Monday, November 2, 2009

GP2: A Success Story

Nico Rosberg, Lewis Hamilton, Timo Glock and now Nico Hulkenberg. GP2's success in promoting its champions directly to Formula 1 is proof that the series has been a success.

Today's announcement that Hulkenberg will join Barrichello at Williams for 2010, means that four out of the five GP2 champions have advance directly to F1.

GP2's ancestor, Formula 3000, struggled between the 2000 and 2004 seasons to produce conditions whereby the champion of the series was an instant shoe-in for a Formula 1 seat.

Champions such as Justin Wilson, Sebastien Bourdais and Vitantonio Liuzzi all made it into F1 eventually - usually by testing or racing in other series - but other champions were not so lucky.

The cars were seen as difficult to drive, and the best drivers would generally have to race them for two or three seasons before challenging for the title. Drivers tried to avoid the category if at all possible - preferring to jump straight from F3 to F1.

The perfect example of this is this year's F1 champion, Jenson Button. He says in his autobiography that he and his managers really wanted to miss the championship out.

That is not to say that good drivers did not come from there - Fernando Alonso is an F3000 alumni for example - but the category had become stale and viewed by many as a better feeder series for the American based ChampCar series.

Certainly history would back up that view: Justin Wilson, Bruno Junqueira, Sebastien Bourdais and Juan Pablo Montoya all went on to have successful careers in the United States.

The new GP2 car however, was designed in such a way that makes it closer to F1 and F3 cars so first year drivers can be successful, and also more conducive to good racing. As a result, of the past champions only Giorgio Pantano has not been given a F1 drive as a result of winning the series - and he was returning to the series after a stint in F1.

All that brings me to the following question: If the GP2 series has been so successful at doing what it set-out to achieve, why do we need F2?

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