F2 expansion for 2019 hinges on driver market

Formula 2 boss Bruno Michel says the state of the driver market will determine whether the series expands from 10 to potentially 12 teams next season.

11 teams initially signed up for this year’s championship, with Russian Time and Rapax left off an entry list that included newcomers Carlin, Charouz and Fortec, as well as an unnamed twelfth operation.

However, stalwarts Racing Engineering departed while Fortec canned its entry, as Russian Time ultimately committed to the series, leaving Formula 2 with 10 teams.

Previous years have featured several in-season driver changes for multiple teams amid budgetary issues and other external circumstances.

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This season has reached the halfway mark with no alterations in any team’s driver line-up, with Michel eager to see the situation replicated going forward.

“I have interest from a few teams [for 2019],” Michel confirmed to Motorsport Week.

“Whether I am going to add one or two more I don’t know because it will depend on the driver market.

“I want to make sure the teams can do their job properly, and I want to make sure they are not struggling and finding drivers that are not good for them as they are underselling the seats.

“I will assess very carefully the market, and I will do that with the teams as well, and if we feel we can have more teams yes.

“You saw what we did this year: we announced 12 teams and at the last minute I took only 10 as I didn’t want to have teams that would take drivers not capable of sustaining the budget.

“We absolutely need to be careful on that, but the answer is yes we have many interest.”

Michel is also in the process of finalising an agreement with the FIA regarding the new-for-2019 International F3 Championship, which will replace the current GP3 Series.

Michel confirmed that the weekend format will be “quite close” to the current GP3 approach, with a new car a halfway house between the current GP3/16 package and the F317.

With regards to potential entrants, Michel commented: “We have of course a lot of interest from teams, it’s a very exciting situation.

“We have all the GP3 teams that want to do it, all the F3 teams that want to do it, plus additional teams would like to come, we’re in a quite comfortable situation.

“But it’s the same thing [as with F2], I’m not going to go with 40 cars because if we do that maybe the [first] two races [will be] fine but you’ve seen what happened to F3 over the years and that’s exactly what we want to avoid.

“The teams will have three cars each, not the possibility to have more like it is in other categories, then we will see how many teams we will take on.”