Formula Renault 3.5 celebrity race

[NaBUru38]

According to Autosport, the Formula Renault 3.5 is considering a celebrity race featuring "drivers with recent Formula 1 and IndyCar experience"!

The event is "only at a conceptual stage" and "likely to be in the off-season". But of course, the point is to attract decent drivers.

Who would you call? Where would you do the race?

[NaBUru38]

How about this:

IndyCar:

Castroneves, Power, Franchitti, Dixon, Kanaan, Pagenaud, Hinchcliffe, Hunter-Reay, Sato.

F1:

Vettel, Webber, Raikkonen, Grosjean, Maldonado, Kovalainen.

Former:

Barrichello, Di Grassi, Pantano, Valsecchi, Filippi, Petrov.

[ivanalesi]

I loved GP Masters and with the FR3.5 car being a lot less expensive to run, hopefully it becomes true! The idea is fantastic, certainly much better than RoC.

[bella]

a lot less expensive to run? crikey, only if they don't shunt it!

this could be a good laugh, especially if they were to run it as a full wsr style meeting with some sort of winter series trophy for 2 litres or something. they'd do well to find somewhere in europe warm enough though

[p-matt]

I don't see it ever happening. If it does it will be full of Karthikeyans and Pantanos at best.

[Down F0rce]

Bring it on... just hope they announce it early enough for us to make travel arrangements!

[NaBUru38]

p-matt, it's Renault. They could bring their F1 drivers, as I mentioned. And IndyCar drivers would love to face them.

[BtccLee]

This may sound ridiculous but Renault are also planning a Formula Renault 1.6 nations cup at the end of next year in the UK. Seeing as Renault 3.5 doesn't have a UK round I wonder if the two could combine....

[NaBUru38]

The United Kingdom isn't the best place for a season-ending race, weather is too bad. Italy or France would be better options.

[TimRTC]

More likely to end up in the Middle East - guaranteed weather and lucrative hosting fees.

Would be a great concept - I would love to see a two-part event with GT drivers involved as well, racing the Renault 3.5s in the first event and perhaps Nissan GT cars in the latter (considering the close ties between the two firms). Would certainly provide an interesting challenge and be more entertaining than the stadium based 'Race of Champions'.

[p-matt]

Originally Posted by NaBUru38

p-matt, it's Renault. They could bring their F1 drivers, as I mentioned. And IndyCar drivers would love to face them.

I think that's quite naive. Remember when A1 GP came along? They were confident about getting F1 drivers because it was off season, but none of them went near it.

The bottom line is that there's no reason for the F1 drivers to do this. They risk injuring themselves and denting their pride if and when they don't win.

And even if the F1 drivers did sign up, there's no real reason why Indycar drivers would sign up. It's not like there is any connection between FR 3.5 and Indycar. They would be utterly destroyed by the F1 boys anyway, but the lack of relevance to Indycars would make it quite embarrassing.

[NaBUru38]

Originally Posted by TimRTC

More likely to end up in the Middle East - guaranteed weather and lucrative hosting fees.

Renault doing promotion in the Middle East? I don't think they have decent sales there.

[kipper]

Originally Posted by p-matt

I think that's quite naive. Remember when A1 GP came along? They were confident about getting F1 drivers because it was off season, but none of them went near it.

The bottom line is that there's no reason for the F1 drivers to do this. They risk injuring themselves and denting their pride if and when they don't win

The one thing in the favour of a 'celebrity' Formula Renault 3.5 race over A1GP is that some F1 drivers will have a commercial relationship with Renault, which may cajole some into taking part. This didn't exist with A1GP, which reduced the incentives for taking part.

That said, if a F1 driver were to take part, I'd expect it to be along the lines of Sebastien Buemi, Susie Wolff or Alex Rossi (i.e. a test driver), rather than a fully fledged race driver.