After the last World Motor Sport Council, the FIA announced a call for Expressions of Interest for the promotion and organisation of Regional F3 championships – what is the rationale behind this step?

“The World Council approved the idea of a new series, to be called ‘F3 Light’, which will be organised on a regional basis. With F4’s growing success at national level around the world, it has created a something of a bottleneck for talented youngsters when they want to move out of F4 to the next step on the ladder. It is a big jump to go from a series that has around 250 to 300 drivers around the world to our FIA F3 European Championship that can only take a tenth of that number. The risk is that you lose a lot of potential talent along the way – and we want to prevent the loss of those who might mature as drivers a bit later, or who do not have the resources to make the immediate move up to the higher category. Another benefit of establishing this intermediate category would be in enhancing the prestige of the FIA F3 European Championship, which would then represent true excellence both in terms of numbers and technically.” 

When and where would you look at introducing such championships?

“The aim is to start in 2017 and we have already had plenty of interest in Europe, especially in Italy, UK and Germany, in Asia and in Australia.” 

How would an F3 Light car different to the current full F3 specification?

“F3 Light would use similar engines to those in F3, but with reduced power, while the chassis should be more sophisticated than that used in F4. From a financial point of view, ideally the new category would require a budget midway between the two existing series.”

The FIA F3 European Championship begins this weekend at Le Castellet – it has something of a new look for 2016, not the giant grid of the previous season and a number of new drivers; how do you think those factors will change the championship for this year?

“First and foremost, it should be stressed that, at the end of last season, along with the Championship promoter, we had set the goal of reducing the number of participants to give the series some stability and also to ensure that each event was run as well as possible. To do this, we introduced stricter entry conditions and in the meantime, we worked with the drivers, the new ones as well as those with more experience, to increase the level of preparation, especially on the sporting front: for example, we organised two training sessions, one in Paris and the other in Geneva for all of the drivers. We are pleased with the number of competitors we have for 2016 and, if you look at the series in direct competition with ours, I’d say the numbers speak for themselves, in terms of both quality and quantity.”

It has been suggested that one of the reasons for the lower grid numbers this year is to do with the dominance of the ‘rich’ teams like Prema in Formula 3 – do you see any substance to this?

”This is one of the most hackneyed and trite themes in motor sport and it’s definitely not limited to F3 – you only have to look at what is said about Mercedes in F1. Prema has won in F3 and in other categories long before this last season and maybe it will continue to do so in the future, when the situation will be different, or maybe other teams will have a run of success to match them. Despite what some have said, we had a very good spread of results last season – second was a Carlin driver, there were three different teams in the top four of the championship and 14 different drivers reached the podium. Prema’s organisational skills and professionalism over recent years has led other teams and drivers to raise their games, while changes to the regulations, such as limiting the number of years in which one can compete in the championship, will make this season even more competitive.”

Finally, can you single out any drivers worth keeping an eye on?

“Well, it’s not exactly proper for me or the FIA to single out any particular driver. I can only say that the mix of those who have already raced in the championship and those making their debut is very exciting. I’m sure we will see some spectacular and tight races, and that, the FIA F3 European Championship will continue to provide a launch pad to the highest levels of the sport for the most talented drivers young drivers.”