Two is not the magic number

Recognise any of these people? No, neither do we. While it is sometimes rather difficult to tell what is really necessary and what isn't, particularly when crafting the perfect mojito, or attempting to dress yourself for a night out in Shoreditch, there are some things that just seem utterly pointless from the very start. And the announcement of the newly-revived Formula 2 series for 2009 seemed to be one of those things that, like the East London Line or Milton Keynes, seemed to be created to fill a gap in the market that was neither wanted nor needed.

With the GP2 Series already installed as the direct feeder series to F1, and doing a pretty good job of it to boot, with the likes of Heikki Kovalainen, Nico Rosberg, Lewis Hamilton and Timo Glock all coming through from the GP2 grid since it's inception in 2005, the plan by the FIA and former F1 man Jonathan Palmer to revisit Formula 2 for the 21st century, 25 years after the series was originally mothballed to make way for GP2's predecessor, Formula 3000, always seemed something of a debatable one.

Ostensibly, the plan was to offer a genuine alternative to GP2, which was seen as a highly costly and elitist route to F1. Formula Two, on the other hand, prepared all the cars in-house, and offered drivers not blessed with thousands of sponsors or a rich dad the chance to race around Europe on a budget of 200,000 Euros (compared to the 1.5 million Euros quoted for a season of GP2). Furthermore, with chassis being assigned to drivers at random prior to every race weekend, here was a series that tried more than ever to level the playing field for the grid of drivers.

But, there were always a few niggly issues. For a start, the Williams-designed, Audi-powered cars used by the series are significantly less powerful than the Dallara-Renaults in GP2. In fact the overall performance of the F2 car put it somewhere around the World Series by Renault in terms of performances, which is one step below GP2 on the established motorsport ladder. Which is a really, truly baffling situation. Is the correct procedure for getting to the top to go from F3 to F2 to F1? Or do you still need to segue in a move to GP2 along the way?

Aside from that, there's the issue of the drivers competing in the championship actually managing to get noticed. With GP2 having the prestigious support slot at European GP weekends, Formula 2 has been left to tag along with any random sporting event that will have it, be it touring car knockabouts, meaningless GT races or whoever. Television coverage in the UK at least has been just as reassuringly sporadic as GP2, but at least the GP2 races are on F1 weekends, which acts as a gentle reminder that the races will be shown on Eurosport at some point to the gin-addled brains of television watchers.

But, provided that you did manage to remember when it was being broadcast, the first season of Formula Two was, overall, looked on as a success. The season was, of course, blighted by the tragic death of Henry Surtees midway through the season, which is the sort of awful, and mercifully rare, event that will always hang over any motorsport series. But despite that, the championship was generally well received and produced what seemed to be a stand-out driver in Andy Soucek, who romped to the title with nearly twice the number of points as any other competitor.

But this is where the problems for the series really kick in. Soucek received a test with the Williams team for his efforts in securing the crown, and acquitted himself very well indeed at the meandering 'Young Driver Test' last December. But since then he has struggled to get his name included in any of the rumours for F1 seats in 2010, and barring some minor miracle, the best he can hope for next season is a reserve driver role somewhere. Which is hardly the greatest job in the world these days, given the utter lack of testing allowed for the F1 teams these days.

Soucek might be having an issue in convincing F1's teams that he is really as good as his performance in the series made him out to be because the Spaniard has already had two seasons in GP2. And two largely unsuccessful ones at that. Meaning that him switching to a lower-powered, less high-profile series and doing somewhat better isn't necessarily a sensationally exciting piece of news for everyone.

And if Soucek is struggling, then the rest of last season's F2 frontrunners are doing even worse. Runner-up Robert Wickens and third-placed Mikhail Aleshin have made little waves in the driver market this year, and Red Bull congratulated their driver Mirko Bortolotti for finishing 4th in the standings by dumping him from their young driver programme and leaving him separately trying to tie up a second season in F2 for 2010.

All the time that F2's class of 2009 is busily achieving precisely nothing, the GP2 grid from 2009 has already seen it's champion secure a Williams drive and the runner-up close in on a seat at Renault. Romain Grosjean was also a frontrunner in early 2009 and he made it to F1 last year (albeit slightly uselessly). Reading between the lines, the issue seems to be that 'Formula 2' is actually a number of steps below Formula 1. And as such remains a totally unnecessary formula. There are plenty of other series slightly below GP2 for drivers to concentrate on without this extra confusion.

The one thing that F2 does have going for itself, though, is the price. It allows drivers a full season of relatively high quality racing for around the same price of a season in some national Formula Ford championships. But this again is largely useless if the top drivers from every season are completely unable to do anything with their success once they get there.

Ironically for those F2 pilots looking for a ride in Formula One is that the drives remaining, i.e. one seat at Renault and Campos and the pair of seats at USF1, are all likely to be wallet-dependent pay driver seats, meaning that the drivers that took to F2 because of it's cheap and cheerful outlook, where securing dozens of personal sponsors and choosing the right team didn't matter, are completely unprepared for the current desires of the calibre of F1 team likely to be desperate-enough to take a punt on them.

For the next few years at least, it seems like money is going to count just as much as talent does for Formula One's lesser teams, which means that F2, designed as a method of getting talented drivers into the spotlight without them needing to pay millions for the privilege, might end up barking up entirely the wrong tree.

So Formula 2 faces a slightly difficult period of justifying itself now. The racing will continue in 2010, of that there is no doubt, but the important question will be whether anyone is really that interested?

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