Why did GP2 Asia fail?

[Formulahistory]

I would like to know your opinions about why GP2 Asia failed?

- Was ist too early for such a series?
- Is there not enough support for a such a series in Asia?
- Was it a problem that the series run in winter?

Could a GP2 Asia be possible today? There is a growing interest in Racing in Russia, we also see something in India. Super Formula know is expanding and want to be not the first Formula Series in Japan, but in Asia as well. Karthikeyan for example tested the car some days ago, perhaps we will see him there.

There are also more and more teams from Asia: Super Aguri, Meritus, Russian Time and so on.

There are also more and more racing tracks in Asia: South Korea, China, Russia, India, now one in Thailand.

So could Super Formula get something like a real GP2 Asia Series? Or would it be good to have a new GP2 Asia Series in the future?

Your opinions please.

[Formulahistory]

Sorry, don't know how to edit the thread's title: It should be called "Why did GP2 ASIA (!) fail".

[el_cat]

I think it failed purely on grounds of cost. By having 12 out of the 13 teams from the main series, it must have cost a fair bit to run out of their usual premises and fly back and forth to Dubai, Qatar etc.

I think because of the cost required, it started to end up being quite fragmented with the driver pool and the depth of talent. A quick flick onto Wikipedia reveals that in 08-09 there were 42 drivers in total (including the likes of Michael dalle Stelle, Kevin Chen, Frankie Provenzano and Hamad Al Fardan who even scored points!), with 34 drivers in 09-10 with a slightly improved quality (Plamen Kralev aside). Such chopping and changing of drivers didn't go much for consistency in my eyes.

What also killed it was when they started using the current car, as then it just became long-haul, risky testing in effect. They would have been better off utilising the old chassis - which aside from Formula BOSS (or whatever its called now) is useless elsewhere - and setting up technical partnerships with "local" teams.

I would like to think there is a place for a Winter series, Far East/Southern Hemisphere based series as I enjoyed watching GP2 Asia and A1GP in their prime. But there needs to only be one series worldwide so the talent pool isn't too diluted. Indycar seems to be the latest place to explore this avenue, it would be good if it works out but I'm not sure now is the right time to try, and that Indycar is the right series to go for it.

[Formulahistory]

Originally Posted by el_cat

and setting up technical partnerships with "local" teams.

I think that could be the point. But what teams do we have?

- Meritus
- KCMG
- Asia Racing Team
- Nakajima
- TOM's
- Super Aguri
- Dandelion
- Russian Time
- Impul

[el_cat]

Originally Posted by Formulahistory

I think that could be the point. But what teams do we have?

- Meritus
- KCMG
- Asia Racing Team
- Nakajima
- TOM's
- Super Aguri
- Dandelion
- Russian Time
- Impul

Not even that - all/most of the above are Japanese teams, but don't forget GP2 Asia was mainly Middle Eastern based. There are fledgling Sportscar and Touring Car series in the Middle East - I was thinking more along the line of suggestion that they could store a fleet of old-gen GP2 chassis out there and run them out of smaller local teams facilities.

Of course, its a nice idea that works in my head but I guess the stumbling block is that whatever motorsport infrastructure exists in those regions is nowhere near suitable to sustain GP2-spec chassis - so they run in and out of Europe and so the costs go through the roof.

[Mekola]

Original purpose in GP2 Asia was to compete with A1GP, and lure Asian drivers to compete in the series. For the first season (2008, don't remember in the second 2008-09, too), it was mandatory that each team had an Asian (non-European) driver in one of the cars. That moved teams to contract the likes of Yuji Sekiguchi, Hamad Al-Fardan, Kevin Chen and other Asian drivers who competed in lower formulae. Unfortunately, only one Asian team with formula experience, Meritus, entered as a local Asian team in replacement of Racing Engineering, the only team who refused to enter in all but the last 2011 season of the series.

[kipper]

Originally Posted by Mekola

Original purpose in GP2 Asia was to compete with A1GP, and lure Asian drivers to compete in the series. For the first season (2008, don't remember in the second 2008-09, too), it was mandatory that each team had an Asian (non-European) driver in one of the cars.

From memory teams could run two non-Asian drivers, but could only count one driver for team results/prize money, etc. Also Russia and Turkey were counted as being Asian for the purposes of driver eligibility.

[somebodysb2]

Russian Time is Motopark Academy - which is based in Germany.

I don't think the Asian region can support a GP2-level formulae when the only other good series left is Super Formula.

We had Formula V6 Asia by Renault which was actually pretty healthy, attracting foreign drivers and strengthening local teams.
Same story with Formula BMW Pacific.

So what do these two series have in common? When the manufacturer money pulled out, the organisers (AFOS and FRD) ran them into the ground.

RE: Asian Teams
Team E-Rain Used to be front-runners in FV6A and FBMWP, now racing in some awful Korean national silhouette series. Team Manager went to Absolute.
Dyna Ten Motorsport Now Absolute Racing. Top FV6A team.
Absolute Racing Effectively an Audi China works/Porsche dealer (Starchase) team. Highly unlikely to return to single seaters considering the success they've had in Sportscars.
Asia Racing Team Now more focused on sportscars and junior formulae.
Meritus A shell of itself.
Eurasia Runs a top flight GT squad (Craft AMR) and a FMCS programme.
Pekka Saarinen Racing AFR, FMCS, and some one-make GT.
KCMG Arguably the strongest non-Japanese formula team
Star Racing Team FMCS
Meco Motorsport FMCS
Team UKYO w/ Super License FMCS
Champ Motorsport AFR

[NaBUru38]

I guess that television coverage in Asia wasn't good enough.

[spider]

I think GP2 Asia was brought about to combat what looked like a relative (big stress on relative) threat of A1GP. GP2 Asia definitely weakened A1GP, running through the winter. So, once A1 vanished, there was little need for it...and expanding the GP2 calendar became more logical than running two series.

[Nikki Katz]

I think it was just miles too soon to work. The original premise was that the series would run all over Asia and that each team should field at least one Asian driver. In reality, half the teams didn't enter an Asian driver at all due a very shallow talent pool with the appropriate budget (therefore disqualifying themselves from prizes in the first season), and the half that did often had drivers that were embarrassingly out of their depth. The field was not even remotely the same quality as the main season, although there were still a handful of good drivers each year that have since ended up in F1.

The events that didn't support F1 races (which was the majority of them upon inception) didn't appear to have anyone at all in the crowd. There were also some teething problems at tracks that F1 doesn't race at (I seem to remember a race in Indonesia or somewhere where the marshals spent 15 minutes trying to move a beached car by pushing it sideways...).

Part of the reason I thought that so many regular teams were taking part is that at the start GP2 was coming up to the point where they were going to decide who the teams in the main series were going to be, and not entering the new Asian series didn't seem like a good move. Racing Engineering probably got away with it because they were regular race winners; I think that had some of the backmarkers not turned up then they would have lost their spot (although DPR did eventually anyway).

By the second year the series had not only ditched the rule of having a driver from Asia, but also removed all of the races that weren't in the middle east. The calender for that season was shorter, but was still long enough for there to be some point to the series, with a few circuits being raced at twice. I'd say that the titles for Grosjean and Kobayashi were quite significant. The subsequent seasons though were really short and the championship outcome fairly meaningless. The final season was only supposed to be 3 events long even before the uprising in Bahrain cancelled two of those, leaving the final round to be held in Italy at Imola, that well known Asian track! Again, nobody turned up.

At the start I thought that the TV coverage was actually pretty good. I seem to remember Eurosport losing the rights for the main series to ITV for a year, who only bothered show highlights the following week, and that detracted from the Asian broadcast (which Eurosport still had) a bit. Once they got the main series back they just couldn't be bothered with either, they'd frequently list the races to be shown and then cancel the broadcast without warning for no reason, often to be replaced with things like the Dorset beach volleyball championship. One good thing about the whole BSkyB - BBC F1 thing is that Sky actually put together a proper package for the support races. My bank balance still doesn't like this situation though.

I don't know if it was supposed to rival A1GP. It's really a shame if it did as that was a series where GP2 graduates that couldn't get into F1 ended up, it wasn't a direct GP2 competitor and it wasn't a threat to F1 either. I'm sure that A1GP had problems other than GP2 Asia though. Not that I liked the championship belonging to a country instead of a driver, but the racing itself wasn't bad.

The series that have been launched since A1GP died have all been horrible. I wonder if Formula E will be any different...

[ivanalesi]

I still remember Sentul GP2! This was so much fun. The drivers were warned about dangerous snakes around the track, the tarmac itself was getting torn apart by the sticky slick tires and most drivers had to change radiators or even bodywork because they were shot by the flying pieces of tarmac! It was the fiasco of fiascos...
The quality of the field wasn't too bad at the end, may be at the current level.
It had FBMW Asia & the Stockcars as support series, which was a pretty good package, but I guess promotion was absolute zero...

[peebee2]

The answer to the OP question is simple. Speedcar paid the bills, and it stopped.

[Formulahistory]

Who is Speedcar?

Have you a source about that?

[kipper]

Originally Posted by Formulahistory

Who is Speedcar?

Speedcar was a short lived stock car series that ran for two seasons, primarily in the Middle East. A number of drivers were ex-F1 or had raced at a reasonably high level. From memory, the '08 champion was Johnny Herbert, with the following year's contests being won by Gianni Morbidelli.

[Formulahistory]

And they paid the money for GP2 Asia? Is there any source for that?

[Mekola]

Also remember that Dubai cancelled the Sprint race in the 2008-09 edition due to a flooded track (unusual in that part of the world).