USF1 asks to skip first 4 races

USF1

Team Principal Ken Anderson has revealed that his struggling USF1 team have asked the FIA to miss the first 4 races of the season.

In an interview with the New York Times, he said: “We’re working with the F.I.A. to clarify how many races we can miss. In an ideal world, we can miss the first four races and show up in Barcelona.”

Has he even been reading the news? The FIA have just clarified that teams are not allowed to miss any races, since that would break the Concorde Agreement. And the way he goes on about an “ideal world” just annoys me. In an ideal world, we would have new F1 teams that were actually capable of getting to the grid, not whingeing and begging for more time as their only driver (and not the best one either) is being linked to another team.

Oh, and they would actually build a car, instead of doing stupic press conferences going on about how they are going to make in to Bahrain, when clearly they aren’t.

FIA states new teams can’t miss races

The FIA has clarified the rules regarding some new teams not being able to attend the first few races. Jean Todt recently stated that Campos and USF1 could skip the first 3 races, if they were not ready, and would avoid punishment.

This statement has been overturned by the FIA, however, who have released a short statement:

“From a sporting and regulatory point of view, each Team that has registered for the Championship is obliged to take part in every event of the season. Any failure to take part, even for just one Championship event, would constitute an infringement both of the Concorde Agreement and the FIA Regulations.”

The Concorde Agreement is, of course, the agreement of all the teams competing in Formula 1. If this contract is broken, the FIA have the power to disallow that team from competing in the sport.

This is good news for Stefan GP, who have already announced that they are sending equipment to Bahrain, in hope that either Campos or USF1 cannot make it. However, it seems that the team have overlooked the completely obvious. If a team drops out, the FIA don’t instantly hand another team their spot. Still, we might as well wait and see can Campos and USF1 get to the grid in time.