Crash.net:
Why F1 - and why now?
Peter Windsor:
Why F1 is an easy question to answer really. It's the world's biggest sport - bigger than the World Cup soccer, bigger than the Olympics, bigger than the Super Bowl. It's 600m viewers annually and it's beautifully organised - a world championship that begins at the beginning of the year and ends at the end of the year every year. No other sport has that. It has a wonderful team franchise system and a formidable business plan, courtesy of Mr Ecclestone, involving great co-ordination of the money derived from television rights, hospitality, freight, signage etc - all of which fuels the
Formula One industry - and it's relatively recession-proof in that a lot of the teams are therefore not dependent on sponsorship for their income unlike, say, NASCAR, so it is just the world's greatest sport and that's why to be in F1. Beyond that, if you're going to be doing a start-up team, you need to have something that's compelling and to do a start-up team that is perfectly in tune with the current economic crisis - in other words, a team that is going to be lean, mean and operate well within the parameters of the F1 financial model is quite an interesting project. Having said that, Ken Anderson and I started this project four or five years ago - long before Armageddon was even thought of - and our plan was always to have a lean, mean team to prove that you could do a
Formula One team for well under the operating numbers.
Crash.net:
Was the team always aimed at 2010, or has the plan been accelerated by the cost-cutting measures and new rulebook that are coming in over next season or so?
Peter Windsor:
2010 was always a number we had in mind four or five years ago; 2009 was a possibility and we were looking at taking over the Honda engine supply that Super Aguri were not using, but the new principals at Honda - Ross Brawn and Nick Fry - knocked that on the head and, as soon as that happened, which was about July 2008, we focused completely on 2010.
Crash.net:
A lot of people will wonder why you are doing this largely from scratch, why you would want to start up your own team rather than capitalise on the chance to buy one of those that have failed - Spyker, Super Aguri or even Honda - in recent years....
Peter Windsor:
Well, Super Aguri was never a
Formula One team as such, it was just running technology supplied by Honda, basically just a race operation. As good as it was, it was a good example of how a small number of people working harmoniously could do a better job than a large number of people working disharmoniously - as we know, they did a better job than the Honda factory team. But, as far as buying Honda is concerned, they are really the 'old guard' - hundreds of millions of dollars, 600-700 people, in many ways a case study of why F1 needs to change. If you are looking at a new operating ceiling financially, it is much more logical to approach that ceiling from zero and grow into it organically than it is to be running at $250m and have to trim your costs down to $65m and lay off lots of people. They've got their own management strategies etc and, if you start laying off people, you destroy what you had in the first place really. If you look at any normal business, the good people are hired initially and they get promoted and have a team of people under them, then they are the highest-paid people and the ones that go first when you have to lay people off, so it's a mess really when you have to start reducing overheads by two-thirds - which is what some of these teams are going to be doing. It is much more logical to grow from zero - and, anyway, we always wanted to do a team in the United States, proving that American technology was at least the equal of anything in Europe and to prove that, now that the world championship is 50 per cent outside Europe, it's no longer the European domain. Obviously, starting a team in America meant starting from zero and that's why we did it.
Crash.net:
How much has that changing calendar impacted on your decision to start the team and get it running in the next couple of years?
Peter Windsor:
Oh quite a lot. The fact that the calendar is 50 per cent outside Europe now, and there is less testing in Europe, has an enormous impact and was one of the justifications for doing it. There were many justifications for doing a team in the United States, but that was certainly one. If there were still 90 per cent of the races in Europe, and massive amounts of testing in Europe, it would be more difficult to do what we're going to do, but that is no longer the case, and, as we speak, more and more races are coming onto the calendar from outside Europe and we're not the first people to say that that is the way that F1 is going to go.
Crash.net:
There has been talk of having a satellite base in Spain - is that true?
Peter Windsor:
Yes, we'll have a small logistics base in Spain, which will really be an operational base for the trucks, motorhomes, pit equipment, etc, and a base from which we will be loading freight from some of the European hubs when we go overseas, if we're using the FOM freight system, but otherwise the entire heart and soul of this team will be in the United States. Unless it's a double-header grand prix weekend, the boys will be coming back to Charlotte after each race and it will be a very American team.
Crash.net:
Is there a belief in F1, or among F1 followers, that US-based technology isn't up to F1 standards - and is this something that you are quite determined to prove wrong?
Peter Windsor:
