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Formula One
F1: USF1 Putting USA Back In Formula One
Before he launched the USF1 team, Ken Anderson was better known within the inner sanctums of motor racing...
Jonathan Ingram  | http://www.RacinToday.com  |  Posted November 20, 2009   Huntersville, NC
I’ve got no agenda,I want the best person for the job. We’re a melting pot. I’d be crazy not to invest in the best people out there. The talent pool that’s available is bigger than ever.- USF1's Ken Anderson. (Photo: LAT
Before he launched the USF1 team, Ken Anderson was better known within the inner sanctums of motor racing.
Ken Anderson co-founded USF1 and had hoped to make the 2010 Formula One grid.(Photo: LAT Photographic)

Typically, he’s gone about the business of entering the rarefied atmosphere of Formula One without a lot of fanfare, relying on his own engineering skills and connections within the industry.

“I’ve been working on this project for years,” said Anderson during an interview at the team’s shops just outside Charlotte. “It was always my intention to do a skunkworks type deal.”

When Anderson first approached outgoing FIA president Max Mosley and commercial rights holder Bernie Ecclestone in late 2006 about a plan to launch a start-up team without direct manufacturer assistance, F1’s two top administrators listened carefully.

Anderson’s vision of getting more from less when it comes to F1 technology now looks like the wave of the future. Within the last year, Honda, BMW and Toyota all pulled the plug on teams with bloated budgets, huge staffs, extravagant travel expenses and relatively poor results.

With the conscious effort by Mosley and Ecclestone during the past year to help independent entries bring fresh blood into F1, Anderson became one of four new constructors preparing to launch in March at the 2010 season opener in Bahrain. Chad Hurley, co-founder of YouTube, has signed on as the primary investor for USF1.

The combination of a relatively unknown American with “shops” in North Carolina instead of a “factory” continues to draw skepticism in Europe, where every other F1 team is located. Most recently, a hastily drawn up and erroneous news story speculated that USF1 was a possible candidate to buy one of the chassis intended for use in 2010 by the disbanded Toyota team.

In fact, Anderson received a flood of resumes from displaced Toyota employees in the past week, veterans who have confidence in Anderson’s ability to build a competitive car and who also grasp his vision for the future of F1.

For the U.S., there’s not much recent past in F1 when it comes to car constructors. Dan Gurney was the last team owner to create an F1 chassis in America at shops in Santa Ana, Calif., and his Eagle chassis ran its final race in 1968. Subsequent American team owners Roger Penske and Carl Haas built their cars in England.

To design his USF1 chassis, Anderson is relying primarily on Computational Fluid Dynamics. But he’s also assembled a staff deep in current F1 participants.

“I’ve got no agenda,” said Anderson. “I want the best person for the job. We’re a melting pot. I’d be crazy not to invest in the best people out there. The talent pool that’s available is bigger than ever.”

Some of the recruits to USF1 are coming from established teams, such as Steve Brown, the former research and development officer at Brawn GP, the current world championship constructor.

“We have some really good guys with current F1 knowledge,” said Anderson. “It’s not like we’ve been doing this in a vacuum.”

There’s no telling how long Anderson has been carrying a design of an F1 car around in his computer and updating it each year with each new round of rule changes. But he’s confident he’s up to speed.

“The specification of a Formula One car, the boundary of where it can and can’t be is far tighter than it used to be,” he said. “It all comes from the Senna crash (in 1994) and the safety zones. That really dictates the shape of the car. You’ve got to be fairly creative like Adrian Newey was last year with the Red Bull car to come up with a shape that’s much different.”

Within the world of F1, Anderson established his design experience as the technical director at Ligier Formula One in 1989 and at Onyx Grand Prix Engineering in 1990. He then oversaw the formation of G Force Precision Engineering during 1991, a company that went on to produce the G Force cars in the IRL. Among others, Anderson designed the cars that won the Indy 500 and the IRL championship in 1997.

Anderson is not worried about not having been actively involved in F1 in recent years. “If you weren’t part of the evolution, how would you know where to jump in?” he asked before answering his own question. He pointed to the team of Brawn GP, launched just a year ago from the ruins of Honda’s F1 program.

“You can only make the pencil so sharp. This year was proof. There was just a minor change (in the rules), then you have a team with just a 100 people rubbing on it that really came up with something nasty.”

Using engines supplied by Mercedes, a relatively low-budget Brawn GP team won the constructors championship versus Red Bull Racing and the usually dominant McLaren-Mercedes and Ferrari teams. Brawn’s Jenson Button won the 2009 driver’s championship.

Anderson believes the timing is right for him to enter with a start-up team, despite the fact that Mosley and Ecclestone lost their argument with the Formula One Teams Association over the introduction of a budget cap. Instead, the teams and the FIA decided to forego the budget cap for 2010 in favor of a more gradual move toward cost containment in a sport where manufacturers have been spending as much as $300 million a year.


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