Changes - Rounds 17 & 18:
And once again it was all change in the world of British F3. We have lost count both of the number of drivers some teams have had this year and of the sheer numbers who have stepped in for one or two races and have then vanished without a trace, leaving behind nothing but bad debts in some cases.
At least this time it wasn't all new faces. Justin Sherwood (Performance Racing) was back in the Scholarship Class after a number of weekends away competing, for some odd reason, in the German F3 series. However, Richard Antinucci was the surprise mover of the week, quitting Carlin Motorsport to go to Promatecme F3 (last year he left Manor to go to Promatecme, but at least he waited until Macau to do that. This time, you had to wonder why he didn't go to Promatecme at the start of the season, which was pretty much what we expected him to do. As a result, there was a spare seat at Carlin, which was duly taken by Michael Keohane. The Irishman left Promatecme in the first half of the season, and in joining Carlin is now back in the team he was with for most of 2002. Are you following all this? I wouldn't blame you if you weren't.
At Team SYR things were even more confusing than usual (this after all is a team fronted by Malaysians, but seemingly staffed mostly by Brazilians who only speak Portuguese - well, Carlo claims to speak English but it's not easy to understand him when he does). Halfway through the week one of their spare cars was going to be in the hands of a Brazilian driver, but suddenly at Friday's test session a Japanese, Masato Shinoyama, turned up. Meanwhile, deputising for the sickly Scott Speed, American Joel Nelson was driving the number 2 car at Alan Docking Racing. As he has been racing in European F3000, where there are normally only about 12 cars at each race, this was not going to be an easy experience. When asked about it afterwards he said it wasn't so much a case of stepping down and of stepping into. We don't think he was trying to be complimentary.