With just 10 days to go until the start of the 2010 Formula One season disaster has struck one of the new teams. US-F1 have announced they are going to relinquish their place on the grid and hopefully defer until the 2011 season. This has had a distinct air of inevitability about it ever since they joined.
The USA’s relationship with Formula One has never been smooth. Various attempts to sell the sport across the pond have failed over the years and taken in such disasters as a makeshift track in the car park of Caesars Palace, the failed BAR team and a host of terrible drivers such as the misleadingly named, Scott Speed.
At the end of the day, America are more than happy with their Nascar and Indy car and Formula One seems to finally have got the message shifted its focus over to the Asian and Middle-Eastern parts of the world.
However no one told US-F1, and the plucky yanks had one more crack at breaking into this classy and elegant form of racing in a country that much prefers muscle cars and raw power going round in circles. They desperately tried to put a team together but were in financial trouble almost from the off.
If you want to burn money then a Formula One team provides a pit to throw said cash down and set ablaze. Ken Anderson and Peter Windsor, the US-F1 supremos, have announced that the problem was with sponsorship and, if the FIA grant them a year’s postponement, they will be back in business in 2011.
US-F1 have been trouble from the word go, they didn’t even manage to sign the Concorde agreement in time, delaying the process for the rest of the teams. After that they had production problems, then they couldn’t find any American drivers and had to go for contractual drivers to make up the cash. They then managed to get YouTube inventor Charlie Hurley for funds but he was reluctant to invest to heavily in the project, the car wasn’t ready for testing so Anderson asked if they could miss the first four races of the season, the FIA said no, they struggled on for a bit longer before throwing in the towel.
It’s hard to see why they even bothered. On a micro-budget with bad drivers it’s a hiding-to-nothing. Especially in what will be an ultra-competitive 2010 season. Stefan GP was mooted in a merger as Hurley looked to try and salvage something from the situation, but Anderson and Windsor were against the idea. As it stands Stefan GP have been trying to take US-F1’s place but have just recently been told that is not going to happen.
Another dismal attempt to get America involved in the Formula One racing has therefore fallen by the wayside. Why there is an obsession for European sports to “crack” the States anyway I don’t know, if they like it they will come of their own accord and it’s pretty clear they are not interested in Formula One. Even when all-American hero Mario Andretti won the world title in 1978, the USA didn’t flutter an eyelash in this direction.
As for US-F1, they just provided the blueprint on how not to run a Formula One team. A disaster from the word go and an exercise in futility.
Stick to the Nascar guys.
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