USF1 -- F1's All-American Challenger

[Giblet]

My rant ends at wondering why USF1 brings out a lame ass school yard mentality among the generally intelligent population of this site.

To be fair, I think USF1 has brought a lot of it on themselves. After all the talk of it being US through and through, the first driver they are in open negotiation with is Argentine. Also, they seem to recruiting from europe if the ad in Autosport a couple of weeks ago is anything to go by - I thought all the manpower they required was on their doorstep?

I actually see where the USf1 guys are coming from, in that a US based team could hold its own in F1 - i'm just not sure this is the team.

They said they would farm American talent if there was any.

There wasn't.

What should they do? Ask a foreign driver to claim asylum?

Since they looked and found nobody ready for f1. A couple months ago they eere already looking south of the border.

[cooper-climax]

They said they would farm American talent if there was any.

There wasn't.

What should they do? Ask a foreign driver to claim asylum?

Since they looked and found nobody ready for f1. A couple months ago they eere already looking south of the border.

They said they would have American drivers, then maybe just one, then perhaps none, but definitely not pay drivers.

They said that they would be using the "world class Windshear tunnel that Ken Built"* but there is nothing much to see yet because there are doing almost everything with CFD.

They said they would give their fans unprecedented access to the team, but the website is still coming soon. (despite two for the three corporate partners I can remember Chad Hurley and Goodby Silverstein specializing in communications.)

They said they would have a "roller" in October, then early November, then whilst saying every thing was on schedule late November.


*Windshear enjoyed this publicity so much that they felt the need to put out a release clarifying the Ken Anderson was just a consultant on the project.

[DanyalDenyo]

I posted my rant to try to understand the undercurrent of hatered towards this unproven team, vs, say, Lotus, who has not been given the gears nearly as hard.

You think?

holy sh*t...lotus release the livery!!!!



haha...just kidding...

I don't agree there is really an hatred towards USF1 efforts. I laugh alot about USF1 jokes vids and stuff, but I sincerely want USF1 to succeed. My point is some really funny posts such as the one above could be perceived as "hatred" from your perspective to a Malaysian.

[Giblet]

They said they would farm American talent if there was any.

There wasn't.

What should they do? Ask a foreign driver to claim asylum?

Since they looked and found nobody ready for f1. A couple months ago they eere already looking south of the border.

They said they would have American drivers, then maybe just one, then perhaps none, but definitely not pay drivers.

They said that they would be using the "world class Windshear tunnel that Ken Built"* but there is nothing much to see yet because there are doing almost everything with CFD.

They said they would give their fans unprecedented access to the team, but the website is still coming soon. (despite two for the three corporate partners I can remember Chad Hurley and Goodby Silverstein specializing in communications.)

They said they would have a "roller" in October, then early November, then whilst saying every thing was on schedule late November.


*Windshear enjoyed this publicity so much that they felt the need to put out a release clarifying the Ken Anderson was just a consultant on the project.

I dare you to go thorugh this whole thread, and see if you still feel that Lotus is getting the gears anywhere near. Nobody was making fun of lotus that much, they were questioning the cars originality vs the FiF1.

If you hate something so much, over relatively small reasons, you need to look inward, not at USF1. I don't meant YOU, just the general populace.

People were carving Force India when they annoucned their intentions. Halololo look at them try, silly buggers. THEY ARE TRYING TO MAKE AN F1 TEAM??!?! OMGLAOLOLROFLMAOAM.

They secured a pole, in short time compared the string of idiotic Spyker/Midland entries.

What bothers me is that if I want technical info about USF1, their facilities, staff, etc, I need to go to other sites, as the user base here has it in for them, and this thread contains very little usable information, aside form constant slander and idiotic defenses of that slander.

Hate takes time and energy and rarely is a good thing to posses. Blind hatred, even more so.

[WhiteBlue]

People were carving Force India when they annoucned their intentions. Halololo look at them try, silly buggers. THEY ARE TRYING TO MAKE AN F1 TEAM??!?! OMGLAOLOLROFLMAOAM.

They won a race, in short time compared the string of idiotic Spyker/Midland entries.

Which race did FIF1 win? Can't remember they did. IMO they got pole position in Spa and P2 in the race, but that was the highest achievement they ever got.

[Giblet]

My bad I meant pole.

[jon-mullen]

Yeah, Kimi wasn't gonna let that happen. P2 was a nice result for them, though.

Fanning the flames a little, this is an article from Motorsport-Aktuell that someone on another forum was nice enough to translate:

Strange hiring process

The new team USF1 continues to hire people for its introduction into the 2010 season, which is beleagured by many doubts.

The Americans remain the big conundrum on the current list of nominations by the FIA for the 2010 season. The number of insiders, who doubt the participation of USF1 is bigger than the group of folks believing in them.

Nonetheless the team of American Ken Anderson and Briton PW continues to work on the entry behind stage. Currently they are trying to hire appropriate personnel for the press department.

In this area there has been a change in F1 in the recent years: More often than not the good looks of the primarily female employees is more important than their competence.

USF1 wants to go a different route: Not by conviction, but because the American HQ forces them to. In the US there was a case which got the managers of the new team concerned: A driver jokingly called a lovely press lady "darling", which caused her to threaten to sue for sexual harassment. In the US this could cause multi million dollar fines.

USF1 doesn't want to risk that. Therefore the managers currently only talk to potential new hires with a perfect reputation and deep knowledge. They are male or female, but preferrably at an advanced age.

The problem however: So far they only got declines.
===================================================


Bottom line is: we'd better stop making fun of USF1 because this country is sue-crazy and has its share of kangaroo courts.

[cooper-climax]

They said they would farm American talent if there was any.

There wasn't.

What should they do? Ask a foreign driver to claim asylum?

Since they looked and found nobody ready for f1. A couple months ago they eere already looking south of the border.

They said they would have American drivers, then maybe just one, then perhaps none, but definitely not pay drivers.

They said that they would be using the "world class Windshear tunnel that Ken Built"* but there is nothing much to see yet because there are doing almost everything with CFD.

They said they would give their fans unprecedented access to the team, but the website is still coming soon. (despite two for the three corporate partners I can remember Chad Hurley and Goodby Silverstein specializing in communications.)

They said they would have a "roller" in October, then early November, then whilst saying every thing was on schedule late November.


*Windshear enjoyed this publicity so much that they felt the need to put out a release clarifying the Ken Anderson was just a consultant on the project.

I dare you to go thorugh this whole thread, and see if you still feel that Lotus is getting the gears anywhere near. Nobody was making fun of lotus that much, they were questioning the cars originality vs the FiF1.

If you hate something so much, over relatively small reasons, you need to look inward, not at USF1. I don't meant YOU, just the general populace.

People were carving Force India when they annoucned their intentions. Halololo look at them try, silly buggers. THEY ARE TRYING TO MAKE AN F1 TEAM??!?! OMGLAOLOLROFLMAOAM.

They won a race, in short time compared the string of idiotic Spyker/Midland entries.

What bothers me is that if I want technical info about USF1, their facilities, staff, etc, I need to go to other sites, as the user base here has it in for them, and this thread contains very little usable information, aside form constant slander and idiotic defenses of that slander.

Hate takes time and energy and rarely is a good thing to posses. Blind hatred, even more so.

I doubt you'll find much comment at all on the new Lotus effort in this thread, the clue is in the title. But if you look around you can find plenty of negativity about the other new teams: "Lotus have noting to do with Colin Chapman and are stealing Force India's front wing."
"Manor are only using CFD They must be mad!"
All ad nauseum.

But...

Manor have signed a well known driver and are expected to have Virgin money.

Campos meta have Dellara building their car, the tub Homolagated, and their Driver has actually sat in the cockpit.

Lotus are backed by the Malaysian government, and have published photos of the their wind-tunnel model and more importantly, chassis construction and crash testing.

USF1 have published a lot of promises they have failed to keep, and some photos of some rented machines in an industrial unit.
Most importantly to me, they always seem to be hiding something. The Speed TV visit to their "state of the art facility" was shot so tightly that we never even got to see the facility. All we saw was Jim Clarke in a '49 and an anonymous piece of ally being cut on an anonymous machine.
Or the picture of their Autoclave shot from 1/2inch off the deck to make it look big enough to make part of a car in.

[segedunum]

They said they would farm American talent if there was any.

There wasn't.

There is American talent if they went out and looked, but they're not interested in looking and they aren't looking at setting up any kind of young driver programme. That would be way too complex. What Peter Windsor really meant by 'American drivers' is that he has a worrying obsseession with Kyle Busch.

Alex Wurz has passed them by, so they'll end up with no American drivers and no drivers of any real experience whatsoever - if they make it to the grid.

[Pandamasque]

Peter Windsor does not a team make. It is a shame that people carve and make fun of the efforts of whole group of people.

Panda.... Making fun of someone for trying is not a good reason.

Efforts of whole group of people? All I see is a TV-play and billion of press-releases. It's not my fault that they make it look like that.

Until they do turn up on the grid I have no reason to believe that USF1 'team' exists at all. So far it looks (at best) like someone has acquired two grid slots to sell them later to some Drakula GP, who then would use Toyota or Lola help to actually build some cars.

Then there's the driver thing. There are talented drivers in the US but I perfectly understand the need to have someone with recent F1 experience. Why didn't they sign an F1 driver? There are paying drivers looking for a seat that would be better right now than that guy from Argentina (I'm not saying he's bad, but someone like Wurz would of much more help for a new team).

Why you bring up str and their drivers just cuz I posted I don't understand why you think discussing driver treatment is the same as nearly a whole site laughing at the efforts of these people.

You brought it up. And yes it's not the same, but equally adequate, IMO.

[mx_tifoso]

Why you bring up str and their drivers just cuz I posted I don't understand why you think discussing driver treatment is the same as nearly a whole site laughing at the efforts of these people.

No offense, but is this really your own writing? It seems like someone else wrote it. I don't feel like it was done in your usual style, which is usually clear and grammatically correct.

[xpensive]

There were too many things on USF1 from day one that just didn't add up.

Remember their original web-site and those poorly written CV's of Windsor and Anderson? Some key-xperiences were simply not true either. Windsor was never GM for Ferrari, he was basically in charge of shutting down the Guildford Technical Office in the UK after John Barnard had left for Benetton with most of the staff.

Anderson was never Technical Director of Ligier or "builder" of the Windshear tunnel either, it went so far as a Windshear spokesperson issued a statement that he had been a consultant, which is hardly the same thing.

And all this name-dropping, an obviously not very comfortable Mario Andretti on the screen in February, Danica Patrick, Chad Hurley, Kyle Busch, Gene Haas, Dan Gurney or whoever American comes to mind, is so tireing.

As I said earlier, that video from the office and workshop was pure comedy with the cheap Jim Clark poster on the wall, shelves sitting on the floor, FIA software on screen and a CNC doing nothing but moving around a piece of Aluminium, which quite clearly did not have a place on an F1 car.

As for Giblet's comments, I don't know why you have taken upon you to so vigorously defend this Monty Python charade,
but I would be a little more careful with the xpression "hatred" if I were you.

[Professor]

Steve Brown, the former R & D (research and development) officer at Brawn GP, joined USF1 earlier this year after being released from his contract on his request. I don't know his exact responsibilities, but he does have current F1 experience and will help the team in whatever role he is assigned. Ken Anderson said this, "We have some really good guys with current F1 knowledge. One of the guys we have (Steve Brown) was the head of R&D at Brawn and he got to touch every part of the car. It's not like we've been doing this in a vacuum."

Dr. Eric Warren joined USF1 as chief aerodynamicist. He is the founder of Corvid Technologies http://www.corvidtec.com and owns the computers being used to crunch the numbers necessary to do the CFD calculations. His compay has US defense contracts including some dealing with the Aegis missle defense system. His racing experience comes from the Corvette Le Mans effort.

Bernard Fergusion, former Motorsport Director at Cosworth (2007) has joined the USF1 team to coordinate efforts between chassis design and engine supply. He was in charge at Cosworth when they built their last Formula 1 engine.

Phil Morse has been named as vehicle dynamacist. Morse worked at Honda Automotive in Research and Design for eight years as a senior engineer in the Suspension/Handling research group. He was cofounder of Morse Measurements, a K&C company. He has experience with vehicle dynamics & elasto-kinematic suspension simulation, data acquisition, and vehicle lab testing. Phil has worked with passenger vehicles and production-based racers, and has designed special Kinematics and Compliance data integration strategies for Formula 1 and NASCAR racing teams. Morse graduated from Purdue University where he earned a Bachelor and a Masters degree in Mechanical Engineering.

[Pandamasque]

Thank you, Professor. Your post has more info in it than everything that came from the team so far taken together.

Why you bring up str and their drivers just cuz I posted I don't understand why you think discussing driver treatment is the same as nearly a whole site laughing at the efforts of these people.

No offense, but is this really your own writing? It seems like someone else wrote it. I don't feel like it was done in your usual style, which is usually clear and grammatically correct.

I'm literally lmao at the idea of newly hired (male and female) USF1 PR personnel hijacking forum accounts to defend USF1 in here. OMG I should sleep more

[segedunum]

That sounds promising Professor, but we've seen nothing else other than press releases and forum posts and nothing like what Lotus, Manor and even Campos have thus far. I mean, we've seen a picture of Lotus's chassis and Campos have theirs homologated. Manor are maybe a bit further behind, but they have official Virgin backing and Manor are a credible racing team with a track record. We've seen nothing of that with USF1, no matter who they've employed.

It just smells far too much like the sort of thing that Qadback were angling for - using the 2010 grid slots as a means to make some money and selling them on when they couldn't deliver. At the moment, that looks like the most valuable thing they have. Does anyone need 10,000 toasters?