Prodrive have impressive facilities already in place, but still failed to get on the starting grid (LAT)

We don’t know too much detail yet, but leading light Peter Windsor needs no introduction to readers of this website. In between his media duties he’s been trying for years to get F1 projects going, usually in conjunction with Argentina’s Enrique Scalabroni, the colourful former Williams and Ferrari engineer who was also involved with Asiatech, and recently sold his GP2 team to Tiago Monteiro.

One report says that the USF1 will use the Spanish base of the Epsilon organisation, which ran Robert Kubica to the Renault World Series title in 2005, and constructs its own Le Mans cars. The men behind it are F1 veterans Joan Villadelprat and Sergio Rinland, both of whom have worked all over the paddock and go back to the days when you could run a team on a sensible budget. There’s certainly a lot of interest in Spain that could be tapped, in addition to any US involvement.

That angle is provided by Ken Anderson, who was involved in F1 a couple of decades ago, without much success, and has mostly been in the Indy world since then. He has a base in Charlotte, including a wind tunnel. An F1 team from North Carolina? Well there’s certainly a racing infrastructure there, even if it’s mostly based on sheet metal rather than carbonfibre. And from what I hear there’s no shortage of potential staff, with NASCAR teams busy downsizing.

Add all those guys together and you have A) a great deal of experience amongst a group of guys who probably who see F1 as unfinished business, and B) potentially too many chiefs.

While anybody can come out and say that they want to run an F1 team, there are some credible names involved here, and thus we have to take them seriously. Will it work? It certainly could, if the money can be found. And that, as ever, is the $64,000 question.

Actually, add three zeroes and that’s just what they’ll need to cover annual running costs...