back to article YouTube injects cash into US F1 team

YouTube co-founder and CEO Chad Hurley has joined the US Formula One team as its primary investor. The boss of Google's online video-sharing empire hopes to see the US F1 team, led by Ken Anderson and Peter Windsor, win in the motorsporting world's Grand Prix tournament in 2010 and beyond. Hurley will pump money into the US …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    <snicker>

    Well they ain't going to win anything with the Cossie engine, others in F1 have tried and failed.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Linux

    American Cars

    Wait, American cars are huge bulky things that eat petrol like i breath Air. Imagine an American F1 car. Its going to be like a hummer and into the pits every lap.

  3. Rob

    Might stand a chance...

    ... if they move all manufacturing and design over to the UK, then they will be a true F1 team ;-)

  4. Scott McMeekin
    Joke

    Bout time...

    You mean americans can do MORE than just turn left?

    :D

    Scott.

  5. Flugal
    FAIL

    A small fortune

    Q: How do you make a small fortune in Formula One?

    A: Start with a large fortune.

    Seriously, the wealth of one wealthy individual is not enough to sustain a team. If the resources of Toyota have won them, er, absolutely zilch, in 8 years of racing, not one race, then poor old Chad is going to join the long list of business folk who have found F1 to be a very expensive drain on resources.

    I wish him and USF1 well. I give them 4 year max before they disappear, with Chad's fortune slightly dented.

    And Bernie still not allowing F1 clips on YouTube.

  6. AceRimmer

    Very very suprised

    Is what he'll be when he realises that GP circuits have left AND RIGHT corners

  7. hugo tyson
    FAIL

    Pit stops?

    Not from 2010 - no refuelling from next year, only tyre changes! Maybe they'll tow a fuel bowser.

    Sounds like another BAT, great, more teams are welcome, but they'll not win anything for a few years, get fed up (cos septics can't take that) and quit/sell-out.

    Pity they're not going to be called "Team America [Fsck yeah]" 'cos then they'd have a ready-made theme song...

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    American talent and tech needn't be American

    > USF1 plans to show-off American talent and tech from

    > their home in Charlotte, North Carolina.

    >

    > However, its cars will use a Cosworth engine, which as

    > the engine maker points out on its website "began life in

    > a small workshop in London in 1958 when it was founded

    > by Mike Costin and Keith Duckworth."

    And why is this a problem? Taking the credit for other countries' technology is what made America great.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Leveraging the synergies

    Let's see, the creator of one notorious money pit (YouTube) is going to have a go at another notorious money pit (starting an F1 team) which is likely to be even more of a money pit than usual as he's targetting a market (the US) that barely knows F1 exists!

  10. Tone

    others in F1 have tried and failed.

    Coswoth DFV won 155 races

    Coswoth HB won 11 races

    CosworthV8 won races and Schumacher's first championship

    CosworthV10 won a race

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    To make a small fortune from F1, it's best to start with a large one

    which makes it perfect Web2.0 venture capital territory, no?

  12. David Webb

    Rumour...

    Rumour has it that USF1 are going to be employing a female F1 driver, so they will get a ton of publicity in the US simply for that, and should they start to win (not very likely) that'll raise its profile in the US.

    2010 though, Ferrari, Williams, McLaren etc.. should have sorted the issues out with their cars so a startup like USF1 doesn't really stand much of a chance of winning the title by 2012.

  13. Phil the Geek

    Could US F1 be worse than Team Haas Lola?

    I have a feeling that US F1 will unintentionally end up being very very funny. Which is good, because F1 needs comedy moments to lighten the long gaps between the interesting bits.

  14. Cliff

    What's another few million?

    What's the harm of spanking another few hundred million dollars when you're already losing half-a-billion bucks a year? Fucked for a penny, fucked for a pound, as they say. Or maybe something about being as well hanged for a horse as a sheep.

  15. zonky
    Stop

    The US barely knows Motor racing exists.

    There are more viewers in Italy who watch F1 on tv, then there are viewers in the USA watching NASCAR.

    Not per head of population- TOTAL HEADCOUNT!

    Quite why you'd bother with an F1 team is beyond me.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Welcome

    With any luck...

    ...they'll randomly pick YouTube comments to be part of the livery. I, for one, welcome the day when a grand prix car goes by with "LOL STFU FAG" written on the rear wing.

  17. Russ Tarbox
    Megaphone

    Is that Tarantino in the pitlane with the shades?

    That chin looks pretty striking.

  18. Graham Marsden
    Joke

    Of course...

    ... if the teams get their way, the Yanks may have to decide which of *two* F1 series they want to join...!

  19. phil 69

    bendy

    they do know that in f1 they have corners, not just a circluar track?

  20. Arse Face

    cheap

    Presumably they'll be using terribly cheap plastics, and the suspension will be so comedically soft it'll look like a kangaroo even on the smoothest of tracks. Unless they poach their engineers from other teams, in which case it'll become a British team, funded from overseas, much like most of the other teams...

  21. Seán

    Team DNF

    It's going to be fun watching them trying to bullshit about DNF being a good thing.

  22. Mr Larrington
    FAIL

    WTF?

    I hope US F1's engineers are better at arithmetic than Hurley is. The last American team in F1 was Penske, which raced between 1974 and 1976. Moreover, they actually won a race - the 1976 Austrian GP with John Watson at the wheel.

  23. michael mackey
    Thumb Up

    Re: Snicker

    Fisichella won the Brazillian GP with a Jordan Cosworth ... stranger things have happened, it would be great to see a privateer back winning races in F1

  24. Matt D 3
    WTF?

    Penske, and all the rest...

    The basic inaccuracy of the USF1 press release was the subject of much debate at Vulture Central. The last US F1 team to win a GP, as Mr Larrington points out, was the Penske team in Austria in 1976. The last US F1 team were Beatrice/Haas-Lola in the mid 1980s, although they never won a GP.

    What I think USF1 are trying to do by discounting these efforts is to tap into the inherent patriotism of the US public. They have deliberately gone back not to Penske, (US team, British Engine, John Watson as driver, who was from Northern Ireland,) but to All American Racing, (US team, US-commissioned but British-built engine, American driver,) whose sole 1967 GP victory they use as their historical reference point. They refer to this victory as a win in a Grand Prix 'tournament'. This is a misleading term that might suggest to the uninformed that the team had, in fact, won the entire championship that year, rather than just one race. The fact that most Americans know little about F1 means they can use this to suggest that USF1 is the latest instalment in a long and distinguished history for American F1 teams, when in fact their record is less than inspiring.

    The reason for this is not obvious, but the enthusiasm that patriotism generates can only be helpful in gaining sponsorship and support. USF1 have already suggested that they will be using new media and methods to gain the finance they will need to run the team, and I suspect that this attempt to paint USF1 as the latest instalment in a long history may be part of this. It would not surprise me, for example, if as well as the YouTube money, they also attempted to personalise the F1 experience by taking smaller, personal sponsorships for the cars and team in much the same way that Jan Lammers with his Racing For Holland Le Mans team. This would fit well with the YouTube sponsorship, too. The YouTube slogan is 'Broadcast Yourself', after all.

    What baffles me is why the team chose to go with US teams rather than US drivers, as America does actually have history there, with Phil Hill and Mario Andretti both being world champion drivers.

    Maybe that will become part of the media approach once they announce their driver line-up. Expect that to go ballistic, if Danica Patrick indeed joins them and becomes only the third ever female F1 driver.

    Matt D

    (Sub Ed)

  25. Gordon is not a Moron
    Stop

    Matt D 3 : Danica not the 3rd

    Ms Patrick would be number 6

    Maria Teresa de Filippis 1958 - 1959

    Lella Lombardi 1974 - 1976

    Divina Galica 1976 - 1978

    Desiré Wilson 1979

    Giovanna Amati 1992

    Ok, so the last 3 never made it out of qualifying but they were still F1 drivers.

  26. Matt D 3
    FAIL

    Bah!

    I just looked it up, and there have apparently previously been five female F1 drivers, not two. Of those, only two ever actually qualified for a race, though, so if Danica Patrick managed to qualify in a USF1 car, it would make her the third female driver to actually race in a championship GP.

    Inaccuracy, schminaccuracy...

  27. Andrew Miller

    @Matt D 3

    "They have deliberately gone back not to Penske, (US team, British Engine, John Watson as driver, who was from Northern Ireland,) but to All American Racing, (US team, US-commissioned but British-built engine, American driver,)"

    The team's name was Anglo American Racing, formed by Dan Gurney in 1966.

  28. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Err...

    The are losing half a billion a year they claim they can't afford to pay a fair amount of money to various rights organisations, but they can afford (presumably) tens of millions to put their name on a car. Don't be evil, indeed.

  29. Secretgeek
    Coat

    This isn't relevant but...

    ...frankly that never usually stops anyone. I just wanted to say:

    'Chad Hurley'?

    'Chad'? 'Hurley'?

    Could it be a more comedy American name?

    I'm getting it...

  30. Jacob Reid
    Paris Hilton

    Read the latest issue of Sniff Petrol (out today)

    http://www.sniffpetrol.com/2009/08/21/youtube-s-a-f1/

    EPIC.

  31. Joc
    Stop

    How very American

    Turning up just as its coming to an end and everyone else is going home . . .

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