17 days before official scrutineering takes place in Bahrain, the exact composition of the entry list for the 2010 Formula One world championship remains unknown.
After a long silence, USF1 team principal Ken Anderson announced this weekend that the team are currently in discussions with the FIA over missing the first four races of the season and entering the championship on May 9th in Barcelona. “We have a timeline in place that if we get a decision quickly, it triggers funding and we’re good to go,” Anderson told the New York Times. “If it takes another week or two to make a decision, it keeps backing up.”
The issue, it appears, is one of money. USF1 don’t have any. Sporting director Peter Windsor revealed last month that a sponsor had been late on payment, but described the episode as “a bump in the road” and said a replacement had been found. “We will be in Bahrain. We may not be pretty, but we will be there.” Now it’s apparent that they won’t be, and that they’ve no apparent hope of making it to Australia, Malaysia or China, there can surely be no guarantee of the USF1 Type 1 being ready to turn laps in Spain either.
It would appear somewhat naïve to suggest that funding will be triggered as soon as someone gives the team permission to start the season four races later than everyone else, unless USF1 are sitting on a more complete car than has so far been revealed. There is, though, no compelling reason for them to keep their car-building progress hidden, unless there hasn’t been any. Everything currently known about the project suggests that potential sponsors are currently faced with saying, “Ken, we’d be delighted to have our name displayed on your car. Where is it?” Under those circumstances, it’s difficult to imagine that any company would be willing to commit a significant sum of money.
It is less difficult to imagine the FIA granting USF1’s request, though to do so would require the rules governing an F1 entry to be stretched to their limits. While there remains some debate over the exact wording of the Concorde Agreement, the contract between the FIA and the teams that states the terms of entry, it is understood that any team who misses a world championship event is in breach of the agreement and will be penalised as a result. That’s a rule that would need to be bent severely to give USF1 a chance to race, but perhaps there’s some motivation for doing so.
This motivation, to be precise:
“We have requested documentary evidence to support all the new teams’ assertions, in particular with regards to funding. Thus we have been provided with accounts, contracts, multi-year business plans and other supporting material…we have asked to see contracts and letters of intent. This extends to the sponsorship side, where plans and descriptions of any existing relationships are required. In all these aspects we have requested evidence that substantiates any claim in the teams’ plans.”
Extracts there from an FIA statement released last June, detailing the due diligence that had been carried out on each of the applicants for one of the free places on the F1 grid. It’s embarrassing enough for all involved in the process that one of the teams granted an entry upon completion of due diligence, Campos Meta, would have been unable to compete had a takeover not been agreed late last week and still face a race against time to have two cars in Bahrain. It would be still worse if it turned out that of the three new teams originally given entries (Lotus obtained their entry in September after BMW’s withdrawal), only one, Virgin, was ever in a position to make the 2010 grid under its own steam.
Then again, perhaps having a team not make it at all is preferable to seeing that team arrive 4 races late, horribly off the pace and without having had a chance to iron out the bugs and reliability issues every new car suffers from. There are those for whom Formula One does not exist between the beginning of November and the middle of March, those who do not know what USF1 is and how much of a mess they’re in. Is it better to have the floating, casual audience left largely ignorant of their existence than to let them watch whatever USF1 are able to serve up once the European season starts? Is it better for FIA president Jean Todt to distance himself completely from the selection process overseen by his predecessor Max Mosley, using the situation to highlight the need for change within the FIA?
All things considered, it seems likely that we’re witnessing the death throes of Anderson and Windsor’s American F1 dream, and that the men at the top of the team would sooner force the FIA to rule them out of racing than to admit defeat. Easier to spin a team closure in your favour if you can say you did everything you could to go racing eventually, and that you’d have made it had someone been willing to make concessions on your behalf. That would leave two empty spaces on the grid, with a team waiting in the wings to fill them: Stefan GP.
Not so fast. While Stefan GP have bought Toyota’s 2010 chassis, engine and gearbox, have Kazuki Nakajima under contract and now claim to have agreed a deal with 1997 world champion Jacques Villeneuve – a deal that Villeneuve says has not been finalised – little is known of their long term plans and ability to survive. Team principal Zoran Stefanovic has made a lot of noise about their ability to race in Bahrain, the equipment he’s already sent there on the off chance that an entry is granted to them and the car having undergone an initial fire-up in Cologne, but nothing has been heard of how the team intend to take on 2011. Buying the designs of an existing team upon their withdrawal is a fantastic way to go racing for a single year but doesn’t seem to represent much of a long-term business plan. In addition, Stefanovic appears to believe that he has an automatic entitlement to go racing should an entry become available, based upon nothing but his having cars to enter. He has support from Bernie Ecclestone but, having started legal proceedings against the FIA over missing out on a place in F1 through what he believed to be an unfair selection process last time around, is not flavour of the month within the corridors of power.
It would seem that avoiding a repeat of the present situation should be high atop the list of priorities when allocating future entries, and that granting Stefan GP immediate entry wouldn’t necessarily fit in with that. Until it can be established that an outfit, be it Stefan or another team altogether, is capable not just of racing now but of sustaining itself over a number of seasons, there should be no great hurry to fill grid slots 25 and 26.
A pity, isn’t it, that this should be the hot topic on the eve of the most highly anticipated season in years. Schumacher’s back and right on the pace, Alonso expects great things from his Ferrari and the established teams can barely be separated with only one week of testing left before the season starts. As seems usual, though, the sport we love has found a way of drowning out the good news behind the noise of a shot being fired squarely into its own foot.
