Alex Lloyd made a late entry into the 2004 European F3000 championship after his F3 plans fell through - and made an immediate impact with his front running pace. In this exclusive interview with
Crash.net, Lloyd answers questions on his F3000 move, the benefits and limitations of winning an Autosport award, his options for 2005, testing a
McLaren F1 car and much more...
Q:
Alex, how disappointing was it to see the F3 plans fall though?
Alex Lloyd:
It was disappointing, especially after having won the Autosport awards and having always planned - even through my Renault year, the year before - to do F3 in that year.
We got right up to until literally a couple of days before the first race and we pulled the plug - still with a little bit of money in the bank - but we realised that basically our funds were going to run out halfway through the year, and we couldn’t afford to do a couple of races and then run out of money and fade away for the rest of the winter.
So we revised our plans; initially our plan was to stop and do the second half of the year in British F3, but having had a little bit of a think about how we were struggling to raise money - and how there’s a lot of British drivers in British Formula 3 struggling to raise money - we thought we’ll try and do something a bit different and see if that’ll open a few doors and connections.
So we went to European Formula 3000; I knew John Village quite well - I’d been sort of pestering him for a while to be honest - so we jumped in and it went very well.
Q:
You mention that other drivers don’t necessarily have enough funding, do you see it as symptomatic of the British racing system that there isn’t enough money out there to fund up and coming drivers?
Alex Lloyd:
It seems like it at the moment. I mean - certainly the British drivers - there aren’t many at all on full budgets, unless they’re linked in with a manufacturer or they have a family connection or something. But in terms of actually trying to raise money in the UK, it’s near impossible. In fact I don’t know many drivers that have got a sponsorship deal without some prior connection.
