USF1 Team Announced: Details Are Still Murky

After waiting for a week for the official press conference, we now know that USF1 is indeed a real outfit. Not much else, but at least we have that.

On the SPEEDTV press conference there were few solid details, but here is a summary of what meager information there was.

Ken Anderson is the team principal, and Peter Windsor the sporting director. It was pretty obvious that the "Front Office" guy will be Windsor just from the number of questions he answered and the number that Ken deferred to him.

The team, as stated earlier, will be based in Charlotte, NC, although no permanent facilities have been identified.

Peter is envisioning a "Skunk Works" type of operation consisting of highly qualified people with a racing background, as well as new entry level mechanics, designers, and aerodynamicists with a desire to be part of something special. Any way you read this, it means long hours. He figures the total team size to be around 100 people.

Plans are to use the Charlotte labor market as much as possible, which, like everywhere else, has a growing unemployment rate. Unlike most other places, this employment pool has close ties to the auto racing industry.

Ken and Peter will maintain majority ownership in the operation. They have set the venture up so that outside ownership is restricted to a "very small" percentage of the total equity—the actual amount was not mentioned. While they have not named any specific sponsors, they feel that attracting sponsors in the US market should be reasonably easy, and plan to use this sponsor revenue to cover the operations of the team.

For some reason I just got this vision of a Formula 1 car with very little paint showing and having sponsorship logos embedded in the livery. Kind of a la NASCAR.

Logistics to and from venues do not appear to be a concern for the two. I have to agree with them there—with no race in North America, only one in South America, and the rest being nearly evenly split between Europe, the Pacific Rim, and the Mid-East, they are just about centrally located to everywhere else on the friggin' planet.

Driver candidates have not been identified, although some names were popping up throughout the press conference. Marco Andretti was probably mentioned more than any other, while there were several mentions of Scott Speed. Danica Patrick was only mentioned once, as was Kyle Busch and Grahm Rahal.

Peter also stated that they were willing to work with any drivers that were interested in making the jump to F1, including any current NASCAR oval track drivers.

The team will be submitting an RFP (or whatever the racing world equivalent is) for engine proposals, and they are willing to entertain all realistic submissions. However, keeping in mind the American slant that they intend to run the team with, I would expect to see the FIA/FOM standardized Ford Cosworth as the front-runner.

Both Peter, and especially Ken, would like to emulate the type of fan interaction/accessibility that they have observed in NASCAR and would like to keep team and driver accessibility as informal and as fan friendly.

It is clear to me that even with the USF1 name and logo, Ken and Peter intend to run this as a privateer operation much like Williams, not a "nationally owned" team. They also made it clear that the organization's focus is on Formula 1 and not other side businesses. I am assuming this excludes the wind tunnel that Ken owns.

Early in the interview Peter mentioned that the other two methods of getting on the grid, "some rich trillionaire or a large car manufacturer," were exactly what he and Ken were trying to avoid. Their focus was on creating a team that they had tight control over, hence the tight limit on outside investment.

Bob Varsha brought up an interesting point about development and testing, to which, in my opinion, Peter gave an even more interesting answer. Bob stated that since they do not have a car yet and do not intend to get on the grid until 2010, the team is basically exempt from the development and testing bans placed on the other teams. Peter's reply was, "We will comply with the spirit of the regulations" in that area, saying, "We don't want to upset anyone."

I will try my best to track this development and will report any additional information as it becomes available. Let's keep our fingers crossed for two more cars on the grid next year!