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| USFI to launch at Alabama. | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jan 8 2010, 01:53 PM (436 Views) | |
| sportsman | Jan 8 2010, 01:53 PM Post #1 |
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Chief Engineer
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What do you think of this Bernie.And all those who sid they wouldn't make it. "The US F1 team will run its car for the first time at the Barber Motorsport Park in Alabama next month. The Charlotte-based squad has confirmed its car will have an American debut before it travels to Europe to begin testing ahead of its maiden Formula 1 season. "Because we are a new team and start everything from zero the first time we will run the car will be in the United States at the Barber Motorsport Park in Alabama, the circuit that was nominated by the FIA for us," sporting director Peter Windsor told the official Formula 1 website. "We've got the dispensation from the FIA, which is fantastic, because we are not based in Europe. We are the only team that does have a test circuit outside Europe, so it is totally logical for us that we run the car the first time in the US at the beginning of February." http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/80776 |
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| Rob | Jan 8 2010, 03:02 PM Post #2 |
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Awesome news! I hope to be there. |
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| AndyW76 | Jan 8 2010, 04:00 PM Post #3 |
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Team Boss
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Lets hope that they get plenty of press out of it, well at tleast more attention than the US GP used to (the feasibility study for the GP at Indy expected much of the crowd to be made up of forgeign tourists). |
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| Rob | Jan 14 2010, 03:32 PM Post #4 |
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Looks to be a closed event. I just got an email from one of the event coordinators for Barber, they are actually still in negations to host it, and it will probably be closed to the public with only "selected media members" allowed to attend.
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| Norbert | Jan 14 2010, 03:45 PM Post #5 |
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Out of curiosity, why did they set up shop in Charlotte? Isn't that the heart of the NASCAR community? Also, isn't Alabama the heart of Junior Nation? Is anyone in the area really likely to be interested in a car that doesn't have 88 painted on the roof? F1 has never been very popular in the States as far as I was aware. it was alleged that more people attended the Ostrich races at Phoenix than the Grand Prix when it was there, for example. Maybe Phoenix was the wrong venue, or it was the wrong time of year or something. However, TyreGate at Indy didn't do F1 many favours either. I can understand an American F1 team being based in America, but is there really that much interest in the areas they're currently using? |
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| Rob | Jan 14 2010, 04:08 PM Post #6 |
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Charlotte is an established industrial area, so they probably had the land, power requirements, and other auxiliary needs in place. I'm pretty sure the owner of the track (George Barber) invited the team to debut there. He has been working his ass off to make the track an international destination for motorsports. This is traditionally NASCAR country but the success of the track is starting to chip that dominance away a little. Having the F1 race here for travel meant little. I drove twice from Alabama to Indy, I know the Saint drove from Colorado to there. I think we have the base to keep a GP here. Honestly it may not be a bad idea to hold one here every other year. I remember after the 06 trip thinking I would take a year off from traveling to Indy, of course had I known the next one would have been the last....
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| Red Andy | Jan 14 2010, 04:22 PM Post #7 |
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Feel free to use my site to get yourself media credentials.
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| Rob | Jan 14 2010, 04:25 PM Post #8 |
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I'll write an article for you to make it look better. I've used this one for the IRL testing and Grand AM race last year, and the IRL race this year, and have managed to strike up a pretty good relationship w/ some of the employees who do the credentialing for the events. The launch just seems to be by invite only. |
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| sportsman | Jan 14 2010, 05:18 PM Post #9 |
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Chief Engineer
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This is why they are based in Charlotte "Unlike many of the other F1 teams, we have not been burdened from the start by having to build a wind tunnel, or a large CFD department, or a shock absorber department complete with its own testing rigs, or a space- and dollar-consuming seven-post shaker rig or even a lot of free space for trucks and motorhomes. We decided to base our F1 team in Charlotte because it is the epicenter of racing in the United States. This coupled with the fact that most of the technology currently in F1 is a product of the American aerospace industry makes Charlotte the perfect choice. Around the corner we have Crawford Composites, where they produce excellent work under the ever-detailed management of Mr. and Mrs. Max Crawford. Gunther Steiner, the very talented and under-rated former Technical Director of the Jaguar F1 and the Red Bull NASCAR teams, has a similar, five-star composite facility a few miles up the I-77. RaceWorks, ten minutes away, has a 2010-spec seven-post shaker and some great guys there, including some ex-Williams boys. Then there’s Corvid, the CFD company co-founded by Dr. Eric Warren, who works now as our Chief Aerodynamicist. Understand that Corvid’s core work is for the U.S. Defense Department, and that the bread-and-butter of the company is to design coding for something as serious as a bomb explosion (that’s right - they map the path and movement of bomb fragments and debris in the milliseconds after explosion) and you will understand that the Corvid folks are enjoying the challenges of F1 turbulence and double-diffusers the same way you and I would enjoy, say, a decent filet steak. What does the Defense Department think? Well, being racers, the boys at Corvid always kept 20 percent of their capacity free for “other projects.” Like JRi Development Group, who are designing and building our shock absorbers, Corvid is based just up the road in Mooresville – up there with McLaren Electronics Systems, USA. http://www.usgpe.com/blog.html |
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