Asian F3 Championship announces new 'winter' schedule for 2019/20 season
The F3 Asian Championship certified by FIA has announced its schedule for the 2019/20 season, its first as an official ‘Winter’ series. The five-round, 15-race series will run from December 2019 to February 2020, at four different circuits across the Middle East and South East Asia.
The move to a ‘Winter’ series comes after the FIA announced earlier this year that drivers wishing to earn points towards a FIA Super Licence, to race in Formula 1, can now bank points from up to two different series per calendar year, given that the series do not overlap.
“The 2020 F3 Asian Championship calendar is designed specifically to meet the needs of the drivers, who are looking to develop their careers as quickly as possible, as well as for the teams,'' said championship organizer Davide De Gobbi.
“With zero compromise on the quality of the championship, we have minimized costs and travel time, maximized track time, and enabled drivers to earn Super Licence points from the championship even before the start of the traditional European and Japanese seasons.”
The series, founded in 2018, experimented with the format in the ‘Asian Winter Series’, which ran over the southern-hemisphere Summer at the start of 2019.
The move means that the series may overlap with New Zealand’s Castrol Toyota Racing Series (TRS), which runs over five weekends in January-February. The TRS has traditionally commenced on the second weekend in January, which would coincide with the F3 Asian Championship’s second and third rounds.
According to FIA regulations, it also means that drivers may only count FIA Super Licence points from one of the two series, should they enter both, as Australian Jackson Walls and kiwi Brendon Leitch both did in 2019.
The Calendar
Round 1, 14-15 December - Sepang International Circuit, Malaysia
Round 2, 10-11 January - Dubai Autodrome, UAE
Round 3, 17-18 January - Yas Marina Circuit, UAE
Round 4, 14-15 February - Sepang International Circuit, Malaysia
Round 5, 22-23 February - Buriram International Circuit, Thailand
