F1: Q & A - Peter Windsor

Formula 1

F1: Q & A - Peter Windsor

Longtime SPEED reporter and former Williams team manager Peter Windsor was in Charlotte on Tuesday to discuss USF1...

Tom Jensen | Posted February 24, 2009 Charlotte, NC

"...I put aside my writing for a couple of days. I was sick, I have to say, of the politics..." - Peter Windsor (Photo: LAT Photographic)

Longtime SPEED reporter and former Williams team manager Peter Windsor was in Charlotte on Tuesday to discuss USF1, the new ground-up Formula 1 team he and partner Ken Anderson are starting and basing in Charlotte.

Windsor and Anderson appeared live on SPEED to introduce the new project, and afterwards, Windsor met with a small group of reporters to discuss details of the new team. Excerpts follow.

How long has USF1 been in the works?
Well, at least four years. It goes back, really, to Ken’s Falcon project. Basically, he wanted to prove that you could design and build a car very efficiently here in the States and here in this part of the States. And he did a very good job with that Falcon IndyCar. It didn’t race because of a dramatic change in the regulations, just after it hit the ground. The car was a beautiful piece of kit.

And from there, Ken set about designing and building the wind tunnel for Gene Haas, for whom he was working at the time. And having done that and proved that he could do that, the next logical step was Formula 1.

We’ve been working on it ever since in every dimension. It may look as if it’s just two guys saying, “We’re going to do a Formula 1 team,” but believe me, we’ve got a fantastic infrastructure now and we’ve sold the part of the company we always intended to sell. And it’s not a major part and we have the investment to be where we want to be in 2010.

What will make for a successful first season in 2010?
A truly successful 2010, first of all will be proving that a Formula 1 car can be, in the 21st century, designed and built in the United States, outside Europe. Breaking the mold, breaking the norm and doing that efficiently and cleanly, by which I mean we produce two good cars that are reliable, we finish races and who knows, maybe we get a reasonable result in year No. 1.

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