usf1

The World Motor Sport Council is just catching up to USF1's premature disappearance from Formula 1. The WSMC has reportedly banned the American ex-team forever - which we're guessing means the troika of Ken Anderson, Peter Windsor and Chad Hurley - from competing in F1, and fined it $382,000 as well as legal costs.

The USF1 project may be dead in the proverbial water, but that hasn't deterred a group of American investors from breaking into Formula One. In fact, it only appears to have whetted their appetites as representatives headed to Montreal this past weekend for the Canadian Grand Prix to meet with Bernie Ecclestone and others to discuss new opportunities for involvement in the sport.

According to Autosport, the delegation was led by Parris Mullins, who was there representing an unspecified group of American investors. An advisor and close friend of YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley, Mullins was directly involved with USF1 until it collapsed.

Ferrari aficionados will fondly remember the letters NART. The North American Racing Team was created by Ferrari's American importer Luigi Chinetti, and campaigned Maranello's thoroughbreds at premier endurance sports car races like Daytona, Sebring and Le Mans. In fact NART even jumped into F1 when John Surtees raced the 1964 United States Grand Prix at Watkins Glen, helping Surtees and Ferrari clinch the championship.

Want to start your own Formula One team? There's space on the grid next season since USF1 failed to make it this year, and we wish you better luck. But it takes more than luck to start a team from scratch. It takes a lot of know-how, a lot of money, and a lot of equipment. That's where this auction comes in.

USF1 has officially shuttered operations in Charlotte, NC. That's according to the Charlotte Business Journal, which notes that Ken Anderson, president of the team, sent employees an email yesterday pointing to financial woes as the straw that broke the doomed camel's back. Anderson's pet racing project was supposed to jump into the Formula One fray at the Bahain Grand Prix on March 14, but couldn't quite get its act together in time. Rumors of a shut down have been dogging the USF1 team nearly as long as it's been around, and this time, it looks like the naysayers were right.

Easy come, easy go. Only it was anything but an easy arrival for USF1, the highly anticipated and much-hyped American grand prix team that was slated to hit the grid this past weekend for the start of the 2010 FIA Formula One World Championship. And in the end, much as Bernie Ecclestone predicted, the team failed to make it.

A recent report out of Spain suggests that the USF1 team won't make it to the starting grid in Bahrain and that the team's chances of making it to the next two races are in question, putting the entire season in jeopardy. To make matters worse, rumors are circulating that one of the team's principle backers - YouTube founder Chad Hurley - has pulled his support from the Formula One upstart and that Brian Bonner, a former IndyCar driver and the team's head of business development, is no longer working for the firm, taking a co-director position at B4 Marketing.

Following the culmination of the 2009 FIA Formula One World Championship, slots were granted to four new teams for the upcoming season. They were all ecstatic about the prospect of dicing it with the likes of McLaren and Ferrari, but not all of them are guaranteed to make it when the flag waves at Bahrain in just a couple months' time. This comes right from the mouth Bernie Ecclestone, F1's notoriously outspoken commercial director.

Rumors have been circulating for months that at least two of the teams - USF1 and Campos Meta - were having trouble finalizing their car designs and getting their houses in order. The other two newcomers - Lotus and Virgin - have hardly been immune to the rumors, either.

Reports circulating the motorsport press indicate that USF1 has signed a provisional contract with Argentine driver Jose Maria Lopez to drive for the new team next season. The arrangement, however, depends on Lopez bringing with him $8 million in sponsorship dollars, of which the young South American reportedly already has 80% in his coffers.

Lopez has experience in formula racing, but has been off the radar for a few years now. After competing in Formula Renault and Formula 3000, Lopez drove a couple of seasons in the GP2 series and even ran some test sessions for Renault F1 . After that, he returned to Argentina, where he competed in local touring cars and in a few international sports car races.

It's on again, off again in the face-paced world of Formula One politics. First the biggest teams in F1 were slated to split off and form their own series. Then everything seemed reconciled, until Max Mosley got all torqued off again and threatened to scuttle the whole deal. It's anyone's guess at this point - we think the one series will be on track for next season - but in the meantime, the FIA issued the official list of entries for 2010.