what other single seater championships do you follow?

[inimitablestoo]

AutoGP - basically a reinvention of the old Euro 3000 concept, but with the fleet of 2005 A1GP Lolas in place of the ex-F3000 Lolas it had before. Won this year by Romain Grosjean, despite missing the first two meetings.

[UltimateDanGTR]

^ AutoGP now ofcourse will race with WTCC at race weekends instead of F2, which is interesting. I thought the F2/WTCC partnership was a good one to be honest...

[wedge]

Well, not in the F1 forum, if that means anything to you. Maybe we could discuss this in chit chat.

You do know there's more to racing than F1? The more people realise this the better.

[Dr. Krogshöj]

I used to like IndyCar / CART as much as F1 in the late 90's but I haven't watched it for 10 years now.

I can see why but I urge you to give it a try again in 2012. The cars will be powered by V6 turbos of multiple manufacturers (Honda, Chevy, Lotus-Cosworth), there will several different bodyworks, and a good balance of ovals and road/street courses.

[UltimateDanGTR]

I can see why but I urge you to give it a try again in 2012. The cars will be powered by V6 turbos of multiple manufacturers (Honda, Chevy, Lotus-Cosworth), there will several different bodyworks, and a good balance of ovals and road/street courses.

^ agreed, however although they are getting rid of the most hideous car in motor racing in 2012, I still think the new one looks strange thanks to those wierd side pods and wierd back;

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog....10/07/full.jpg

[wedge]

I can see why but I urge you to give it a try again in 2012. The cars will be powered by V6 turbos of multiple manufacturers (Honda, Chevy, Lotus-Cosworth), there will several different bodyworks, and a good balance of ovals and road/street courses.

The other major problem is a dearth of talented new drivers. No offense to someone like Dario who's a helluva driver but where's the kids giving a run for his money week in week out on ovals and road courses? (yes, I was referring to you, Will Power)

[Jag_Warrior]

The other major problem is a dearth of talented new drivers. No offense to someone like Dario who's a helluva driver but where's the kids giving a run for his money week in week out on ovals and road courses? (yes, I was referring to you, Will Power)

Absolutely! I agree with that!^

Unfortunately, most of the more talented youngsters, who would have probably given American open wheel formula car racing a shot ten years ago, are now going to one of the NASCAR series: Camping World trucks, if not Nationwide cars. That's where the money is. Even racing a pickup truck in NASCAR will give you at least as good a paycheck as many/most IRL drivers probably get. If you can get to Nationwide, it's not even a contest. I think of 1995-2011(at least) as our lost generation for AOWR. We lost fans, sponsors, tracks and the aspirations of younger talent to race formula cars here. So now the series is basically being propped up by ride buyers who really have no place else to go... and not that many people seem to want to watch them race.

We have a reason to be more hopeful going forward... with the recent announcement by GM that it will enter the series in 2012. But over the past 10+ years, considering who used to come here to race and where they came from, one could have expected David Coulthard, Kimi Raikkonen, Scott Speed, A.J. Allmendinger, Juan Pablo Montoya, Sebastian Bourdais, Nelson Piquet, Jr. and maybe even Nico Hulkenberg and Bruno Senna to give American open wheel formula cars a shot. But not now - there's almost no sponsor money to pay them. There's still some decent drivers in the series. But we basically have the old men of Champ Car, a collection of ride buyers... and of course, Danica.

That's another reason I try to keep a close eye on GP2 (and I'd watch GP3 too if we could get coverage here!). That's where I feel I'll see the racers who have a good chance of making it into the series that I love the most. Years ago, a top CART or CCWS driver would probably get a look from an F1 team. But AFAIK, other than a courtesy "test" for Marco Andretti, no IRL driver has ever been given a serious look. One Danica fan(atic) claims that Danica was on Ferrari's short list to replace Michael Schumacher. But when he's off his meds, his credibility is often in question.

[schmenke]

I can see why but I urge you to give it a try again in 2012. The cars will be powered by V6 turbos of multiple manufacturers (Honda, Chevy, Lotus-Cosworth), there will several different bodyworks, and a good balance of ovals and road/street courses.

Sounds promising. Like Mark, I really enjoyed the CART series of the '90s, but haven't followed Indy/IRL since. Racing on ovals bores me to bits.
I only follow F1 these days and will watch the occasional GP2 race, but that's largely because we don't get much television coverage of anything else around here .

I know it's probably not considered single-seater, but I do wish we'd get more coverage of the Aussie Supercar series here. That I'd watch!

[Valve Bounce]

You do know there's more to racing than F1? The more people realise this the better.

You do realise this is the F1 forum, and there are other forums in Motorsport to discuss the other single seater formulae.

[Dr. Krogshöj]

^ agreed, however although they are getting rid of the most hideous car in motor racing in 2012, I still think the new one looks strange thanks to those wierd side pods and wierd back;

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog....10/07/full.jpg

Actually, that's not an actual car design, it was a fantasy rendering for a press conference. The aero rules are being written as we speak by a team led by Tony Cotman. Altough the Dallara Safety Cell (around which the different bodyworks will be designed), shown in dark grey on the picture, is probably very closed to what it could look like.