Alexander Toril and Ed Jones will move to the FIA European F3 Championship this year to race with T-Sport and Carlin respectively.
The 17-year-old Toril makes the jump to the FIA series following a respectable European F3 Open campaign where he claimed four podiums on his way to 5th overall.
The Spaniard tested with the British squad prior to Christmas, with the parties coming to an agreement shortly thereafter.
While the competitive level of F3 Open falls short of what the FIA championship offers, Toril did at least impress with his consistency and reliability across the season, where he was only one of four drivers to finish all sixteen races in the season {note 1}.
Toril certainly does not underestimate the challenge ahead – if anything, the Spaniard is looking forward to it. “I am highly motivated to start the start the season and I am sure that with T-Sport we will be do a great job.”
Despite his youth, the Spaniard has already enjoyed two years of Formula 3, having only competed in a single season of French Formula 4 following four years of karting, but Toril thinks his two years in F3 Open may go some way to aiding his efforts. “I hope I can demonstrate this year all the experience I have been accumulating during the last two seasons and compare me with one of the most competitive European grids.”
Jones, meanwhile, was announced as one of Carlin’s latest charges at the end of last week. The Dubai racer, who won the 2013 European F3 Open Series with Team West-Tec, joins Jake Dennis at the Farnham team.
At 18-years-of-age, Jones has crammed in a fair amount of racing experience. Alongside his F3 Open duties, the Carlin man debuted in the FIA F3 Championship with Fortec at the Hockenheimring last May, while also driving in a number of British F3, Eurocup Formula Renault and NEC and also competed at Macau in November with Fortec.
Jones is also a veteran of the now defunct InterSteps Series in Britain.
Following the announcement, he commented, “It is very exciting to be joining the team for the 2014 season. I completed several days testing with the team before Christmas and really enjoyed driving the car. I can’t wait to get on track for the first official test and build on our progress over the winter.” Carlin team boss Trevor Carlin added: “He tested with us before Christmas and we were very pleased with his progress over that short time. Ed helped us with several technical changes and his feedback as well as his pace was very impressive.”
Admittedly Jones’ pace in the Hockenheimring and Macau were not best of efforts to judge his talents, so will be interesting to see how the F3 Open Champion handles the step up to full season competition. If nothing else, it may give a finer impression of where F3 Open truly stands in the feeder series ladder.
{note 1}
Other drivers to finish all sixteen F3 Open races in 2013 include series runner-up Sandy Stuvik, Yarin Stern and Che One Lim. Ed Jones also finished all his races; however the eventual champion only entered fourteen events. Vicky Piria was classified for every race, but did not actually finish races at Monza and Barcelona.
