Glenn Freeman

races on.

on the modern calendar, but the addition of Austin would bring back the United States Grand Prix for the first time since 2007 when Indianapolis last hosted it.

Bernie said this was a big deal because for the first time in the history of Formula One in the United States, a world-class facility will be purpose-built to host the event.

I've been looking for the right place and I hope now that we have a permanent home.

Now, both of you have been to the US Grand Prix at Austin countless times.

Ed, is it fair to say that in this case, Austin delivered what Bernie was hoping for?

Yeah.

And I guess the big thing that I do see the logic of is a permanent purpose built place because F1's existence in America up to that point have been nomadic in terms of circuits.

You're bouncing between street circuits and then the Indy road course.

So at least it had a proper F1 track to call it that in the States.

So F1 had an American race coming back, but it didn't have an American team, although it had come close for 2010 with the attempt by USF1 to join the grid.

One of the people involved in the late rescue bid for USF1 involved, do you remember this, YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley.

When I was doing research, I totally forgot about this guy.

It was a huge deal when that was announced.

It was, yeah.

So obviously there were still attempts to...

rescue the project and one of the people who'd been working with chad hurley was now trying to find another way onto the grid and by this point it wasn't doing another usf1 it was trying to buy into a team because the feeling was that actually starting from scratch was pretty much impossible

The person who was still cracking on with this was a guy called Paris Mullins, who, John, you interviewed for Autosport at the time.

And Mullins said then, a competitive startup team simply isn't possible given the state of the sport and its rules.

He said teams needed experience and knowledge from years of competing and that taking over a team and making necessary changes was the way to go.