van Hool: I was right about state of F3000.

Team Astromega boss Mikke van Hool made some inflammatory comments about the state of the FIA F3000 series at the start of the season, and feels no reason to change his mind now that the 2003 campaign is over.

The Belgian, a former driver in the championship, appeared set to transfer his allegiance to the fledgling Formula Renault V6 series for 2003, after claiming that costs in F3000 were spiralling out of control and that he could not expect to find two drivers with the necessary budget to complete the ten-race season. In the end, his prediction proved half-right, with Tony Schmidt securing tenth overall in the standings after a full year's racing, but the second seat being shared between a number of drivers after Jeffrey van Hooydonk struggled with budget problems - a situation that led to Astromega being docked points for fielding just one car in Austria and Hungary.

"I am afraid that the predictions I made about our championship have come true," van Hool told an interview on the team's site, "It's now obvious to everybody that the junior single seater formulae need to be sorted out - although I don't have too many illusions about anything coming from the powers that be in motorsport.

"It is quit simple. You need a lot of money to run these cars - especially if you don't have a team sponsor like Detroit Diesel [which used to sponsor Astromega until a couple of year's ago]. Unfortunately, there was just not the right level of support behind Jeffrey to run him in all the races, and to get some decent testing done with him."

Asked whether his disillusionment with F3000 would finally cause him to quit the series and head for an alternative like FRenault V6, van Hool admitted that he had not closed the door entirely on the premier F1 support class.

"Things will sort themselves out, I guess, but I am not too sure what that means for us," he said, "You hear a lot of potentially interesting rumours in the F3000 paddock, but I am sure rumours will be equally as interesting in the rival series' paddocks."

"At the start of the season, we had 20 cars in International F3000, I believe around 25 in Formula Nissan, about 18 in Formula Renault V6 and about 15 in Euro 3000. Add to that the F3 championships and you have just too many cars for the available driver market. All these championships claim to be a good place from which a driver can try to get into F1 but, having said that, F3000 is still clearly the most successful in this respect.

"It is still very early to say what the plans are for next year. We would like to continue in F3000 if it makes sense, and we are definitely staying in FRenault 1600."