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For my part, I can promise that we will be bringing a further US slant to Formula One. As many of you probably know, I have been working with the very talented Ken Anderson in recent years to bring a new American team into F1 with US drivers. It has been a bit tense over the past month or so, with many other new F1 teams deciding suddenly that the recession wasn’t so bad after all and that F1 was something they could easily tackle, but we weathered the storm and now have the US name up there on the 13-team 2010 F1 entry list alongside names like Ferrari, McLaren, BMW, Renault, Toyota, Brawn, Red Bull and so forth. I hope in the future to keep my links with Speed TV, but Ken Anderson and I above all hope that we can take the US to F1 in a way that will do justice to America’s heritage – to the Scarab and to the Eagle (the first and last F1 cars to be designed and built in the USA) and to a hall of fame-full of drivers.

We hope always to remember the past in our team as much as we race in the present and prepare for the future. Without the Mastons or the Phils or the Dans and the Ritchies and the Marios, Ken and I wouldn’t be doing what we are trying to do today. Equally, without America’s spirit for innovation and odds-defying achievement – without the inspiration of men like Kelly Johnson, for instance, or Harrison Storms – Ken and I would still be talking about our team rather than at last making it happen.

There is much to do, much to chase: there will be plenty of interesting news items emanating from our corner of Charlotte in the weeks to come – just as I am sure there will be plenty of “interesting” news stories written and aired about our project by F1 observers, friendly or not. For us, it will all be part of the game. A game we will be sharing with you, the F1 race fan, every step of the way.

I write from London, where the summer is warm and the sporting summer is in full swing. Despite the recession, a capacity-filled Wimbledon is attracting 12m TV viewers in the UK alone; the famous Ashes cricket series is about to begin between Australia and England. And the British Open is but a few weeks away. F1? The world has gone strangely quiet. The gaps between races are longer this summer; everyone is drained, I think, from the politics of the past six months.

F1 will burst back into life, though – with different winners, I’ll wager, and closer racing than we have seen of late. The Brawn-Red Bull domination will not last until Abu Dhabi – of that you can be (99 per cent) certain. And, sooner or later, F1 will again become what it so recently was – a global phenomenon that crosses boundaries and time zones and upstages every other sport in the world on an annual basis. The war is over. Here’s to the battles ahead.

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