognised itself as "lesser" but not an alternative to the wealthy, funded drivers. Looks like we'll have to wait till next year to find out now.