Show Me the Money!

A short time after we went to press last month, it was announced that a new American Formula One team was soon going to be announced. Yawn. Sorry, it’s not that I’m not—yawn—excited by the prospect, it’s just how many times have we heard this over the past…oh, I don’t know, 30 years? You have to admit that the United States, on the whole, has always had a somewhat star-crossed history in Formula One. Don’t believe me? In the modern postwar era, we’ve enjoyed but 2 World Driving Championships (Phil Hill, 1961, and Mario Andretti, 1978). Britain, by contrast, has had 13 to date, while Brazil has had 8 and Germany 7 (though, granted, all 7 came from Herr Schumacher).

Sadly, when one looks at the record of American car constructors, the statistics get even grimmer. Lance Reventlow’s Scarab effort kicked off America’s first postwar foray into Formula One at the close of the ’50s, but sadly the team missed the mark by a year or two, when they had the bad fortune of fielding a fast front-engine car, during the dawn of the rear-engine revolution. Next up, but often overlooked, was the short-lived Scirocco effort of the early ’60s, but lack of funding and development saw the team miss a great opportunity to capitalize on the even playing field brought about by the new 1.5-liter engine rules of the day.