Team Principal Ken Anderson insists the team is planning to enter the field in 2011, but after months of disinformation, it is unlikely anyone would bet on USF1.
USF1 Was conceived during the FIA/FOCA battle of 2008, when it appeared that several major teams would be pulling out of Formula One to start a new league, and after two factory teams (BMW and Toyota) pulled out of the sport.
Then FIA president Max Mosley opened up the grid to four new teams, among them Campos-Mehta, Lotus, Virgin, and USF1. Initially these teams thought they would be operating under a $40 million expense cap, but after team owners rejected that, the new teams had to find considerably more funding.
USF1 was the brainchild of race car engineer Ken Anderson and Peter Windsor, a racing journalist and former manager of the Williams and Ferrari F1 teams. The team formally announced its existens on February 24, 2009.
Initially the idea of a U.S. team fielding U.S. drivers was quite popular among American race fans. As the season drew closer and nothing concrete emerged from the team’s Charlotte, North Carolina factory, fans became increasingly skeptical that the team would succeed.
USF1, backed in part by YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley, failed to meet design and production deadlines, which hurt finances, much of which were conditional on meeting certain interim goals.
Despite the workers being paid late or not at all, despite the team’s offices and workshops being almost empty, and despite the team missing every deadline, the team’s official press releases were always 100 percent positive.
However, rumors within the racing community indicated that the design and construction team were disillusioned and dissatisfied with Ken Anderson’s management style. In some places he was accused of micro-managing the team to death, holding up progress at every step by making unplanned changes or complaints.
It was even rumored that there were investors willing to support the team if Ken Anderson left the project.
The first serious signs of the team’s problems came when it was unable to pay for the engines it had ordered from engine-builder Cosworth. When, in February, Cosworth shipped its first batch on 2010 F1 engines to the teams which would be using them, ion time for the first test days of the 2010 season, USF1’s engines were not shipped.
This again set the rumors flying, and again the team assured everyone that it would be on the grid for the first race in Bahrain.
On February 20, the team asked the FIA for a dispensation from their agreement to compete in all of the races in the 2010 season, saying they needed to miss the first four events to fully prepare their car.
A week later USF1 entered into talks with Zoran Stefanović, a Serbian businessman who had bought the old Toyota F1 team, and renamed it Stefan Grand Prix. Stefan GP had a car (the old Toyota chassis) but not spot on the grid, while USF1 had a spot on the grid but no car.
Talks fell through and a week later, USF1 was forced to admit that it did not have the funds, nor had made sufficient progress to compete in 2010. Today the company told its employees that they would not be proceeding with the 2010 chassis, effectively shutting down the company in all but name.
