Got to agree with that.

I disagree. That was quite mediocre. A very obvious effort to create emotion, that doesn't go beyond the one of a mildly talented 15 year old. Seriously. I wrote that kind of stuff when I was 15, and it's fairly easy if you put some effort into it.

I belonged to those who voted USF1 will make it. And I would have loved to see an american team in Formula 1, something which - that was always my impression - the lot of the posters here were looking forward to. But there is a point when mounting evidence tells you the probability for it going to happen is ever decreasing. There is too much to list here, be it Ecclestone saying "we might not see the Americans in Bahrain", be it the sudden silence from Charlotte, be it CompositeKen, be it Anderson jr. with his not very confident appearance on Youtube... you name it.

And then comes Mario5 telling us not only it is all rumours no truth but it is all the jealous europeans who want to bash the US. Which by the way was basically the same foulmouthed stance from Mr. Windsor, to be viewed here (not for much longer, I guess).

But you'd be wrong, basically. There's no real evidence that Lola or Prodrive would have done better. For all we know they'd be no further along than Campos(ie Dallara).

Well Hurley (or someone) could buy the building, keep the equipment and use it to make parts for various forms of racing. IRL, Nascar, even racing Karts I suppose. I wonder if the building still comes with an F1 factory?

... and the guy making those comments was european / aussie ... not US ...

Sorry to say but how predictable. It was only a question of when.

Total waste.

Total shambles.

Someone has some explaining to do, and not just the Anderson/Windsor duo.

Sad. Especially for the employees.

Personally, I do blame the FIA, at least in part. I always thought that the process to select the lucky three was more style and politics than substance, and the failure of one (so far? - another has had a major reorganisation) is no surprise.

I hope the others make the grid, and succeed.

But at the end of the dy, that's F1 ...

again: epsilon euskadi!

http://www.epsiloneuskadi.com/epsilon/index.aspx?language=2

but they applied with a wrong engine mentioned in the FIA-form.

Anderson and Windsor should be ashamed by their actions and I hope that we never have to see these two in F1 again. This team looked like a massive joke from Day One for example those Youtube videos only serves to underline this point with the shoddy looking work environment, staff in football tops and the general air of amateurism that seemed to prevail. The truth is there were better candidates and they shouldn't have been accepted in the first place. Obviously I feel sorry for the staff who have been dragged through this and I hope that Hurley is able to oversee some kind of merger with Stefan so that they can make the grid instead.

Maybe my posts about uniforms (I started the whole uniform thing) and guys being dragged out of Starbucks to pose for pics thing were closer to the mark than I imagined :/

Once everyone stops trying to force F1 on America we will be better off.

If America wants F1 they can watch it and it will grow naturally. Forcing it upon them is obviously not working when the Tony Georges, Andersons and Peter Windsor types are involved.

STOP TRYING to make F1 work in the States. Focus on what works. Not what could work.

I think the whole thing would have been easier to swallow if Windsor and Anderson had been handling themselves with dignity and honesty. What good does it achieve to be in denial? and after that shut down all the communications when it was pretty much transparent what was happening?

Even now it boggles the mind for them to have remained silent, towards their own staff on top of things...

They could have failed at fielding an F1 team but get out of there with their heads high, but their actions made that impossible so they failed at failing too..

Sad to hear this for the sake of any hopes of bringing the US back into the F1 fold and also sad for the employees who were lead to believe they could weather the storm. What thanks they get for being loyal. I hope they have some legal recourse for getting compensated for their work despite the bungling by management at the top.

Kind of metaphoric of the US economy really. Overspending, severe mismanagement and empty promises to shareholders and employees, company failure and now folks out of jobs.

And now what of Peter Windsor? Can anyone really save face from this and continue in the kind of public capacity he once had in the paddock?

I desperately want to believe Windsor has some dignity yet to release a public statement!

I suppose one could say that truer words were never spoken ...

"This [situation] is the legacy of the holy war waged by the former FIA president," he explained. "The cause in question was to allow smaller teams to get into Formula 1.

"This is the outcome: two teams will limp into the start of the championship, a third is being pushed into the ring by an invisible hand – you can be sure it is not the hand of Adam Smith – and, as for the fourth, well, you would do better to call on Missing Persons to locate it.

"In the meantime, we have lost two constructors along the way, in the shape of BMW and Toyota, while at Renault, there's not much left other than the name. Was it all worth it?"

So what you mean is that I might be wrong.

The joke's over. It was too long and not very funny. I'm just mad that they had to tag "US" on the whole operation. The failure had nothing to do with our country, just the incompetence and bad luck of the guys who ran the team. Not securing an American driver, when there were some options available doomed sponsorship at the start. Without sponsorship money, you get nothing.

Agree with everything said.

Shame this didn't work out. I'm never happy to hear that a team cant make it.

Whether it was the result of bad PR and communication, or their personalities, Windsor et al always came over as pretty smug and self important in this whole fiasco, and I think that's why there's been so much vitriol towards them.

Rather than making F1 richer, I think USF1 would have been tarnished it if they'd limped into Bahrain. A proper US team, run properly, would be great of course, but this wasn't it, and was never going to be it.

Of course it's a shame that people have lost their jobs, but they are skilled people who chose to take jobs in a highly speculative and risky venture, so presumably have some contingency plans and were prepared for this happening. So it's a bit different from hundreds of people losing their jobs in an established company and not being able to support their families, which happens every day around the world.

Can you offer more than that? There's so much BS out there, what's the story?

You could also say that the rest of the world does things differently from the US? Why do they do that? They only look inward..

If it will make you feel better I am sure they will stop calling the World Series the World Series (though it is international).

F1 doesn't catch on in the US for the same reason soccer/football doesn't. There is NFL football, NBA basketball, Major League baseball, College Football, College basketball, NASCAR, NHL hockey and on and on. There are probably as many F1 fans in the US as in any other country in the world but there are 300 million people in the US. It just can get traction when it has to compete with 15 other sports that are already more popular. (The 2002 USGP let the loser win and the 2005 USGP let the losers make the tires episodes didn't help.)

And be careful what you wish for. If the US took to F1 like we took to NASCAR or the NFL some disgustingly rich American would buy Bernie, kick out Renault (French you know), move the races to the US, race on some ovals (to make the F1 drivers more complete drivers), and then honk you off by calling them world champion.

Well they had Lopez's money, which wasn't a bad chunk of change. Wasn't American, but maybe they couldn't find an American driver with that kind of money that ALSO had(or was capable of getting) a superlicense. And there's no telling if some potential drivers and management decided that USF1 wasn't a viable option for them for whatever reason.

Word!

I hope FIA with J. Todt learn a good lesson and make a reliable selection procedure which'd guarantee that the fittest will be on the grid.

you've really gotta wonder why Lola, Prodrive or Epsilon didn't get a spot..

if the FIA really wanted a US team, why didn't they court Penske or Andretti when they were trying to introduce their budget cap... both those teams could do it easily, have the finance and sponsors already..

so did the unfortunate employees too

I agree with your comment about not forcing it on America, but this is not only about America. USF1 is not the first F1 team to fail, and it remains to be seen how many more of the new entrants won't make it.
The issue is what led F1 to where it is today, and how/in what form it will survive.

There is only one true manufacturer in F1 today, and if and when they decide to abandon it, it will pretty much be the end of it as we have known it in recent years.

If the rumours from the time were right, if you didn't commit to using Cosworth engines, you had no chance. They were just rumours though......

Who's trying to foist F1 on America? I wouldn't lose any sleep if that nation disappeared like the mythical Atlantis. You take yourself far to seriously, if you believe that. F1's survival doesn't depend on U.S viewership and never will. India and China will become vastly more important markets compared to the peaked U.S market and this will only increase in time. Think of it like football(soccer) it would be great if the U.S took football seriously(like the rest of the world), but don't think the world loses any sleep over whether the U.S participates or not.

so Mosely trying to force the manufacturers out caused this... makes sense

So what is the fallout from this?

Will the FIA grant StefanGP the slot?
Someone will sue someone else (I think that is to take for granted, it could even be the owners of the building that were selling with the promise of a deal until 2014)
Rule changes regarding the monitoring of new teams.
Minor timetables to be adhered to eg all crash testing must be complete and passed 2 weeks before the first tests are due

etc... etc...

The people that should really be ashamed are the ones that limited team entries to 13 and chose the new entrants for 2010.

Andersen and Windsor are assassinated by Argentine hitmen.

Lopez returns as the king of Argentine Touring Cars.

As we all know now, by the time they announced Jlo they were already in a death spiral … it would have taken a heck of a lot more money to salvage that mess … anyone doing due diligence after the first of the year would have stayed far away from it. The writing was on the wall.

Well said

I find it a pitty that a 172 page epic thread with 1683 posts was closed down.

Thats a bit harsh! Sued for what? They had financial troubles you cant sue them for that. If a backer pulls out what do you expect them to do? This happnens a lot in business. I admire them for making an attempt to live the dream. It takes alot of money and courage, no doubt their all American vision might have hampered then. But they did try!

I'm going to keep his January 1st blog....and if he ever gets another job in F1 journalism I will constantly spam his mailbox with this bull.

Got to hand it to him, though...

Bernie was right all along.

Yet again.

Bernard says a lot of things - some of them are bound to be right. I mean, does anyone still think that his medal system proposal was the stuff of geniuses, for example?

Ha ha! Not a bad idea

The US takes football very seriously. They don't take soccer as seriously. Your reply indicates that you don't live in America. You have to live here for a while to understand why.

At no point did I ever say F1's survival depends on America. Do you read my posts or not? Bernie tried to "foist" F1 on America and it worked short term for the existing viewership. Tony George tried to. Heck these jokers at USF1 though there was a bunch of people that would fall in love with F1 over here if they found out about it. No. There are enough F1 fans here. Cater to us with some HD content and we'll be happy.

F1 needs to do what it does best. Put on motor racing. Yes, everyone needs to make a buck but at some point the try can hurt. There are valuable lessons learned here and long term the loser is the North American fan who wants 2 races and a US based team. The other fans (like me) who could not give a rat's ass what country the cars or drivers come from and just enjoy the racing and politics will be served. That's about %99 of us over here. Sure I like my British drivers, a former Tifosi, a old Williams fan, a former Benetton/Schumi fan, a current McLaren fan - but I'm not chomping at the bit because there is no current Canadian or American driver.

Cars? Check. Pit babes? Check. Noise? Check. On track action? Check. Off track drama? Check. Silly paddock celebrity sightings on BBC? Check. BBC satellite feed instead of Speed TV? Check. All that pales compared to what damn country some of these jockeys were born in.

Here's a quote from FIA Senate president Nick Craw from November 2009:




Nick Craw should be sacked. He visited the factory twice, yet he hasn't seen anything troublesome, when rumors about USF1's lack of progress were already flying around everywhere?

"They're going to make us proud", my ass. He's FIA president, he should judge those things neutrally, and not make the decisions based on his national pride.

I used to be a fan of Peter Windsor. I haven't been for about 3 years now.
Ironically he had a lot more humility and insight when he was a journalist (for autosport that is) then when he ostensively set out to found an F1 team.

In the last few years he had become increasingly sarcastic and bothersome during pit lane interviews (maybe he was feeling smug knowing that some day soon HE would be a big wheel like the people he envied) and generally devoid of interesting insights or observations.

When then announced the team it was doomed. Peter and Ken are a clown and a quack respectively. Not masters of the F1 universe. Flav is a **** bag but he has forgotten more than either of these dorks have ever known about running a race team.

Windsor blowing hard about the resourcefulness of the USF1 Yanks (i am in Seattle) and the laziness of the brits leading up the the debacle that we see before us now was more evidence that EGO not logic drove the WHOLE PROJECT.

There will be a lot of fallout from this mess.

The insiders who knew flipping well this was an exercise in bravado and had no chance (see my other posts...you know who you are) should be flogged.

Let Stefan race and lets all learn that our "guts" feelings are often (always) more worthy than the stories and excused the mind will conjure particularly when it really does not want to see whats behind curtain number 1.

Lets hope he (Windsor) disappears without trace, my only other hope is that James Allen doesn't get his job doing the PC's.

I sure hope this will not turn out into a dogfight between SGP and FIA. This season was made to be sportive, and not political. Somehow I get the feeling that Stefan jumps to conclusions over the closing of USF1, and will "claim" their gridposition at the FIA. But, however they are well more prepaired to appear at the start in Bahrein than USF1 (or Campos for that matter) has ever been, the license to compete in F1 is not something to be earned; it's granted (no matter what we think about that, other discussion...).

Please, let this be a sportive season, not a political one again...

It's still alive ....

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/81820

*Americans never give up!*

If USF1 was a dog, it would have been put down by now.