The new US F1 team has bragged that their brand new F1 car for their debut season in the sport will be ready to run "by the end of October", in a move that will doubtless send shockwaves through the tail end of the grid.
The team has upped it's preparations with the first race of the 2010 season just over eight months away, and the US F1 team principal Ken Anderson has happily shown-off just how far along their designs have progressed.
"Quite a lot of it is ready to manufacture," Anderson chuckled, "The chassis is locked down, because we were waiting to hear if the engine rev limit was 20,000rpm or 18,000rpm.
"The chaps will now start building the chassis in August. We will have it rolling on the ground in late September, without bodywork or stuff, and then the bodywork will get added in October." Which all sounds very exciting.
The team remain confident despite mutterings that the Cosworth engine supply that the team will use in 2010 is in danger of being massively underpowered. Doubtless the team will make up for that by signing some super-awesome Indycar dropouts to drive the things.
Anderson went on to say that the early confirmation of their entry into next year's championship has allowed them to order in the machinery required for building their cars, and has also kick-started a massive recruitment drive for coffee makers and wheel-nut specialists and the like.
"We were only approved a few weeks ago and it wasn't prudent to order $5 million of machines until we were there," he prudently stated, "We have about 20 staff at the moment, but we have got 20 or 30 starting in August. The thing is we need people to run machines, and there was no point having them until the machines are there."
Further developments for the team in the next few weeks are set to include the announcement of investment from Chad Hurley, the all-American-named CEO of YouTube, which is ironic given how long the average F1 clip survives on that particular medium before it is eviscerated from the records.
US F1 are also close to securing a deal with the Aragon track in Spain to use it as their base in Europe. The venue is part of the new, sprawling "Motorland" development near Zaragoza, which appears to be a multi-million pound development designed to host a few crappy World Series by Renault events. What recession?
"It looks like [we'll be there]," Anderson said on the subject of the deal with Aragon, "It is not signed or sealed though. We are evaluating there and Paul Ricard.
"The Aragon facility is a fantastic facility, the people there are very nice, very helpful. It is a great place for winter testing, and we would like to have our drivers based there, or at Paul Ricard, and run all the time."
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