Those who are into the IAF sessions (International Automobile Federation) know the excitement and nail-biting finish recorded (and enthusiastically betted upon, too) by gaming enthusiasts as much as professional car racing lovers who were glued to their TV sets during the 2009 Euroseries 3000 season when it began last year on May 16. This session was held in Portugal’s Autódromo Internacional do Algarve with the finish venue dated 18th October being Monza, the Italy backdrop known for romance, thrills and spills of another kind, post 14 races, no less! Now, you can only begin to imagine what an exciting event that must have been.
Last year’s Euroseries 3000 organizers were Coloni Motorsport and they had made the announcement proudly enough fro the A-One Grand Prix chassis, for the Lola B05/52, to be part of the championship, as a replacement value for the earlier Lola B02/50 model. The announcement also included the news about a popular online poker website sponsoring the title series for years 2010, 2011 and 2012. Due to this deal by the sponsors, those who won the driver’s championship cup also got to feature in a free season of this year’s GP2 Series (that is, 2010 GP2 series). It also enabled the winners to take part in the GP2 Asia Series for 2009-2010 season starts, commencing on October 23rd and 24th – just a little less than a week from the official win of the prestigious title.
The first place winner was Will Bratt while the second rank went to Marco Bonanomi who had previously tied with him when both drivers had finished at same points and victory levels.
As mentioned earlier, the Euroseries 3000 from 2006 to the current times has been organized by (Coloni Motorsport whose F3000 Italia series launched in 2006 were such a hit with the growing number of car racing enthusiasts that they had to expand to 4 more nations to accommodate their championships – and this number seems to growing to integrate yet another country for Italian championship!
How’s that for pro car racing gaming advancements?
Moving on to the finer nuances of car technology advancements for the Euroseries 3000, it should be mentioned here that both versions of the Lola that were considered eligible, used Zytek 3000cc engines. But, it was only last year’s Euroseries 3000 that thought it fit to introduce the Lola B05/52, an ex-A1GP type that had a running capacity of an enviable 3400cc engine, even though the race series still stuck to using the Euroseries 3000 tag, notwithstanding the new technology. It is only this year that the series is being officially re-named as the Auto GP (in 2010).
However, those who are avid racing fans will have already scoured the net for updates on the Euroseries 3000 and found that forum posts are the best source of information about their favorite sports – since the official website too seemed to be in the process of upgrading its information portals and lacked the necessary updates when this article went into print. For the others, here are some fast facts to chew on about the Euroseries 3000:
• The newly christened Auto GP 2010 is the erstwhile Euroseries 3000
• The International GT Open will run meetings with the European F3 Open
• Huge budgets of around 380,000 euros in prize money are predicted for every round per drivers going in for the full season, with reservations made for 200,000 euros in each event and 80,000 for the winner.