According to reports in the New York Times, the USF1 team has applied to the FIA for permission to miss the opening four rounds of the 2010 Formula One championship season.

For the team that has had the longest amount of time to get their act together, the first of all the new teams to announce their plans to enter the sport this season, it leaves their future completely up in the air.

Whilst FOM boss Bernie Ecclestone said recently that teams could miss three rounds and not be penalized, the FIA was quick to react and reiterate that that simply wasn’t the case...

“From a sporting and regulatory point of view, each Team that has registered for the Championship is obliged to take part in every event of the season,” the sport’s governing body stated recently. “Any failure to take part, even for just one Championship event, would constitute an infringement both of the Concorde Agreement and the FIA Regulations.”

However, this has not stopped the USF1 team from asking anyway as co founder Ken Anderson told the NYT....

“We’re working with the FIA to clarify how many races we can miss. In an ideal world, we can miss the first four races and show up in Barcelona,” he said.

Anderson also admitted that sponsorship money had fallen through but if they get a quick positive response from the FIA they have other backers in place ready to act immediately to ensure they have a car ready for the Spanish Grand Prix in May.

“We have a timeline in place that if we get a decision quickly, that triggers funding and we’re good to go. If it takes another week or two to make a decision, it keeps backing up.”

The American team are hopeful that Jean Todt will give them a positive response rather than penalize them for skipping races as previously stated.....

“I guess anything’s possible,” he admitted. “But what would be the point of that? Why would they give us a franchise and just, the first time there’s a bump in the road, yank it and put it out of business? That’s definitely not the message that I’m getting from them. They want to help us, not shut us down.”