Last Of The New Boys

One thing that F1 Fanatic called my attention to was the fate of the last round of "new teams" that were introduced with such fanfare in 2009:

• USF1 didn't make it to the first test
• Campos became HRT and expired at the end of 2012
• Virgin became Marussia and have deteriorated to the point where they are having to choose drivers with money over drivers with talent
• Team Lotus became Caterham and has managed to beat Marussa; being in the top 10, they are guaranteed money from the commercial side of Formula 1.

While F1 is supposed to be a meritocracy, and it is a good idea to have more teams than money-paying positions, you want to always have someone on the outside looking in, hungry to join the elite.  That keeps the old guard hungry, and if/when teams fall by the wayside you have someone new ready to pick up the position.

Another American Boondoggle?

TimesOnline blogger Kevin Eason disses the recently announced US GP to be held in Austin, Texas from 2012 on.

He makes strong points. There's no history to this organization, there's no indication where the money will come from, and they only have 18 months to put it together. He compares it with the Donnington debacle and we all remember how that turned out.

Personally? I think F1 is on thin ice in the US right now. Between cutting and running from Indianapolis, the USF1 farce (which at least had Peter Windsor behind it), and don't forget the nearly-on-no-wait-its-been-cancelled race around Liberty Park in New York from all of two or three weeks ago, anything announced with any kind of fanfare needs to be solid and deliver.

If it turns out that a couple of hicks have conned Ecclestone then F1's reputation in the US will be permanently scarred.

Here's hoping these guys can do the business.

(Update: it isn't looking likely at this point: Joe Saward claims they don't even have any land yet...)

Lets Review:

These are new the teams selected by the FIA for inclusion in the 2010 F1 World Championship:

• USF1: Dead and finished. Probably permanently.
• Manor Racing: Now Virgin Racing. This may or may not be a buy-out, it is hard to tell. They have introduced, and started testing, a real racing car.
• Campos Meta: Now Hispania Racing Team, or HRT. Original owners no longer involved. Still waiting for the Dallara-designed and built car to be introduced, although that is allegedly going to happen on Thursday or Friday, a week before Bahrain. This means the first time it does any running, trivial or not, will be free practice session one at a race weekend.
• Lotus: so far the most stable of the lot. No ownership changes, and they have introduced a (plain, slow) F1 car and done some testing.
• BMW-Sauber: lost their entry while BMW was trying to exit involvement, only to gain it back when Toyota abruptly departed. Perhaps the most ironic team on the grid, since BMW is not involved at all any more, and the engines are Ferrari. Probably the best prepared of all the "new" teams since they really are not that new. We can't really count them as in trouble because all their drama happened last year.

So from five teams, you have one outright failure, possibly two total ownership changes, one very uncompetitive team, and one moderately successful team which again doesn't count because they are not really that new.

Oh, and the FIA has decided that Stefan GP won't be participating this year, even though USF1 has failed.

Now to be fair, part of the problem is that the first group of teams to sign up for 2010 did so when the FIA was planning the spending cap rules. The championship formula that eventually was decided on was very different, meaning that all these teams were suddenly underfinanced. USF1's Ken Anderson claims that the delay in sorting out the regulations for 2010 (there wasn't a peace brokered until mid- or late July 2009) meant that the new teams had no idea what set of goal posts they would actually be working towards until very late.

So you end up with a truncated timeline to meet a standard that suddenly would cost a lot more money than initially planned.

With these factors in mind, it isn't much of a surprise that the new teams would have difficulties.

Mosley's Crusade

Ferrari's latest salvo at the FIA is thinly disguised as a complaint about the poor quality of F1 teams added to the sport for 2010.

Now to be fair, Ferrari has a point. Let's look at who they picked:

• USF1, backed by Peter Windsor and with YouTube money. On paper this looked fabulous, especially when combined with American engineers with something to prove. However it turns out that progress has been lacking and money to continue isn't forthcoming.
• Campos Meta, a spanish organization that was going to pay Dallara to design and build cars. This operation also had money problems, and is currently existing only thanks to an emergency infusion of the YouTube money that has deserted USF1.
• Manor Racing, which might or might not have been taken over by Virgin.
• Lotus, an operation bankrolled by the Malaysian government.

So of the four, Virgin and Lotus are the only ones which don't have immediate cash flow issues.

And while the car unveiled by Lotus was disappointingly basic, it is a F1 car and it is turning (some) testing mileage.

Two from four is not a very good batting average for what is supposed to be a premiere motor sport. Even though the FIA claimed they had done their due diligence on the applicants, it clearly wasn't enough.

Let us remember that all this came about because Mosley wanted to turn F1 into a much cheaper sport to participate in, and in the process of having a showdown with his established teams, brought on a collection of new teams to fill up his entry list. It is worth remembering that the F1 regulations for 2010 are a compromise from his budget-based F1, meaning while the existing teams have to reduce their budgets somewhat, the new teams are suddenly looking at battling established competition which will be spending more than they had anticipated when signing up. I doubt many in either camp were particularly happy.

As I mentioned, if either USF1 or Campos (or both!) fail to be in Bahrain, it will be a black eye for the FIA, although one which can be placed squarely at the feet of the now departed Max Mosley.

While Virgin and Lotus will probably be much more fragile and off the pace than the other series regulars, their presence will serve as a foundation for their future growth -- assuming they can find someone to fund it.

Ferrari also complains about Stefan GP, which has picked up the abandoned pieces of Toyota's F1 program and is lurking about in the bushes waiting for one of the anointed four to fail. This I think is more F1 business as usual -- there are always an assortment of marginally crazy people trying to get in. Every circus needs a sideshow.

USF1 Staggers Towards A Conclusion

I know I'm kinda beating a dying horse here, but the accident is too compelling to look away:

• James Allen discusses the pros and cons of the FIA permitting USF1 to miss races in a bid to get their car sorted. In my opinion it isn't going to happen, no matter how bad USF1's failure will make the FIA's expansion selection work look. However, that will all be handily blamed on the now departed Mosley.
• Campos has sorted its immediate future, nixing our discussion of a merger with USF1. Joe Saward talks about how the Stefan GP might buy USF1's entry (along with other assets) and will be able to participate in Bahrain branded as USF1, at least for a few weeks. I approve of the irony of an American-branded race team being entirely made up of ex-Japanese equipment and European management.

Campos, USF1 to merge?

Motosports.com has an article detailing the woes of Campos Meta. It includes speculation that USF1 might merge with Campos:

According to the magazine, US F1 investor Chad Hurley isn't happy with the progress the by Ken Anderson and Peter Windsor managed American team has sofar made, and has decided to pull the plug and has stopped his financial support. Hurley is now considering to help Campos-Meta by paying the Dallara and Cosworth bills and merging US F1 and Campos-Meta into one team. Which would open the door for the Serbian Stefan Formula One team, they could take over the thirteenth and last slot for 2010.

This makes sense on paper -- Campos has a car in Dalara, but no money. The money behind USF1 is unhappy with the progress, so they effectively have no car. Putting USF1's money together with Campos' Dalara car just might get a combined organization -- probably mostly USF1 staff, since they've been actually doing things with cars for the past little while -- to a grid sometime this year.

The stories of USF1's impending demise have come more frequently in the recent days, and the silence from the team itself doesn't do them any favors as far as viability goes. I am still stunned that Peter Windsor of all people apparently couldn't get his ducks lined up properly. Especially considering that USF1 was announced over a year ago, they had a substantial head start on everyone else and to come up short does nothing positive for them.

I know that in this media-driven business it could all be nothing, everyone merely reporting on everyone else's speculation, but by my watch there is less than a month to go before Bahrain. If USF1 is going to be a legitimate team they need to get something going, and quickly. If they are going to be merged with Campos, that needs to get going quickly too. Time is definitely not on their side any more.

This also doesn't do many favors for the FIA's expansion of F1, if two of the four teams picked as new entrants can't cut it right from the beginning...

More Cars, Deadpool Update

Recently:

• The Force India VJM03, which looks to be a pretty conservative car. No Red Bull kink, no sculpting on the nose, and very little in the way of interesting aero at the back. There's already speculation that the aero isn't going to get it done for Force India in 2010.
• The Red Bull RB6: the kink, sculpting on the nose, and a similar steep drop in the sidepods down toward the car's rear end to that seen on the McLaren. Oh, and another huge shark fin, all dressed in the mandatory deep blue that makes it hard to see what is going on. I'd love to see an overhead shot of this car.
• ...aaand Autosport has a spy-shot of the new Lotus. This car looks as odd as the Red Bull RB5 did last year, however I have my doubts about the Lotus' potential.

I think that's all of last year's teams debuted, plus Virgin and the not-yet-cleared-to-participate Stefan GP. So I think we are waiting on a formal launch for Lotus, plus USF1 and Campos.

Meanwhile from a deadpool perspective, Motorsports.com reports that the FIA is insisting that teams must show up and participate at all F1 events for 2010:

From a sporting and regulatory point of view, each team that has registered for the championship is obliged to take part in every event of the season. Any failure to take part, even for just one championship event, would constitute an infringement both of the Concorde Agreement and the FIA regulations.

Pretty clear.

This puts Campos in severe danger, since their finance is definitely not sorted out.

There are persistent stories about USF1 being in trouble, but I find it hard to believe that Peter Windsor would have been involved this long and not had his ducks lined up at this late date.

USF1 Spoof Site

Well, them good ol' boys may not have them there Forumulated One cars figgurd out so good, but they got themselves one of them there 'blog' things in the intertubes, complete with photos of their development car and secret footage of crash tests.

They're even on Twitter, too.

Funniest thing I've read all week.

USF1 -- We've Seen This Movie

It must be the off-season, since the F1 media is busy trying to create a firestorm of press around the recent content-free announcemnt of the USF1 project.

Peter Anderson writes on F1Fanatic that the proposed team has many challenges in the areas of Logistics and Finance, not to mention the possible strategic blunder right from the start:

For me, the biggest own goal is passing up the opportunity to buy Honda Racing.

And he's right there. This kind of mistake could be caused either by financial concerns -- in that USF1 doesn't have the finance to execute a purchase of the Honda team -- or arrogance -- in that USF1 doesn't think they need to know anything of the status quo and that they will succeed without any help.

Logistics are indeed another challenge. Trying to run an international sporting team from the US will mean that the team members are going to live on planes. It could be argued that for much of the year they will probably not be back at their "base" because they have to stay at the next event's location in order to acclimatize to the timezone, while their competitors are only a couple of timezones away at their bases. Such a routine will burn people out very quickly.

Thing is, we've seen this kind of grandstanding several times. People announce teams and projects and then back out, for example, the ProDrive project that came and went over the years. Even organizations which buy struggling teams will come in with grand announcements and plans, only to get bought out themselves in a few years -- witness the journey taken by the Jordan Midland Spyker Force India team, or the various struggles that Minardi took over the years, or Honda's saga with Super Aguri. Even Honda themselves started their own team years ago only to slowly take over the Tyrell BAR team.

The bottom line is that with no racing there isn't much else to write about, and the founders of USF1 are undoubtedly enjoying the attention that this exercise is getting. Attention for a new project is good, as it will help raise their visibility which will help when trying to find a budget and components.

But overall I remain skeptical about the whole exercise. Until a USF1 shows up at an official F1 event, be it a race or a test, this is all just a bunch of hot air.