"You’ve got two gentlemen there who know the reality of the sport and know it inside out. They are not just dreamers and they have the credibility to support this..." - 1978 F1 World Champion Mario Andretti (Photo: LAT Photographic)

Media Question: Can you give us the idea of the scope of the operation?

Anderson: We’re looking at well over 100 people. Highly skilled, highly paid people.

Varshsa: By comparison, the big Formula One teams run about 1,000 people.

Anderson: Depends on how you look at that too. It depends on if you are doing your own engine. McLaren does a lot of things other than racing for instance. So, starting with what Peter said is a “skunkworks” approach to it, we want a minimum amount of the best people, but there are also a lot of vendors. If we have 100 to 120 people in-house here, there are dozens and dozens of vendors that we can rely on that would add up.

1978 Formula One World Champion Mario Andretti via telephone: I’m excited. Obviously, I have been following some of the rumors the best way I could and finally, a couple of days ago, Peter called me and confirmed that it was in fact a reality and told me about the announcement today. Clearly, this is the best news I could have hoped for as a Formula One fan and an absolute supporter. I’m sure its great news for all of the American Formula One fans and its got to be great news for Formula One period. It’s all positive.

It all makes sense. You’ve got two gentlemen there who know the reality of the sport and know it inside out. They are not just dreamers and they have the credibility to support this. I, for one, for whatever it is worth am totally behind you guys.

Varsha: Mario, obviously your grandson Marco is a name that obviously would be on anyone’s list of young drivers with a dream of racing in Formula One. What would it mean to you as the ’78 World Champion whose son, Michael, made the podium at Monza in 1993 … what would it mean to you to see Marco in a Formula One car?

Andretti: I would just love that. It would rejuvenate me in many ways. My ultimate love is, and always will be, Formula One. In fact, I know Marco has not expressed himself probably enough. He just wants results to speak for themselves at first and go from there. But every time that I mention the possibility, he says, ‘I’d give anything to have the opportunity.’ I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again and I’ll back it up, if I were to design a Formula One driver today, I would design Marco. He learns quickly. He’s very much of a free spirit … the travel and all of the aspect does not phase him in the least. He’s certainly wants to do it and excel in it. We’ll see what the future brings for him. Right now, he has to get some results where he is with his dad in the IndyCars and we’ll see where that takes him.

Media Question: What are the challenges of not currently having a (Formula One) home race here in the United States?

Windsor: From our point of view, we’ve never seen that as a problem. We’ve always believed we want to take the United States to Formula One again in the footsteps of Mario and Dan (Gurney) and the history of Formula One. We are not trying to take Formula One to the United States and convert millions of fans to Formula One. We hope that will happen on the back of USF1 and we sincerely hope that having a US Grand Prix here again will be a byproduct of that … nothing would be better for us and nothing would be better for American motor sports. But that is very much in the hands of FOM and Bernie Ecclestone, who have done a brilliant job of staging races around the world. Each country that stages a race these days, effectively stages a mini-Olympic Games. They don’t have the Olympics, so they stage a Formula One race. That’s what makes Formula One as big as it is on television as a global sport. America has got to play that role in effect. Let’s hope President Obama says we’ve got to have a US Grand Prix and the federal government will get behind it.