Carlin to end involvement in GP2 feeder series

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British racing team Carlin is set to confirm that it is pulling out of the GP2 Series before the start of the 2017 season.

Carlin was missing from the line-up of this year's teams announced this week by GP2 organisers. Instead, the 11th team is currently listed as 'TBA' on the official series website.

Carlin has been competing in the championship since 2011 and has nurtured the early careers of future Formula One stars including Max Chilton, Rio Haryanto, Jolyon Palmer and Felipe Nasr who between them handed Carlin eight wins in GP2.

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The team finished in tenth place last season, with its most recent podium success coming at Monaco in May when Marvin Kirchhöfer was runner-up in the sprint race.

"We've come to a point where we have fulfilled our contract with GP2 Series, a championship in which we have enjoyed great success including numerous podiums, race wins, and been championship contenders," a team source told Autosport magazine this week.

"The time has now come to move on to focus on other areas of our race programmes."

Carlin currently fields teams in Formula 3 European Championship, Euroformula Open, BRDC British F3 and British Formula 4. It also competes in the US in Indy Lights and is said to be planning to expand operations into the senior IndyCar Series in 2018.

Carlin pulled out of GP3 at the end of 2015, and also called time on its Formula V8 3.5 squad the same year after losing financial backing from Renault.

Hilmer Motorsport had previously announced that it would be fielding a GP2 team again in 2017 after taking a sabbatical in 2016, but so far this has not been confirmed and the team is not among the list of ten teams names so far announced.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.