After much speculation about the readiness of USF1 and their 2010 challenger, the FIA headed to tin taxi country in good ol’ Charlotte North Carolina and were served a piece of humble pie.
This can mostly be attributed to one Bernie Eccleston and his “well tapped” information. Last week Bernie stated that there had been doubts raised as to whether the US team would make the 2010 grid, and stated that the soon to be Qadbak team would not have to worry about a 14 team waiver. Further more, there was rumor floating that Chad Hurley was very upset with the lack of progress being made. Hurley who is the lead investor in the team, was supposedly upset at the lack of a car and any product really to show for his money.
The FIA conducted an inspection of the facility and were very happy with the progress the team has made since the signing of the Concorde Agreement in July. The team has a fully functional Charlotte factory with multiple high end engineering tools available to them. When asked about the actual car, Ken Anderson told AUTOSPORT that the car was a virtual product at this moment. The reason for the virtual car is it gives the team the ability to put together a car and put it through a number of different models in order to save on the actual production of the car. There are a number of tests that can be done through modeling, so instead of building the piece and then scrapping it, they can design and test it virtually and build it if it works and scrap it if it does not.
The team still expects to have a proper racing machine in time for the January 2011 testing cycle. I think this inspection should silence some of the critics of the team and a good indicator that we should maybe move on to another team as far as not making the grid. I also see no problem in having fourteen teams and also think there are other teams on the grid that we should be worried about it.