Video: Coulthard vs. Barrichello vs. McNish in screaming V8s
11th October 2021
Ben Miles
Just like their Formula 1 counterparts, racing cars in the lower formulae used to look a bit more spectacular “back in the day”. Case in point being Formula 3000, the forerun...
Back in 1992 the F3000 field was filled with names you will remember from F1 and other series in future. David Coulthard was racing against Rubens Barrichello, Olivier Panis and Allan McNish (although the TV graphics team seem to have run out of Ls for his first name).
There are also names that perhaps aren’t quite as familiar to you, showing that racing careers diverge strongly even if you make your way all the way to the rank just below F1. This race, at Silverstone, for example was won by Jordi Gene, the older brother of ex-F1 driver Marc Gene, who himself went on to have a long career in the World Touring Car Championship, also in the field is Michael Bartels, who would become the driving force behind the successful Maserati MC12 GT racing programme.
But the key takeaway is how squirrelly the cars look, seeming to be much more of a fight than the cars of today they make Stowe look like a lot more of a challenge than even current F3 cars. How things have changed.
