AU3 Championship pushed back to 2026

By Thomas Miles

Date posted: 24 June 2025

The arrival of the AU3 Championship will have to wait until 2026 after a “perfect storm of circumstances” forced organisers to postpone the debut season.

The inaugural AU3 Championship was set to bring a new option to open-wheel racing in Australia.

The series, run by a collaborative effort from Tim Macrow Racing and Motorsport Australia was hoped to align the British GB3 Championship.

To make this happen, the Tatuus FT-60 chassis with Alfa Romeo and Toyota engines that feature in the Toyota Formula Regional Oceania Championship had been brought over from New Zealand.

The new championship was set to debut at Phillip Island in May.

Then it was postponed to One Raceway and Winton, but neither of those will happen either.

Despite these setbacks, a test day was held to give drivers a taste of the Formula Open cars.

However, entries have not quite met expectations and with numerous event cancellations and delays, the championship organisers have bitten the bullet.

AU3 Championship representative Tim Macrow has released the following statement confirming the postponement.

A ‘perfect storm’ of circumstances, including some early logistical hiccups, ongoing uncertainty, as well as recent cancellations surrounding other categories and events in a period of economic uncertainty, has led to confirmation of the postponement of what was to be the inaugural 2025 AU3 (F3 Formula Regional) series until next year.

AU3 was conceived as a step forward from the pioneering Formula Open single-seater series of the past two years (an economic ‘development’ arena using older F3 and F4 cars); a pathway for young drivers locally, upgrading into a more current car and series, in particular using the F3 Formula Regional cars that contest the long-standing and successful January/February Regional series in New Zealand, run by Toyota NZ.

Their support and assistance in making the cars available, getting them here from NZ, and assisting with the logistics involved has been superb.

However, shipping and import delays out of anyone’s control made for a problematic start, with the cancellation of a pre-series test day and the scheduled opening round.

From there, and despite a successful rescheduled test day recently, confirmed competitor numbers have not yet met the numbers required for a successful series.

We had been working on incentives to boost numbers and planned to kick off with our scheduled event at the Sandown round of the SRO series in July but, after two false starts already, and now confirmation that the August Race Winton event isn’t going ahead, even with Toyota NZ and Motorsport Australia’s help at this late stage, it just doesn’t stack up to start the 2025 championship.

So we are postponing to 2026.

We’re doing our best to provide a single-seater pathway for young drivers locally, so there’s no-one more disappointed than me – my team has put a lot of effort into this, to continue where we left off with AFO.

It’s leaving a pretty big hole in Australian motorsport again, but hopefully we can fill it in the future.

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AU3 Championship pushed back to 2026

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