Troubled start-up American Formula 1 outfit Team US F1 has abandoned work on its 2010 car and asked the FIA to defer its entry into the world championship until next year.
The team’s staff were told on Tuesday that they were being put on unpaid leave since there was no longer any prospect of raising the necessary finance to compete in F1 this season.
However, team principal Ken Anderson denies that the squad is being closed down and is clinging to the hope that it will make it onto the F1 grid in 2011.
Anderson told Autosport that he has asked the FIA to give the team the breathing space to resurrect its F1 project and is awaiting a reply from the governing body before deciding what to do next.
“We have applied to the FIA to hold our entry until 2011,” he said.
“It was supposed to be confidential, so I could not really comment on it. It seems to have leaked out though.
“We are waiting for a reply from the FIA and are working with them.
“In the meantime, there is nothing for the employees to do, so we have told them to stop working on the current car until we have a decision.”
US F1’s ambition of launching an all-American team came up against the headwinds of the global economic recession and F1’s limited presence in the USA.
The North Carolina-based outfit had already been forced to dilute its plans to field American drivers, announcing last month that it had signed Argentina’s Jose Maria Lopez in a deal backed by that country’s government.
Its demise – at least for this season – creates a vacancy on the 2010 grid that Serbian operation Stefan GP is eager to fill, having been predicting just such an outcome from the sidelines for months.
But it is unclear whether the FIA will simply transfer US F1’s entry to Stefan, or decide that it does not need to fill the 13th slot and satisfy itself with 12 teams, including the three remaining new entrants Virgin, Lotus and Campos Meta (now renamed Hispania Racing).
An official 2010 entry list is expected to be released imminently.