How and why European F2 went out in a splash 40 years ago

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The often glorious and occasionally frustrating 18-year history of European F2 ended at Brands Hatch 40 years ago today. Those on the grid recall what it was like to race in the first of F1’s primary feeder series

Reflecting the series’ decline and fall, the 209th and last European Formula 2 event was brought to a premature end on September 23, 1984 as torrential rain caused havoc around Brands Hatch’s full Grand Prix layout. But after a season of crushing Ralt-Honda dominance, it was perhaps appropriate that in the championship’s final act Philippe Streiff should take a deserved maiden win for underfinanced private constructor AGS, powered by the category-defining engine from BMW.

Formula Scout spoke to some of the protagonists from that day to hear their memories and to understand why the demise of F2 in Europe provoked mixed emotions.

Although the category had been in existence since 1948, with the Formula 1 world championship even being run to F2 regulations in 1952 and 1953, it was not until 1967 that a European championship was established.

Arguably, the period in the late 1960s and early 1970s was European F2’s heyday as F1-experienced names such as Jochen Rindt and Jackie Stewart, designated as non-scoring “graded” drivers, competed against the top junior talent of the day.

By the 1980s, the category and the championship were struggling to maintain both sporting and commercial relevance. Top drivers such as Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna and Nelson Piquet had bypassed F1 by jumping straight from Formula 3 to F1.

Unlike today, races were held separately from F1 events, and the television coverage and spectator attendances were minimal. The calendars comprised of a delightful and eclectic mix of circuits, and the 1984 season featured just two contemporary F1 venues (Brands Hatch and Hockenheim), alongside circuits now relegated to hosting Formula 4 races at best such as Misano and Vallelunga. And four of the 11 rounds were in Britain.

It did boast the Mediterranean and Pau grands prix however, and the traditional Easter Monday event at Thruxton which had live television coverage on the BBC. Silverstone’s race awarded the BRDC International Trophy, which had ran for F1 cars only four years prior.

Increased costs and a lack of competition and coverage meant that the writing had been on the wall for some time, and the decision was made to create a new category for 1985. It was to be known as Formula 3000, as cars had three-litre engines.

F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone had seen an opportunity with the Cosworth DFV units that were becoming obsolete at the top level as 1.5L turbocharged engines took over, and so European F2 came to a sad end after 18 seasons. Japanese F2 followed suite by transitioning into an F3000 series in 1987.

The teams arrived at Brands Hatch with a mix of sadness at European F2’s demise, and relief and anticipation for the new formula. There was a general feeling that the championship and the regulations had simply run out of steam.

The works Ralt-Honda team had dominated in 1984, continuing where it had left off in 1983, with its drivers Mike Thackwell and Roberto Moreno having wrapped up the first two places in the championship long before the paddock arrived in Kent.

With access to the Williams wind tunnel, Ron Tauranac had developed the ultimate chassis for the F2 regulations, the Honda V6-powered Ralt RH6/84, and it had steamrollered the opposition in the hands of its exclusive user: the factory Ralt team.

Of the 10 rounds held before Brands Hatch, Thackwell had won seven and Moreno won two, the only blemish coming at Hockenheim when both cars hit problems, allowing Pascal Fabre’s March-BMW to take victory.

BMW’s M11 engine had been a mainstay of European F2 from the start, bar the 1972 season, with 95 rounds won using its power and every single race in 1975.

The Bavarian manufacturer entered F1 in 1981, and when it withdrew its F2 works support in 1984 its ageing engine was no longer a match for Honda’s V6. Honda itself was in the first year of its co-operation with Williams, but had prepared the engines in Japan while operational running was entrusted to John Judd.

Dominance by one team or car-engine combination was not unusual in those days of multiple chassis, multiple engine suppliers and a choice of tyres. But whereas March and BMW had always been happy to sell their equipment to customers, Ralt and Honda guarded their exclusivity tightly.

In 1984 there were regularly six of March’s new 842 design on the grid, allied to the BMW engine. Three of those were entered by Onyx Racing, which had F3 graduate Emanuele Pirro and Thierry Tassin [pictured above] fronting its line-up.

Pirro came to the final round on a high after earning his first podium with a second place in the previous race at Donington Park. Now one of motorsport’s busiest sexagenarians, he was then the youngest driver in the F2 field aged 22.

Tassin had been a frontrunner in British F3, before graduating to F2 in 1982. Pole on his fourth appearance on the Nurburgring Nordschleife left an impression, and almost led to a Ligier seat in F1, but the Avon-shod Toleman-Hart became increasingly uncompetitive.

“All of a sudden, we were more than one second off the pace. And the dream of going to Ligier more or less disappeared,” he says without regret.

Tassin was combining his F2 appearances with “driving for BMW in the European Touring Car Championship because I won the Spa 24 Hours in 1983”, the first of four triumphs at the Belgian endurance classic

For the last race they were joined by 42-year-old Derek Bell, reviving his relationship with team boss Mike Earle whose Church Farm Racing team had run Bell to his first European F2 podium back in 1968.

“Mike Earle, who ran Onyx Racing, had worked with me and he lived in our village [Pagham]. So, he asked me to come: ‘DB. You’ve got to come and get this last race, blah, blah blah.’ So I said ‘okay’ and I went along,” Bell told Formula Scout.

His F2 debut had come in 1968’s season-opening round at Hockenheim, in the race that claimed the life of two-time F1 world champion Jim Clark, and his performances early that year caught the attention of Enzo Ferrari who recruited him to race for Ferrari’s own F2 team then handed Bell his F1 debut at September’s Italian Grand Prix.

Bell went on to be 1970 European F2 runner-up, before making his name in sportscars. When he made his F2 return, after 10 years away, he was at the pinnacle of his career as a works Porsche driver with three outright Le Mans 24 Hour wins to his name already.

“It was really strange, he was a driver of another generation, but I always had the utmost respect for Derek, so it was a privilege to hang around with him,” recalls Pirro. “Derek was living just across the road from the team in Bognor Regis so I got to know him.”

Tassin has similar memories of working with Bell: “[He] was very well known, very popular because of his Le Mans wins with Jacky Ickx and so on. It was really a pleasure to have him in the team. He was a really friendly person. And it’s tough when you’re doing endurance racing to be back in F2 with all the young drivers mainly concentrating on single-seaters, but he enjoyed it.”

He also has good memories of taking the F2 car to test at Goodwood, which was not far from Onyx’s base and had held F2 races before the European championship’s creation.

“[Onyx’s base was] near the beach. Goodwood in F2 was quite a track because it’s not really a testing circuit where you can go and avoid to have problem and have escape roads. If you have the slightest problem or you go off, you’re going in the [grass] banking. It was really tough and dangerous to go testing there.”

BS Automotive was another team to couple the March 842 with BMW engines, and its line-up was led by fourth-year F2 driver Christian Danner. In addition to the March contingent, the M11 units powered entries from French constructors AGS and Martini as well as the F1-bound Minardi. But those outfits knew they were up against it.

“All the non-Honda teams had a significant disadvantage in 1983 and in ’84,” is Danner’s assessment of those times.

“The Hondas were so much faster than the rest of the field. Years later, when I was developing a Mugen F1 engine and did a lot of testing for Bridgestone in Japan, I was working with the chief engineer of that F2 engine programme, and he told me that that F2 engine, which was a V6, had about 80bhp more than the BMW.”

Pirro agrees: “They were a stronger package, probably more because of the engine. It was definitely a more powerful engine but by how much I don’t know. But the March was a really a very good car.”

Indeed, he goes as far as to say that the March 842 was “one of three best cars I ever drove, with the McLaren MP4-4 [F1 car] and the Audi R8 [Le Mans prototype]”.

To further complicate matters, Bridgestone and Michelin were fighting a tyre war, with all teams except Onyx starting the season on the former. Ralt switched to Bridgestones for the last two rounds in preparation for their use in F3000.

Pirro believes that the Bridgestones weren’t a match for the Michelins, although the Japanese firm was rapidly closing the gap. Indeed, Ralt seemed to lose its advantage initially after switching at Donington.

“The gap between us and the Ralts once they switched to Bridgestones shrunk a lot. And they were not really in another league like they were before. This is why I made the first podium of the of the season on the second last race,” he recalls.

However by the finale the Bridgestones seemed to be gaining the edge, aided by a private test at Brands Hatch beforehand

With the title long since decided, the eight rows of cars that lined up on September 23 to contest the Daily Mail Trophy on the circuit’s full Grand Prix layout on September 23 1984 had something else at stake: victory in the final ever European F2 race.

The Ralts filled the front row, with poleman Moreno [pictured above] almost two seconds faster than Pirro in third. Streiff, the quickest Michelin runner, was back on the third row.

Dark clouds loomed overhead, but the race began dry. Moreno fluffed his start, caught out by Brands Hatch’s famous sloping grid, allowing Thackwell to surge into the lead ahead of Pirro and Tassin [pictured top].

Moreno dropped to fourth but quickly disposed of both Marches just as Thackwell pulled off in a plume of smoke, the oil catching out Pirro and Tassin to allow Streiff into second. Just as the Michelin runners began to suffer in the dry conditions, “it began raining like hell and lots of cars went off, and so did I” remembers BS Automotive’s Tomas Kaiser.

Inevitably, the race was red-flagged after 31 of the planned 50 laps. In those days, some rounds were decided by aggregate times from races that were split in two, and Moreno had an advantage of 19s over Streiff, with Tassin and Pirro just behind.

When the race restarted under intensifying rain, it was quickly apparent that Bridgestone’s wet tyres were no match for Michelin’s, which suddenly came into their own.

As Danner relates: “When the rain started, everybody thought that Bridgestone would walk away with it, because they’ve got such good wet tyres, but come the wet weather, the Michelin was so superior it was unbelievable. Nobody could believe that a standard customer tyre from Michelin was able to beat the wonderful wet tyre from Bridgestone.”

Not just beat but annihilate. Moreno had been demoted to seventh on-the-road in under a lap and within just four Streiff had completely overhauled the deficit from before the red flags to take the aggregate race lead.

Michel Ferte was flying in his Martini-BMW, passing Kaiser for second on-track and beginning to chase after Streiff with his car control in the torrential rain a sight to behold. He was just 1.3s down on Streiff when the clerk of the course called an end to the race, the championship and ultimately European F2 three laps earlier than scheduled.

Ferte had overhauled a one-and-a-half minute gap to Moreno to take second overall, with Moreno just 2.46s ahead of the remarkable Kaiser on aggregate, who had been outstanding in the wet conditions.

Kaiser remembers that a spectating Keke Rosberg complimented him on his race “and that made me very happy”, and team boss Bob Sparshott was so impressed with my “coming onto the main straight with opposite lock” that he kept talking about it for their next two seasons together in Int. F3000.

Bell came home in a respectable ninth. “All I remember was it rained. I was usually good at the rain,” he told Formula Scout.

“John Watson was there to watch it and he was a good friend of mine and he said ‘DB, don’t forget drive in a longer gear’ to use third where you normally would be spinning wheels in second in the wet. I mean, I always did that anyway, because I’d learned that in my early days in sportscars. I don’t know where I finished, but I did finish.”

Sadly, Streiff and Ferte are no longer alive. Streiff made his F1 debut with Renault a month after Brands Hatch, then reurned to AGS for the 1985 Int. F3000 season. The team later made it to F1 too, and Streiff was its sole driver in 1988. He never got to race the team’s updated car for 1989 as a pre-season testing crash at Autodromo Nelson Piquet left him paralysed and in a wheelchair until his death in 2022.

Ferte went on to take nine F3000 podiums and was 1991 Le Mans 24H runner-up. He passed away in 2023 after a long illness.

Thackwell [pictured above] was the dominant final champion of European F2, and his reward at the end of 1984 was two races in CART. But instead of tackling single-seaters’ top tier in 1985, he instead continued with Ralt. He won the inaugural F3000 race at Silverstone, and despite a further two wins, three second places and six poles he missed out on the title to Danner.

From 1980 to 2009, Thackwell held the record for being the youngest ever driver to race in F1. But after his debut aged 19 he only attempted to qualify for three more races and in 1987 turned his back on motorsport aged 26.

Moreno went to Japanese F2, CART, then returned to Ralt in ’87 to race in Int. F3000. He won the Mediterranean GP that year, and the title in 1988 with Bromley Motorsport. His F1 career was spent mostly with underfinanced teams, but enjoyed a brief spell at Benetton where he made the podium before being rudely dumped to make way for Michael Schumacher.

Pirro spent three years in F1 before conquering touring car racing and then sportscars with Audi, for whom he won the Le Mans 24H five times. He was director of McLaren’s Driver Development Programme for a year, responsible for bringing in current F2 points leader Gabriel Bortoleto, and after leaving the role this April joined the FIA to become president of its Single-Seater Committee.

Tassin [pictured below] retired from the cockpit in 2002 but maintainted his links to BMW, and is now sporting director for W Racing Team which runs the BMW M Hybrid V8 hypercar in the World Endurance Championship.

After his F2 return, Bell won Le Mans another two times and became a two-time World Sportcar champion.

Kaiser continued into F3000 with BS Automotive, and in ’87 came close to getting into F1 after putting together a deal with Jackie Oliver to race for Arrows. However there were complications in getting the required superlicence, so before signing with Arrows went to see Ecclestone, then at the helm of Brabham as well as the Formula One Constructors’ Association.

“During that chat, Bernie said: ‘No, you’re not driving for Jackie Oliver, you’re driving for me. So we’re going to the workshop, we’ll do the seat and you’re going to be in one of the best cars and team-mate to Riccardo Patrese.’”

Ecclestone assured Kaiser that he and Max Mosley would sort out the superlicence problem, and hatched an elaborate plan for Kaiser to turn up in Brazil for the first race “’just with a plain white helmet and we’ll see where you end up’”.

Still without the superlicence, and seeing Andrea de Cesaris occupying Brabham’s second car, he flew back to Europe.

At the same time, he had been in discussions with Eddie Jordan to “prepare a F3000 car for Silverstone in case I wouldn’t be in the F1 car”. Though he joined Jordan for 1987, he realised his “head was in F1, and my arms and legs were in a F3000 car”. After half a season he left Jordan to reunite with BS Automotive, before ending his racing career to focus on supporting Swedish athletes through the Hello Sweden organisation, whose colours he carried in 1984.

So, a championship that had produced so many F1 drivers came to a damp, premature and rather ignominious end. Despite the criticism, it had nevertheless played a key role in developing many top drivers.

“A sad day. Not in that very moment, because nobody really knew what was coming,” dwelled Pirro.

“Personally, I recall it as a good season because the car we had, the March, was a very good car, so from a driving standpoint, I really enjoyed it. With hindsight, it took really quite some time before the F3000 became a nice car to drive, and F2 was, in my opinion a really great category, nimble cars, very strong engines, high [revs per minute].

“F2 played an instrumental role as the footstep of F1, so it took a while until F3000 got this heritage, and so with hindsight it was a sad day because it was the end of a wonderful chapter.”

Unsurprisingly, given his 1985 title success, Danner feels positively about the end of the first of F1’s primary feeder series and the start of the second: “In ‘84 I had a good year in F2, but it wasn’t a winning year because of [Ralt-Honda superiority]. So, for me it was good that F3000 came because then I could actually finally benefit from what I learned the hard way in F2.”

One time when testing the F3000 car at Snetterton, engineer Ralph Bellamy proposed an idea to Danner.

“[Bellamy proposed] ‘we try something which I think is going to be the future of flat bottom racing cars’, and he put rake in the car. I just couldn’t believe the difference it made to have the rake in the car and therefore have more aerodynamic downforce.”

The change from F2 to F3000 entailed more than larger engines and a name change. F2 cars utilised ground effect to create downforce, while F3000 had flat-bottomed machinery. Eventually ground effect was outlawed across all of single-seaters.

Both concepts had their positives, as Kaiser explains: “It was a fantastic car to drive because it was doing ground effects and when you got things right with the sliding skirts under the side pods, it was just a fantastic car to drive but on the other hand when it changed to F3000, you got Cosworth engines and no ground effect so that was very spectacular also to drive, but it was totally different.”

Int. F3000 ran until 2004, and as a spec series from 1996 onwards, then it was replaced on F1’s support bill by GP2. That also had spec chassis and engine suppliers, but it briefly held category status when its second and third-generation cars were used in multiple series from 2008 to 2011, then in 2017 the FIA became more involved and rebranded GP2 as F2.

The F2 name would not be revived for the premier second-tier championship until 2017, by which time spec cars were de rigueur across junior single-seaters.

Most round wins in European F2