Below is a transcript from today’s exclusive press announcement on SPEED for the newly formed USF1 program to be based in Charlotte, NC and on the track for the 2010 FIA Formula One World Championship racing season. Participating were host Bob Varsha, team principals Ken Anderson and Peter Windsor and American racing icons Mario Andretti and Dan Gurney:
Peter Windsor: How do you do a Formula One team? That’s an interesting question. There’s no book about it. There are books on how to drive a race car, perhaps, but nothing on how to do a Formula One team. But if you look at the way it’s gone in the past … the recent past … it’s been either find an incredibly rich trillionaire and have him dominate the team; own the team and if you are lucky enough to get the job once he puts the team together or you are lucky enough to be invited by a large car company to set up their Formula One operation. Ken and I have been around long enough not to want to do either of those two things. We’ve always wanted to do our own team our own way. It sounds rather arrogant perhaps, but we have some experience and we have some things we want to bring into the sport. But the key to that was not selling anything more than a very small stake in the team. So, we set some unbelievably steep hills to climb in the recession. We wanted to sell off a small part of the team, and I am pleased to be able to sit up here now and say we’ve done that and now we are two guys who can say we are going to do a Formula One team because we have the capital to do it.
Somebody asked about the recession. The recession has actually helped us out a little. For those out there that say, ‘Where’s all the money? Where’s the huge facility? Where’s the money pouring out of the sky?’ … that isn’t going to happen with USF1. We’ve always had a very different approach and that approach will become visible as time goes on and as this year unfolds.
Host Bob Varsha to Ken Anderson: An American-based Formula One team. Why would you set up an operation like this an ocean away from where the rest of the teams reside?
Anderson: Most of the technology in Formula One comes from the United States to begin with. The logistics side of it now, less than half the races will be on the (European) continent. The cost of doing business in the United States is significantly cheaper than Europe and there are a lot of good people here.
Varsha: A lot of people might wonder about travel time back and forth, putting the cost aside … the idea of building a car here and racing it there. How will it be accomplished?
