A new bid to bring an American team into Formula 1 in 2010 is set to be officially launched within the next month.
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.
A high-level source involved in the project told itv.com/f1 that USF1 would be based in North Carolina, with a facility near Anderson's state-of-the-art Windshear wind tunnel in Concord.
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 source added that America was also a more cost-effective place to design and build an F1 car than Europe, especially as the next generation of rules will feature standardised parts and will encourage more outsourcing to specialist suppliers.
He cited the Windshear facility - a full-scale, 180mph rolling road wind tunnel built to F1 specification that opened last September - as an example of the cost efficiencies that could be achieved, saying it came in comfortably under budget at less than half what it would have cost to build an equivalent tunnel in Europe.
"Unit costs are lower, land is cheaper, it's easier to get things done [in the USA]," the source explained.
"And in this new era that F1 is approaching which the FIA are very adamant about, one of the obvious cost reduction systems is to outsource as much of the car as possible.
"Within the infrastructure of the cluttered European F1 bases, it is very difficult to outsource as much as a team would want to because it's so competitive out there, and it doesn't actually save you a lot of money anyway, because there are so many teams there that the outside suppliers charge a premium.
"Whereas in America, if you're the only F1 team on the block, it's a slightly different deal."
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.
"We all know that F1 hasn't sold itself as well as it should in the US, but that doesn't really concern this operation.
"What this operation is about is taking the United States to Formula 1, rather than taking Formula 1 to the United States - so it's a completely different philosophy.
"We're not trying to convince 25 million NASCAR fans that Formula 1 is the way to go; we're saying to a lot of Americans who love Formula 1 that they can be a part of Formula 1 as well, and there's no reason why we shouldn't have an American team out there doing well."
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.
The source said creating a completely new team for the cheaper regulations will actually be more straightforward than the scaling-down process that current teams are going through as a result of the rule changes.
"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."
Itv.com/f1 has learned that the project has the backing of both the FIA and Bernie Ecclestone, with Max Mosley affirming in recent interviews that he regards the US bid as a "serious" effort.
The official launch of USF1 will take place on American broadcaster SPEED TV, for whom Windsor commentates, in late February or early March.
Source: ITV.com/F1
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