Windsor: "Bring the USA into F1?

It is one of the most serious candidates for obtaining an entry for the 2010 championship. Born from the will of two enthusiasts, Team USF1 is ready to take up the challenge. Budget limitation or not.

Published on 09/06/2009 à 18:34

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Team Manager of Williams yesterday, journalist for the American Speed Channel today, Peter Windsor is a well-known figure in the paddock. After several years of reflection with his partner Ken Anderson, he is ready to fly the star-spangled banner on the F1 for the first time since the Penske team in 1977.

How long have you been working on this project and what is its genesis?

I have been working on this USF1 team for four years. I say ?this stable? because we have worked on other projects with my partner Ken Anderson since our first meeting in 1985. The Williams team, for which I worked then, used Penske shock absorbers. Well known company Ken worked for.

Isn't launching a new F1 team when the world economy is at its worst a bit of a crazy gamble?

Budget, how we are going to organize ourselves, contacts with suppliers, we seriously started putting all the pieces of the puzzle together two years before the recession. Our efforts to find potential investors were not very successful at the beginning and, in a way, the beginnings of the crisis were favorable to us because, from then on, our discourse evolved. We highlighted our ability to operate an F1 team at a much lower cost than the existing teams and people started to listen to us. Our message has become more in tune with economic reality. It helped us.

Are you satisfied with the progress of the project since its official launch in February?

We now have a beautiful 3600 m2 building in Charlotte, North Carolina, where a small group of engineers are designing the car. We have at our disposal the fabulous wind tunnel that Ken designed for Gene Haas (co-owner of the Stewart-Haas team in Nascar and CEO of a machine tool company, editor’s note). This wind tunnel is the cornerstone of our building and will soon host the full-scale model of the car. The entry into production is planned for July, while the personnel for the racing and logistics teams will be formed at the end of the year.

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