Quote:
Originally Posted by NaBUru38
FR3.5 / FV8 was a good intermediate step between F3 and GP2.
Its alumni list is impressive: Marc Gené, Fernando Alonso, Sebastian Vettel, Antonio Garc�*a, Heikki Kovalainen, Robert Kubica, Álvaro Parente, Robert Wickens, Kevin Magnussen, Carlos Sainz Jr, Justin Wilson, Stephane Sarrazin, Markus Winkelhock, Kamui Kobayashi, Jaime Alguersuari, Jean-Eric Vergne, Daniel Ricciardo, Esteban Guerrieri, Esteban Guerrieri, Will Power...
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The serie indeed produced a bunch of talents. And typically the racing was pretty good.
However imo it is also a perfect example of what is wrong in motorsports.
FR3.5/Nissan/Renault WS is from a time where we had GP2, A1GP, Formula Superfund, Italian F3000, FR 3.5 and a bunch of european F3 classes and i am sure i miss some. All of those series aimed for becoming 'the' serie below/next to F1. With all gone except for GP2 you can say that this didn't work.
It's a shame that the FIA, F1/FOM/Bernie and OEM's let this happen and did not work together on building an infrastructure where junior series have enough commercial exposure for teams to have sponsorincome and actually hire drivers based on their talent in stead of who pays.
There was a short moment after introduction of GP2 that there was a decent chance were GP2 could have developed into such a serie. They had the teams, and for a few GP's the saturday and sunday races were live on the main tv networks as part of the F1 deal. I remember a sunday morning race having over 1.5 mio viewers in Germany alone. It was actually to good because quickly Bernie dropped the races from TV.