Villeneuve will go back to his illustrious music career and cheesy appearances on low budget tv programs in quebec...

 

Been saying it from the beginning, what a joke. The US and International motorsports just don't work out too well. Now this big SNAFU just makes the US that much more of a joke. We should just stick to American football and not attempt to venture off into areas where there isn't serious commitment.

 

Or stick to just space travel, like we've been doing.

 

I never really saw this as a nationality thing. As a Canadian who travels regularly to the U.S on work, I have no doubt that there would be many competent people who would do a great job performing roles for an F1 team. It is such an international sport anyway. Every top team is staffed by the best people from all sorts of countries. Charlotte could have worked, with an European base for logistics reasons.

It just is not a "US" mess-up, rather the operation was not underpinned by the necessary talent. At first, I was kind of feeling sorry for Anderson and Windsor, but now I am feeling disappointment. Reading the report that they were absent when everybody was being let go really brought it home how shoddy their management was.

To any reasonably competent manager it should have been apparent months ago that the necessary goals were not going to be achieved in time and their fiduciary duty would have been to negotiate with other entities to transfer the care of the team to parties that could make it work while there was still time. As it is, they have squandered their entry slot and all the people they took on are high-and-dry. It just seems so... irresponsible.

It was never impossible: Lotus and Virgin did it and even Campos (now HRT) looks set to debut in Bahrain. Not perfect, but they did it where USF1 was not even remotely close.

 

+1. This is excellent. I do get a kick of folks somehow believing that because USF1 failed that the US is a joke (pick your insult).

Maybe it is the capatilist nature of the US, but if the financial return (or sufficient ego boost per dollar) is not there the right minds will not get behind the project. They will build racing yachts instead.

Cheers,

 

T-shirts, anyone?

 

So did they send the Cosworth motor back for a refund?

 

Not even close! I read somewhere F1 has a global audience of 50 Million. Per race!

Now, the even bigger fiasco is the article on march's Road & Track about USF1. They make it look like nothing's happened. What a joke!
Some editor will get his *** kicked over that one!

 

I'll take an XL please.

 

I don't see why everyone is surprised. When it was first announced, most on this board said it won't happen. They our hopes were raised when they confirmed that they had shops, windtunnel use, etc.

THEN came the SPEEDTV piece where they showed the inside operation piece that lasted about 2 minutes. Contrast that with what Machett has been showing us from the RED BULL technical pieces and the "INSIDE GRAND PRIX" from Toyota and BMW Sauber operations and you quickly came to the conclusion, this is a joke of an "attempt" and that's why I say I wouldn't be surprised if it came out later that it was a scam and investors were bilked out of millions.

I feel sorry for the people who worked on the project in good faith and are probably owned a ton of money for their efforts. Anderson and Windsor's credibility has dropped beyond recognition, IMHO.

 

Yeah, I can't say that I see Windsor the same way any more after what I've heard in how they treated the workers. That's unacceptable.

 

Pretty pictures:

http://www.formula1.com/gallery/other/2010/430.html

 

USF1.
Vaporware.

Wonder what Windsor will do next.

 

Will be interesting to see how Speed F1 reporters handle the USF1 story on first F1 broadcast. Lets see if they are as critical now as they were supportive when this mess was launched.
Rich

 

the unfortunate piece of this is that there were some very good people working in that org. from my pov, it's the leadership that failed them.

it cannot be surprising that they couldn't get sponsorship money. if you're spending corporate dollars on advertising and marketing in F1, which is basically a non-US sport, you're target corporations are limited to those who want to be branded as an "american company" that is advertising across the world. they didn't position USF1 as a global team, but as a US team.

if you're a global company with deep pockets, it's hard to justify putting your budget with a non-traditional startup up that is branded as "american" when the audience is nearly all non-american.

it just does not sell to me.