F1 looking for new teams - Nascar owner wants in

An American team is bidding to enter Formula One in 2015.
Bernie Ecclestone revealed on Thursday that he is in talks with two parties interested in the FIA's invitation to fill the final spot in pitlane.
It emerges that one of them is Gene Haas, a Nascar team owner.
"We have responded to the FIA's 'call for expression of interest'," he said, "and will share more details in the coming weeks."
Haas co-owns the Stewart-Haas team, and reports said he has an estimated net worth of $740 million.
It is claimed his team would be based in Charlotte. They also have a base in Belgium and own the wind tunnel that 75% of F1 teams use.

Stefan GP who previously applied are believed to be the other team interested in joining F1 again.

Would be happy to see Haas get approved as he's venture in Nascar looks successful and would also mean an american team in the sport. If this happened possibly we could see Donica Patrick in F1??

No idea on Stefan GP par the fact they have been rejected a few times.

Honestly, I'm surprised there is interest from the US. They tend to like their motorsports pretty simple, both technologically and rules-wise (the good attendances at the recent US Grands Prix notwithstanding).

NASCAR vehicles are like V8-powered Touring Cars, compared to F1 cars. NASCAR is also hugely popular and gets lots of fans, hence its profitable for them. I could be wrong but even Indy Cars are more like GP2, or other lower formula single-seaters.

Trying to run an F1 team from Belgium is an entirely different proposition.

Firstly, there is a hell of a lot more travel involved - global, rather than just around 1 (admittedly very big) country.

Then there's the technical angle. From my admittedly limited knowledge, there isn't that much to building and running a NASCAR vehicle. The specs are pretty basic and I don't think you can deviate much from them. At any rate, I'm fairly certain NASCAR / Indy Car teams don't spend anything like the time and resources developing their cars throughout a season, the way F1 teams do.

The only way I could see a US team sticking around for any length of time is if they could make a pretty rapid transition from back of the grid, to at least where the likes of Force India, Toro Rosso and Williams are right now. They'd need a certain level of success, fairly quickly, to justify the expense. They couldn't afford to be like Caterham and Marussia.

Haas is perhaps becoming bored of NASCAR. Like you say dyrewolfe they'd need success straight away or at least be a midfield runner to be encouraged to carry on. The technical side of F1 they'd be pretty alien to unless they get an F1 man in to run the team (Ross Brawn anyone?). It would be good to have a big US team in F1 and it would be even better if they could encourage a big US engine supplier or such-like to get involved as well. You still feel that F1 has not tapped into the US market as much as it should.

Haas is the American version of Briatore: he's been convicted of tax evasion, conspiracy and intimidation of witnesses; not someone F1 should be welcoming with open arms.

Good grief! Lets hope there are other candidates out there then.

Don't get me wrong I would love to see a US team in F1 and think an American audience and market can only be good for the sport.

However, in order to get quick success, they'd have to buy in a lot of European expertise to hit the ground running on the technical / engineering side. Also (again I'm guessing here) but most US race drivers are used to either racing on ovals or the closer wheel-to-wheel Indycar stuff.

Either way, their cars, I believe, are a lot simpler. Asking an American driver to get to grips with stuff like DRS and ERS, on top of different engine settings etc...Well, it'd be no different to getting a lower-formula rookie driver on board. I'm sure they'd learn, given time, but I think a lot of them would find F1 boring.

So while there obviously are F1 fans in the US, I can't ever see it competing with their homegrown motorsports.