01/04/2009
NEWS STORY
USGPE team boss Peter Windsor believes the global economic crisis has been good for the sport, forcing it to slash spending to the point where new teams will be encouraged to enter.
"The FIA has massively reduced the cost of doing a Formula One team and the entry of a new team," Bloomberg quotes Windsor as saying. "It wouldn't have happened in a so-called boom period.
"You can't continue to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to allow two guys to go racing on Sunday afternoon," he continued, "it has to become a more logical number."
Windsor, a former team manager with Williams, and now a highly respected commentator, recently announced that he is to enter the sport next season in partnership with Ken Anderson. The USGPE team, formerly USF1, an all-American outfit, will be based in Charlotte, North Carolina, though it will also have a European facility where it will keep its trucks, motor homes and ancillary equipment.
The FIA recently announced a further raft of cost cutting measures including a £30m budget cap, under which those teams that adopt it would have greater technical freedom. Furthermore, the cost of the bond needed to enter the sport has been reduced from $48m to $1m.