F1 NEWCOMERS: Who are Manor?

Well who are they? well they are one of the 3 new teams allowed into the F1 world championship by the FIA for 2010. The other 2 are already well known, Campos Meta and USF1 (The latter being in the works for quite some time.) Also Manor's entry answers the riddle of a well known race car design company that announced they had alligned themselves to an unknown team. Here i'll be looking at who's who, where they are based and what their current activities are which may give out a clue as to who they may hire to drive their cars. Lets look at all 3 of the new entrants starting with the big suprise of the bunch.

MANOR MOTORSPORT - MANOR COSWORTH
TEAM OWNER: John Booth
HEADQUARTERS: Bicester, Oxfordshire, Great Britain
CURRENT ACTIVITIES AND DRIVERS:
Formula Renault UK: Thomas Hylkema (NED), Dean Smith (GBR), David McDonald (GBR), Alice Powell (GBR)
F3 Euroseries: Cesar Ramos (BRA), Pedro Nunes (BRA), Roberto Merhi (SPA)

This really was the suprise on the entry list, when many expected the British spot on the grid would go to either Aston Martin, Lola or the Litespeed/Lotus concerns, instead a little known junior formulae squad from Oxfordshire won one of the coveted 13 pit garage spaces available.
Little known that is if you live outside the British Isles because on these shores, Manor are one of the most successful and prolific junior squads out there with a long list of success in one championship in particular, Formula Renault, one of a number of championships on the 4th rung of the motorsport ladder. FRenault is where they gave a first opportunity in single seaters to a certain Lewis Hamilton who won them the championship in 2003, and it was then that they decided to make the big gamble to expand into the F3 Euroseries bringing Hamilton along with them. They have been well established in that ever since.
But back to their bid to be in Formula 1, their bid basically centered around the efforts of one company, Wirth Research (that explains the little mystery about who they would be backing). In the tie-up, company boss and technical guru Nick Wirth in effect becomes the team's technical director for the first time since his efforts with the Benetton team in 1999, Wirth also has had a dabble at team management too after presiding over the ill-fated Simtek team in the mid 1990's, his design experience will be vital to Manor's potential competitiveness.
And as where to find them this season, well they are very prominent in the F3 Euroseries still with a couple of Brazilian young guns and a potential new Fernando Alonso in the shape of Roberto Merhi. Also they are still a force in Formula Renault UK with championship contender Dean Smith, the experienced Dutchman Thomas Hylkema, young gun David McDonald and interestingly 16 year old Alice Powell, potentially Britain's answer to Danica Patrick (only without the ego.)

CAMPOS META GRAND PRIX - CAMPOS COSWORTH
TEAM OWNER: Adrian Campos
HEADQUARTERS: Valencia, Spain
CURRENT ACTIVITIES AND DRIVERS:
GP2 Series (under the Barwa Addax banner): Romain Grosjean (FRA), Vitaly Petrov (RUS)
Spanish Formula 3: Bruno Mendez (SPA), Adrian Campos Jr (SPA), Bruno Palli (VEN)

In conjunction with the Meta Image sports agency coupling that with his own considerable wealth, various contacts throughout spain and a crucial technical partnership with Dallara, Campos becomes the first ex-driver team to enter the sport from scratch since the Merzario team tried their luck in the late 1970's.
Adrian Campos himself was not that distinguished as a Grand Prix driver, he only took part in 21 races, all of them with Minardi, scored a best qualifying of 16th, a best finish of only 14th in his home race in 1987 and suffered 3 DNQ's, he has though had huge success in team management with huge success in Spanish F3 and more recently in GP2 when in 2008, his squad won the teams championship after years spent as the perennial backmarkers.
Key to their bid was their technical partnership with race car manufacturing giants Dallara, who supply cars for a multitude of lower formulae championships, but they have not built an F1 chassis since supplying Scuderia Italia with cars in 1992, whether this may hinder Dallara's ability to produce a competitive car though is unlikely as their experience in producing near F1 like machinery in GP2 should stand them in good stead.
With where to find them in the meantime before 2010, they are prominent in Spanish F3 (known as the European F3 Open) with a trio of young hard chargers (including his son Adrian jr), and also in GP2 where his old team now owned by the spanish businessman Alejandro Agag are still frontrunners.

US GRAND PRIX ENGINEERING - USF1 COSWORTH
TEAM OWNERS: Ken Anderson & Peter Windsor
HEADQUARTERS: Charlotte, North Carolina
CURRENT ACTIVITIES AND DRIVERS: none

You wont find this lot anywhere on the motorsport scene at the moment, thats because the men behind the USF1 project have been working hard over the last 4 years with the sole aim of producing an American Grand Prix entry, the first such attempt since Shadow came to a close in 1980. Infact only 2 American cars have ever won Grands Prix, these being the Eagle Weslake driven by Dan Gurney in Belgium in 1967 and British driver John Watson drove to victory in Austria 1976 in a Cosworth engined Penske.
Its a very ambitious project taken on by Peter Windsor who has experience in F1 as a PR manager at Williams and is also a TV commentator for American F1 coverage while Ken Anderson has got team boss credentials in NASCAR with the Stewart-Haas team which scored their first win in Pocono last week. Ambitious because they have built this team from the ground up and have had to find the money to finance it themselves, which they have done.
Most of all, they want to promote Grand Prix racing in the USA through their team, difficult considering the huge fanbases they already have for their home championships NASCAR and IndyCar and to help, they ave said they would like to employ 2 American drivers with good circuit/road course records, names which could pop up are American drivers that have featured in the A1GP series like Jonathan Summerton, Charlie Kimball and Marco Andretti.