American team planning F1 entry
An American group is looking at putting together a team to enter Formula One in 2010, sources have confirmed to autosport.com
The team, which is set to be called USF1, will be fronted by American design engineer Ken Anderson and former Williams team manager Peter Windsor.
Although there has been no official announcement about the plans yet, nor an official entry lodged, sources suggest that their bid has been approved by rival Formula One bosses and that they are currently attempting to raise sponsorship funding for the project in America.
An official USF1 website has already been produced. Investigations by autosport.com have revealed that the website is owned by Anderson, although at this stage it only has a logo.
Anderson was technical director of Ligier in 1988 and also worked for the Onyx F1 team before moving back to America. He was technical director of both Chip Ganassi Racing and AJ Foyt Racing before designing the G-Force IRL car in 1996 - which went on to win the 1997 Indy 500 with Arie Luyendyk - and the next generation chassis in 2000. Anderson then became technical director of NASCAR team Haas CNC Racing in 2003.
He is also the part owner of the Wind Shear Inc. full scale, 180mph rolling road wind tunnel in North Carolina which has been used by F1 and NASCAR teams.
Sources indicate that USF1 plan to construct their own chassis at their North Carolina base, with the ban on in-season testing making it more feasible for an F1 team to be based outside of Europe for all but the stretch of European races between May and September.
The Formula One Teams' Association's (FOTA) recent confirmation that each manufacturer is willing to supply customer engines for 5 million Euros per season and gearboxes for 1.5 million Euros now make it more feasible than it has been for years for an independent team to enter F1 in 2010.
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