The regional ‘junior’ championships are making their own plans to ramp up competition and appeal to drivers making their way up the single-seater career ladder.
The F3 Asian Championship Certified by FIA (another catchy name) has announced a compact format for its third season in 2020, which will see it run for five rounds and conclude before the start of the regular racing season.
No dates have been announced yet but the format takes advantage of the new FIA regulations, announced by the sport’s world governing body, to enable drivers to accrue Super Licence points from more than one series in any given year. 18 points are on offer to the series winner.
This follows the championship profile established by Toyota Racing Series more than ten years ago and may well place the two series in direct competition. The cleverness of Toyota’s FT-60 is that it aligns the series more closely with the FIA’s ladder of categories than ever before.
The F3 Asia car is by far the closest to the TRS version – both are Halo cars using the Tatuus chassis and the Asian car is running a 1.8-litre turbo four cylinder Alfa engine making 270 bhp at 6,000 rpm and 350 Nm at 4,500. It is likely the TRS car will have a slightly more driver-friendly torque curve due to its additional capacity.
The Asian series will run exclusively at Grade 1 circuits and organisers are looking at a Middle East addition though they say they are mindful of the cost of moving around more than necessary. This year the series ran at Sepang in Malaysia, Buriram in Thailand, Suzuka in Japan and a double-header at Shanghai International Circuit.
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