Fledgling F3 and World Series team Ultimate Motorsport has exclusively revealed that it could be on the verge of making the huge leap to Formula One as soon as next year.

The admission was made by team manager Barry Walsh, who claims he has been working on ambitious plans behind the scenes for some time and is now just dependent on a deal regarding customer cars going his way.

The squad has made a significant impact in the British F3 Championship since debuting in 2007, not least because it shunned the popular Dallara chassis in favour of the little-known Mygale.

However, on the weekend where it will start from a first-ever British F3 pole position at Snetterton, and is also challenging at the sharp end of the World Series grid at Silverstone, Walsh told Crash.net that the plan has always been to do F1.

Although refusing to be drawn on whether the entry would be entirely private or involve manufacturer backing, Walsh said that a formal announcement regarding the move could be made in the next few months.

“The main ambition is to take Ultimate to F1 because this has all been geared in order to get there,” he said. “We are working very hard to achieve it and we have been working closely with different partners to get the right people to do the job properly.

“We are talking to many parties in order to do this and we've spent a lot of time getting the right people together. It is coming together quicker than we thought, but we are very comfortable with the position we are currently in.”

So far, Walsh has pencilled in a debut for 2010, but hasn't ruled out appearing as early as next season, pending an agreement on the Concorde Agreement over customer cars.

“It is hard to say [when we can get on the grid]," he admitted, "We are pushing to race in 2009, but we are waiting for the outcome of the Concorde Agreement, which will have a big bearing on what we do.

"We will have to build our own car eventually, but for us to get started and to get the people together to place ourselves on the grid, we are relying on the customer situation to get us going.”