History: International F3000

[timbo]

Not a hot topic, but anyway.
I checked wiki and found that not a single winner of International F3000 became a F1 World Champion!
Why it happened?
Simple luck (during 1985-2004 era we had only 8 different champions) or there was something wrong in regulations that required different qualities than F1 drive?

[marcush.]

funny enough this is something F2 and F3000 have in common....
so from 1967 till 2004 not a single champ coming from the second league would reach the top spot in F1.
this cannot be just luck or coincidence .
So the first and still only F1 champ coming from the official F1 feeder series now called GP2 is Lewis Hamilton....

The F3 euroseries -also only Lewis Hamilton,
French f3 -Alain prost
British F3 ,Jim Clark,Jacky Stewart,Emmerson Fittipaldi,Nelson Piquet,Ayrton Senna (1983!),Mika Hakkinen.
German F3 series: Michael Schumacher


so it seems in the earlier days especially the British F3 series seemed to produce champions which also were F1 Champions material...

[timbo]

so it seems in the earlier days especially the British F3 series seemed to produce champions which also were F1 Champions material...

Yes, quite interesting indeed!

[Paul]

I looked into what championships the recent champions had actually last won before moving to F1:

Button: British Formula Ford
Hamilton: GP2, as mentioned
Raikkonen: Formula Renault 2000 UK
Alonso: Euro Open by Nissan
Schumacher: German Formula 3
Hakkinen: British Formula 3, as mentioned
Villeneuve: Indycar World Series
Hill: none
Prost: French & European Formula 3, as mentioned
Mansell: British Formula Ford, same as Button 21 years later
Senna: British Formula 3, as mentioned, same as Hakkinen 7 years later
Piquet: Formula Vee

Pretty much all over the place...

[timbo]

I looked into what championships the recent champions had actually last won before moving to F1:
............

Pretty much all over the place...

Thanks!
Interesting, seems like "official feeder series" idea is moot. A talent shows itself in any series.

[marcush.]

yes ,but....
there were guys dominating the lower ranks but did not make it in F1 thereafter.
So to actually win championships is likely to happen on your way up but to win in the lower ranks does not necessarily make you a F1 champ in the future.

[CMSMJ1]

You must also see that the junior winners listed above all jumped over F3000 and straight into F1. The guys left in F3000 were then the top of div 2 drivers...a