Start-up team seeks Formula One title made in USA

By Nate Ryan, USA TODAY

CHARLOTTE — There is no sign identifying a nondescript red-brick building as the home of the first U.S.-based Formula One team in 40 years. But two murals in the lobby reveal its mission and philosophy. One depicts Dan Gurney in a black No. 36 Eagle scoring the last F1 win by a U.S. team in 1967. The other is of Mario Andretti in a black and gold Lotus from 1978, when he was the last American to win a world title. US F1 hopes to combine both concepts.

"The plan is to be an American brand that creates the next American world champion," says Peter Windsor, the team's sporting director. "That's the raison d'etre of this team."

Staying true to its name is not so much a novelty as a necessity for US F1. Besides its U.S. headquarters (supplemented by a satellite operation in Spain), the team will rely on American parts and labor, a Hollywood-trained creative staff (which is planning 250 hours of long-form documentary footage in high definition on the team's progress for its website) and the backing of a deep-pocketed U.S. entrepreneur (YouTube inventor Chad Hurley).

Q AND A: US F1's Chad Hurley


MOST WANTED: US F1 likes Kyle Busch behind wheel

While Formula One remains a global phenomenon largely ignored in the USA, much of its technology comes from here, and US F1 thinks it can run as a more economically efficient business by eliminating the middlemen who ship parts to F1 teams in England and Italy. CEO Ken Anderson says 90% of F1 trickles down from the U.S. aerospace industry and notes carbon fiber was a domestic invention. Machines in US F1's 40,000-square-foot shop (the original home of Joe Gibbs Racing) were built in North Carolina, California, Minnesota and Georgia.

A similar approach worked for Gurney, who says he benefited from being based in Southern California when it was the hotbed of aviation in the 1960s. "Kenny and Peter are putting together a perfect team and have an excellent chance," Gurney says. "They are armed with technology we never had."

When its first car is finished next month, US F1 plans frequent trips to Windshear, a rolling-road wind tunnel in nearby Concord that Anderson helped design. Five F1 teams visited Windshear last year before testing restrictions (that won't affect US F1), and NASCAR's Charlotte hub affords access to many such high-tech toys. The team will rent a seven-post shaker rig for a couple of thousand dollars a day rather than spend millions building one, Anderson says. Adds Windsor: "Because of the boom in NASCAR, we can take advantage of infrastructure no one else is and be the only F1 game in town."

It's recruiting NASCAR personnel, too. US F1's lead aerodynamicist (Eric Warren) and machine shop manager (Brian Williams) are from Michael Waltrip Racing. The team will double to 100 employees next year (including an R&D manager hired from 2009 F1 champion Brawn GP).

Windsor says there's lots of sponsor interest, but no major companies have been announced to shoulder an annual budget of $60 million. Hurley (part of a group that sold YouTube to Google for $1.65 billion three years ago) says, "We'll find the revenue to make a great business out of this. The returns may not be as large in the first few years, but I'm not involved for the short term. We're looking 20 years down the road."