British Formula Renault racing in the United Kingdom dates to 1989, when the BARC founded an amateur-oriented championship to complement the professional Renault Sport UK series that launched the same year. For the first decade and a half, two parallel championships existed in the country: the main Renault Sport UK series, recognised as the premier British Formula Renault championship, and the BARC series catering to club-level competitors with more modest budgets.
The BARC championship used technical regulations broadly aligned with the main UK series but with notable differences designed to reduce costs and extend component life. These included fixed gear ratios, an intake restrictor to limit engine wear, and a restriction to one new set of tyres per outing. The series used the Tatuus Formula Renault chassis first introduced to the UK championship in 2000 and updated in 2007, a specification that kept older cars competitive and made the series financially accessible.
From 1995 through 2011, the two Formula Renault championships in the UK coexisted, with the BARC series serving as the entry point for drivers with lower budgets. Renault Sport UK actively supported the BARC championship throughout this period, maintaining a connection between the two tiers.
In March 2012, Renault Sport UK announced it would not run the main Formula Renault UK series that season due to a critically low number of entries — only six confirmed competitors — at a time when seasonal costs for the main championship had escalated toward £200,000. The series ended definitively in September 2012. This left the BARC championship as the only Formula Renault 2.0 series operating in the United Kingdom, and the organisation responded by rebranding the series. From 2013, the championship adopted the name Protyre Formula Renault Championship, dropping the BARC tag to reflect its new status as the leading national single-seater championship in Great Britain.
Despite its initial growth following the rebrand, grid sizes declined in subsequent seasons. The Protyre Formula Renault Championship ran its final season in 2014, after which the championship was discontinued, ending twenty years of continuous BARC-organised Formula Renault racing in Britain.
The championship's weekend format centred on two qualifying sessions on Saturday followed by two races, typically both held on Sunday. During the 2012 season, triple-header events were introduced at some rounds, with a third race added whose grid was determined by the second-fastest times from the second qualifying session. Points were awarded down to 20th place, with two additional points for the fastest lap. All rounds less one counted toward the championship, giving competitors some latitude to discard a difficult weekend.
The series ran predominantly at circuits in England, forming part of BARC club racing meetings rather than standalone events. Venues included Donington Park and Silverstone, among others.
The Protyre Formula Renault Championship occupied an important niche within British junior motorsport as an affordable pathway for drivers who lacked the substantial budgets required by the main Renault Sport series. The main UK Formula Renault championship produced several drivers who went on to reach Formula 1, including Lewis Hamilton, Kimi Raikkonen, Paul di Resta, and Heikki Kovalainen — Raikkonen winning the main championship in 2000 before making his Formula 1 debut the following year.
The end of both UK Formula Renault series by 2014 coincided with the rise of new junior single-seater categories in Britain, particularly MSA Formula and BRDC Formula 4, which offered a lower-cost alternative that ultimately made a third iteration of Formula Renault in the UK commercially unviable. A proposal to revive Formula Renault UK in 2014 as a two-tier championship combining modern and older machinery ultimately collapsed due to a breakdown in negotiations and insufficient demand.