Home Formula RegionalFRegional Asian Championship BlackArts and Pinnacle boost Asian F3 grid with TRS and F4 stars

BlackArts and Pinnacle boost Asian F3 grid with TRS and F4 stars

by Ida Wood

Chinese Formula 4 champion Jordan Dempsey, Toyota Racing Series stars Brendon Leitch and Thomas Smith and F4 UAE race-winner Tom Beckhauser will all race in Asian Formula 3 this year.

Pinnacle Motorsport, which only entered two rounds last year but won three races with 2019 TRS champion and Red Bull junior Liam Lawson, will field Dempsey and Smith.

Irishman Dempsey won last year’s Chinese F4 title with the team, and finished third in the Walter Hayes Trophy. He’s also a winner in BRSCC National Formula Ford 1600, and was the 2015 Ginetta Junior Ireland champion.

Smith is a fellow FFord graduate from Australia, and was eighth in Australian F4 last year. He contested the opening round of the championship’s 2019 season after finishing 14th in TRS.

Pinnacle also provides technical support for B-MAX Racing’s two Asian F3 entries. Tairoku Yamaguchi won the 2019 Asian F3 Winter Series Masters class title, and will be aiming to repeat the feat in the main series.

The second car is being driven by 24-year-old Yu Kanamaru, who has stood on the podium in Formula V8 3.5 and was once a title threat in Euroformula Open and Formula Renault NEC. Last year he headed B-MAX’s Japanese F3 line-up, finishing fifth in the standings.

In addition to the already announced Thomas Luedi, BlackArts Racing will run seven-time TRS race winner Leitch and Beckhauser, the latter who will also be competing in Central European Zone F3 after a difficult season in ADAC F4.

Asian F3’s 2019 grid now consists of 10 cars, with the second season of the championship set to start at Sepang on April 6-7.