#spec series

[thepotentialof2007]

What was the Superleague Formula?

If a football-based Super League sounds familiar to motorsport fans, that's because it is. Between 2008 and 2011, a single-seater series called Superleague Formula featured cars running liveries of football clubs - including ESL founding clubs Liverpool, Spurs and AC Milan.

Superleague Formula was the brainchild of Robin Webb, who had previously been involved in the football-themed Premier1 series that failed to get off the ground shortly after the turn of the millennium.

The first round at Donington Park in 2008 featured a grid of 16 cars, with two more added for the rest of the season. The grid remained stable over the following seasons, reaching a high of 19 in 2010 before shrinking to 14 for its final season in 2011, which was curtailed after two rounds with nations joining football clubs on the grid.

The series used a fleet of identical Menard V12-powered chassis that produced 750bhp and were built to full 2008 Formula 1 safety standards by Panoz Elan Technologies. With push to pass to aid overtaking and no help from driver aids, they were big, heavy and loud, though significantly slower than F1 cars. [x]

Not all teams were paid. Only those from the top-tier, such as Liverpool and A.C Milan, received money to carry branding on cars – around a million Euros per season. Those such as Anderlecht received nothing. When A1 GP failed, nations joined Superleague Formula’s clubs and Team China was added in 2010.

“Superleague did everything right with the noise and the tyres – we could push as hard as we wanted to on the tyres and there was nothing left on the table.

“We could run a lot closer and that was one of the good sides of the championship. It was a reverse grid from race one to race two, but you could overtake and get close and run right up somebody’s rear end and have a race. It was more like Formula Ford racing with 700 horsepower.” [x]

Full list of teams and drivers

[thepotentialof2007]

A1 Grand Prix (A1GP) was a 'single make' open wheel series that ran from 2005 until 2009. It was unique in its field in that competitors solely represented their nation as opposed to themselves or a team. As such, it was often promoted as the "World Cup of Motorsport". The series was ratified by the FIA and races were held in the Formula One off-season. The A1GP concept was founded by Sheikh Maktoum Hasher Maktoum Al Maktoum, a member of the Dubai ruling family.

25 teams, each representing a different country, signed up for the first A1 Grand Prix season. All teams used a spec chassis (Lola), engine (Zytek) and tyre (Cooper Avon)

During the 2005 Dubai weekend, retrieval of a stricken car (Piquet Jr’s) via chopper was tested but apparently found little favor, as it was not taken up in subsequent races. Nor did the FIA respond to a Swiss concern in 2014 who put forth the idea again as a safer alternative to heavy recovery equipment on live F1 tracks. There’s also a longer but lower quality video with German-language commentary of this same recovery test: the car can be seen soaring over the track toward the pits as racing continues.