Asian F3 set for competitive season.

The expanded 16-car grid likely for the first event of the Asian Formula Three Championship at Batangas this weekend [10 April] is undoubtedly the most competitive field assembled by the series to date.

With reigning champion Christian Jones returning to do battle with 2004 nemesis John O'Hara and a few surprise packages, including former F3000 racer Ananda Mikola, lying in wait, predicting a winner is far from easy.

Jones, the son of 1980 F1 world champion Alan, returns with the same car and team, his own CJM Dallara 301-Honda. The team also has a new Dallara 304, but supposedly no engine to fit it with. Which car Jones will drive will only be known once the first event has started.

The first race will also answer one of the big questions of the year, what is faster the 304 or 301 model. O'Hara reckons, initially at least, that it will be 301, but that, long-term, it will be the 304. He has a point, the 301s are 10kg lighter and the teams know the car very well, but the real advantage of the 304 is its six-speed sequential gearbox.

Jones, like O'Hara, has to win to keep his career on track. He will certainly find it harder this year, and it would be a surprise to see any driver win the first four races in a row, a feat the Australian achieved in 2004. His smooth yet deceptively fast style reaps rewards when the going is good, but whether this is good enough to beat the feisty style of O'Hara only time and circumstance will tell.

O'Hara, an ex-pat Irishman, swaps teams from Kinetic to TOM'S, and will race the Toyota specialist's Dallara 304. Testing has not gone well, however, with O'Hara driving the chassis used by Enzo Pastor last year. Team and driver believe there is a chassis problem and TOM'S Japan has sent one of its cars as a replacement. It will not be apparent until race week testing has got under way if the new car will get O'Hara on the pace, however, but it will be a major surprise if he is not winning races this year. He has to win, if not his racing career will be in danger of stalling.

Mikola returns to the series with a new team, Pertamina Fastron Racing, and a new car, a Dallara 304-Nissan. This is the first time that a Nissan engine has been seen in the series, but comes from Japanese outfit Three Bond Racing, and will be engineered by Adachi San who has defected from Kinetic to run Mikola. Adachi proved with O'Hara and Mikola last year that he is a great engineer and will give the Indonesian a car capable of winning. He has set the fastest testing time to date at BRC, and will certainly go faster when Nissan sends its ECU tuner for race week.

Last year's Promotion Class winner, Tyson Sy, surprised many by moving from Team Goddard-Minardi Team Asia to Speedtech Asia. He has shown promise in testing so far, but he still needs to move up a notch if he is going to win races outright this year. His fitness is also a little suspect, so he may struggle to keep up the pace for a race distance. If Sy is to have any chance of fulfilling his dream of racing in F1, he has to win races this year, and whether he rise to the challenge is one of the more interesting questions of the year.

Dado Pena has moved to Ambi Pur Team Goddard-Minardi Team Asia to lead the team's fleet of Dallara 301-TOM's. He has all but equalled Mikola's best in testing and put himself right in the frame this year. Like Sy, Pena has driven for Minardi Team Asia in Formula BMW Asia for the past two seasons, and the team knows that he has the speed and good technique to succeed. His major fault has been allowing slight problems to get to him, but Pena himself says he understands this and that he will not allow it to happen this year.

The team were extremely impressed with him in testing at BRC and they truly believe they have a good chance of winning races. Pena has remained part of the Minardi ladder to the top and he knows if he does well doors will open to help him on his way to F1. Sy and Pena have been arch rivals since their karting days and both are desperate to beat the other. Who comes out on top is one of the talking points of the season.

Katsuhiro Konno joins JF3, but is difficult to predict how he will fare. His experience is relatively little and it is doubtful if he can hack it with Jones, O'Hara, Mikola, Pena and Sy. However, on the other hand, he may be the next Sato.

Rodolfo Avila is an Asian Formula Renault champion, but this is a big jump for the young Macanese, even if he did compete at Macau with UK outfit Carlin last year. He has done more testing miles than any other driver and, as yet, has not set the world alight. However, his testing has been done in the ex-Pastor 304, a car with which O'Hara struggled to get within two seconds of Mikola on the same day. Avila tests his own car, a Dallara 304 freshly delivered from Japan, on race week.

Pepon Marave returns for Shell Kinetic PCSO in his 301 TORRI engined car. Last year was not a good year for the 2003 champion, as he spent most of the year looking like he would have preferred to be on the golf course rather than behind the wheel!

James Winslow joins Kinetic, also in a 301 TORRI. He will be competitive, he finished second in the ARP British F3 Series last year, and can probably win races, but Kinetic are notoriously tight-fisted with any information, and it is difficult to know how he has fared in testing.

The fate of O'Hara, Avila, Konno, Sy and Pena is partly in the hands of TOM's. Rival Toyota tuning company, TORRI, probably had a slight advantage last year as its ECU man had only two cars to deal with and was possibly able to sail closer to the wind when mapping the ECU. Jones's ECU was mapped through e-mail by Neil Brown, not as good an arrangement as TORRI, but benefited from the tuner being able to concentrate on one engine only. TOM's, on the other hand, was mapping for almost the entire field and was also possibly a little too conservative on occasions.

If TOM's really pushes all its drivers, the top three is likely to be O'Hara, Pena and Mikola, with Jones, Winslow and Sy pretty close. If O'Hara turns out to the tuner's favourite son, then he, Mikola and Jones will likely make up the top three. If TOM'S lags behind, then expect Mikola, Jones and Winslow to fill the top three. The champion could be any one of six drivers and that really reflects the growing stature of Asian F3.