The USF1 team is the brainchild of Ken Anderson, who worked for the Ligier and Onyx F1 teams in the 1980s before becoming a successful designer and engineer in American motorsport, and former Williams team manager turned journalist and broadcaster Peter Windsor.
The group behind the team are confident that the infrastructure and expertise now available in America – particularly on the southeastern corridor that runs down from Charlotte to Atlanta, the traditional home of NASCAR but also the site of many ALMS sportscar teams – can match anything in F1’s European heartland.
They also believe the in-season testing ban and a less Euro-centric calendar mean that being based on another continent is no longer a major obstacle.
The project team is not overly concerned about the current lack of a United States Grand Prix or the nation’s preference for NASCAR stock car racing, seeing USF1 as first and foremost a means of promoting the nation’s motorsport capabilities to the rest of the world, rather than simply a way of increasing American interest in F1.
“Of all the countries and all the continents out there that need to globalise very quickly, America is the pre-eminent one – and Formula 1 does a better job of globalising brands than just about any other medium, ” the source said.
USF1’s founders, who have been planning the team for four years, believe now is the ideal time to launch a new grand prix team, as the FIA and FOTA’s cost-cutting measures have slashed the budget required to enter the sport and forced manufacturers to offer affordable engines to teams.
“If you’re going to be running a team on a relatively low budget, it’s much easier to create a team from zero and attain that budget than it is to be spending 250 million euros and have suddenly to slash 150 million off your overheads – how are you going to do that?
“It’s a very difficult thing to do. ”
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