The Bear has given US F1 “a little room.” After he broke the Mullens story at the very moment the emissary was sitting in a chair at Dallara, Murphy figured letting it all cure a bit would be good all around. Unfortunately, the racing rags – again seemingly hostage to their precious race passes – take whatever they’re fed hook, line, and sinker (it’s too bad they aren’t reeled in and roasted, but, well, that’s the order of things, isn’t it). Anyway, Peter Windsor seems to be their ‘target of opportunity.’ That’s reason enough to look elsewhere, in the Bear’s humble opinion.
If Peter has a problem it’s naiveté; he’s been around the sport long enough that he should be able to recognize a train wreck when he sees one. Even more to the point, long before that, he needed to find a partner able to manage the tough job of building an F1 car. Poor Peter never did. (He might have taken a look at the project behind the Falcon 01-A for a clue, though.) And in the time since, he’s clearly been spending too much time as the “face of the team” (a role for which his broadcasting experience makes him well suited), because if he’d visited the working floor at the team’s Charlotte facility, he’d have easily seen that things were badly off track. Managers and executives have always needed get onto the “factory floor,” an idea that oddly seems to have to be learned and relearned. A ‘drop in’ by an FIA official who has no idea what he’s looking at is no substitute, either.
Good managers aren’t often the same people as good engineers or good designers. The skills are entirely different. Successful managers know to hire good people, set a direction, then let them work, following up on progress, but not interfering in the detail. That’s not what’s been going on in Charlotte, Murphy hears.
Effective managers certainly don’t draw something on a napkin (ok, that’s an exaggeration, but you get the idea) then kibitz the design, demanding some undefined ‘simplicity’ from a complex piece of work. ‘Simplicity’ won’t pass a crash test.
The result of all that is an organization that’s floundering. One source told Murphy that there’s “no ‘organization’ worthy of the name” – and you can read that as a noun or a verb. Good people have been working their hearts out ‘insane hours’ because they care, staying just one step ahead of financial disaster. The result, unfortunately, will not put a car on the grid at Bahrain in less than 24 days.
The stumbling around at US F1 (or US GPE…whatever) has become so obvious that badly needed new investment is sitting on the sideline, only willing to move ahead if there’s a management change – not just any management change, and not Peter Windsor. It’s not Peter Windsor that’s responsible for the lack of progress in Charlotte, nor will his departure get an investor off his duff and into the action.
Murphy hears one moment that principal Chad Hurley won’t put more money into the Charlotte operation, then the next that he’ll continue – for now. He sent his friend to Italy to try to get a chassis. That seems to have come to naught, but the Bear hears there are other such options out there. There may be an ‘angel’ on the horizon or there may not.
Some will say (are saying, actually), that a United States-based F1 team was – and is – an mistake, a venture doomed to failure. The Bear doesn’t think so. Smarter folks than Murphy say this might have succeeded, that in fact it still can even at this late date, if it can get proper management and proper funding, the first being a prerequisite for the last.
Of one thing there seems to be widespread agreement, however: With Ken Anderson in charge, there will be no rescue of America’s first F1 team in over thirty years. Perhaps it’s time for him to step down and give this historic racing effort a fighting chance.
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Tags: Chad Hurley, Charlotte, F1, Formula 1, Ken Anderson, Parris Mullens, Peter Windsor, US F1
I couldn’t agree more! Drop the dead body already. This needs to move forward. I guess we can get a chassis from Campos or Dallara, maybe even Virgin since their car is CFD only and crash tested you only need to send the design out to be made, carbon-fiber doesn’t take that long..
I for one said Hindy would eat his hat and I hope that’s the case. They also should have gotten Danica for the money if needed, so what if she runs near the middle of the pack, you have two cars….