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.
Hey xpensive, that CNC was performing surface finishing, typically around 0.001"-0.002" per pass, so yeah, its pretty slow. That and they turned the coolant flow off for the cameras so they have to slow it down so they don't burn up the tooling and the part.
As for not having a place on a race car, looks an awful lot like a suspension upright without all the little carbon pieces around it for controlling brake cooling airflow.
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.
As for cooper-climax, the building they own, the machines come from HAAS (who sponsors other racing efforts) and an autoclave does not need to be very large. The only part of the car that defines the final size of the autoclave needed is the driver cockpit, which isn't very large when you look at it by itself. Did you think the entire car goes in at once?
Maybe you two should learn a little more about race cars before criticizing those who actually build them.
With that said, the reports of running an Argentine driver with no F1 racing experience are worrying, especially if he is only on the team because he is bringing $8 million to the table. That could be a sign of problems, or that the team simply failed to impress any quality divers (Ken doesn't seem very comfortable on camera...ever) and decided if they need to run a no-name to fill the other seat, why not get paid for it. If they were gonna run a foreign driver, Wurz was probably the best choice. That being said, Lopez has driven an F1 car before. They still are looking for a second driver, and I would bet (and hope) its someone with significant experience (Villeneuve would be my first choice)
However, the number of American drivers who have Superlicences is very short (Scott Speed...and...?) and the qualifications are pretty stringent (Sebastian Loeb was even denied). Names like Summerton are great, but they need at least a year in a European feeder series to even qualify.
It seems that everyone expects a new team to turn up with 300+ employees at some gaudy facility to build the car in with money being no object. Understandable since that always leads to a winning team. I mean, just ask Honda, Toyota, BMW, Renault....
