USF1 -- F1's All-American Challenger

[xpensive]

Which is possibly a bit out of topic when Byrne wasn't even close to be asssociated with (A)USF1.

[Pandamasque]

Mwahahahahaha!!!!! Mwahahahahaha!!!!! Mwahahahahaha!!!!!

http://www.crash.net/tailenders/video/1 ... _past.html

[PlatinumZealot]

You guys read this?! A lot of interesting things unveiled!

F1: What Went Wrong In America’s Comeback?

"The suspension employed coil-over shocks versus the torsion bars currently used in all F1 cars, but the springs didn’t fit well in the era of needle-nose designs. “Ken Anderson was designing an Indy car,” said Bialas, “not an F1 car.”

http://formula-one.speedtv.com/article/ ... omeback/P1

[segedunum]

Yer, I read that article in Autosport. It confirms everything we suspected here along with other things like Ken Anderson employing his son and for engineers to design something only to come in the following morning to see that Ken and his son Jason had changed it.

Ken Anderson was a control freak with a hint of nepotism thrown in who was too incompetent to design and direct the build of a F1 car, and Peter Windsor was incompetent enough to let him do whatever he wanted. Perhaps that's why Anderson brought him in. That's it in a nutshell. Bernie was nowhere in sight.

The sight of a picture of Anderson and Windsor in some sort of video conference with Mario Andretti 'on the phone from Nazareth' I think it is just has you reaching for the sick bag. I actually don't know what possessed so many good technical people to get involved with this.

[xpensive]

A few pieces of "I told you so" now isn't it? For me as an old geezer, the entire thing was pretty straihtforward, when those bozos Cv's were so obviously fabricated, PeeWee was never a GM of Ferrari in any important capacity and KA was never a Technical Director of anything.

WB's employment numbers from AMuS were quite telling, even Virgin has 180 employees and USF1 had 55 parking spots in Charlotte.

[Belatti]

The funniest thing is that Ken keeps believing in himself. "The entity is intact".

[WhiteBlue]

Too much dream and not enough competence. Anderson obviously did not have the capability to manage the car design and manufacturing project and failed to realize this. If he had delegated that responsibility to a capable man in September the bottle necks had been identified three months earlier and there would have been more options to cure it.

Another case of fish stinks from the head.

[jon-mullen]

By Jan. 15, the team missed the payroll for five days.

....

In the third week of January at a meeting of department heads in Huntersville with Anderson, the team’s chances of making the grid at Bahrain on March 14 received a unanimous vote of no confidence, a situation that severely shook sporting director Peter Windsor, who had asked for the vote.

....

As for the vote of no confidence, [Anderson] said the staff never fully committed to his vision for a start-up team operating on a low budget. “I was very disappointed in the lack of commitment from many of the people we hired,” he said.

You miss payroll, ask people their honest opinion, and then trash them? "Low budget" is one thing, not paying people...well, that's something else, isn't it? And then talking --- on them...that is so piss poor. How many months and articles is it going to take before he accepts some real responsibility?

But the entire set-up ran into a major logjam. Anderson appointed his son Jason as the design director, in effect making Ken Anderson the team principal and its chief designer. Jason Anderson, who came from the Dale Earnhardt Inc. team and had no F1 experience, kept the chassis design in his computer system throughout the early design stages and did not share it with the other engineers.

....

“When we got other designers in from F1 teams, Jason didn’t want to put the chassis out there,” said Bialas. “That would have been the thing to do, put it out there and talk about it, try to make it better.”

"No you can't see the world's greatest toaster." That is some kind of hubris right there. Just take the little knock to your ego, let the old boys club have a laugh on you and move on. "My bad, I've never designed an F1 car." Not many people have, no one's expecting you to be Adrian Newey on the first try, you want a safe, cheap, good place to start, get people's help and friggin do it.

Honestly you've got to wonder how they even expected to succeed with those kinds of personalities running the show.

[nipo]

Shame on Anderson. He and his "entity" will never see another day in F1 (not that they have seen any).

Let's move on.

[Sean H]

So whose pocket did that money end up in? Surely a small staff and rented equipment that wasn't used didn't cost all that.

[xpensive]

[
Ex-Formel 1-Pilot Stefan Johansson, ein Kenner der US-Rennszene, hatte mir schon im August letzten Jahres erzählt: “Vergiss den Anderson. Der ist ein Traumtänzer. Redet viel, nichts dahinter. Nur leider merken das viele Leute zu spät.” Man hätte auf den Schweden hören sollen.

I trust Auto Motor und Sport and Stefan Johansson, who was actually there when he tried it 20 years ago!

I just love this one forever and ever, I'm sure WB and marcush does to?

[raceman]

this thread is still alive??

[xpensive]

So whose pocket did that money end up in? Surely a small staff and rented equipment that wasn't used didn't cost all that.

I've been thinking about that too, even if you have 50 people employed for six months and build a halfway carbontub and a nosejob,
it should not cost you 20 MUSD. Perhaps half of that.

[Mysticf1]

Especially when you consider what Virgin produced on their budget...but then again gross incompetence does cost alot.

[marcush.]

[
Ex-Formel 1-Pilot Stefan Johansson, ein Kenner der US-Rennszene, hatte mir schon im August letzten Jahres erzählt: “Vergiss den Anderson. Der ist ein Traumtänzer. Redet viel, nichts dahinter. Nur leider merken das viele Leute zu spät.” Man hätte auf den Schweden hören sollen.

I trust Auto Motor und Sport and Stefan Johansson, who was actually there when he tried it 20 years ago!

I just love this one forever and ever, I'm sure WB and marcush does to?

+1 I do