FIA F1 race director and technical department head Charlie Whiting is believed to be paying a call on the US F1 facility in Charlotte this morning, having travelled to America yesterday.
Although FIA sources could not confirm the trip, it’s assumed that he’s making the visit in order to find out exactly what the state of play is at the beleaguered team.
US F1 boss Ken Anderson recently asked the FIA for dispensation for the team to appear at the fifth race of the season in Barcelona. The governing body has recently issued a clarification insisting that teams cannot miss any races, despite suggestions from Bernie Ecclestone and others that the Concorde Agreement allows teams to skip three events.
Whiting will be able to determine whether the team has any chance of competing even by Spain, and will presumably submit a report back to FIA President Jean Todt.
In the past ACCUS boss Nick Craw – who naturally has been keen to see the project take off – has visited the team on behalf of the FIA.
Adam Cooper's F1 Blog 
Any word on who else was there? Anderson? Windsor? Hurley? Craw? Lopez?
Definitely not Craw, Charlie was alone. I can’t imagine that Hurley and Lopez were there…
Whats the matter??? Don’t they trust Craw’s ability to judge the situation???
I guess when he guaranteed USF1 would be on the grid in Bahrain, live on SPEED, he did kind of lose credibility in judging the matter…
“Charlie Whiting has finished his solo visit to the USF1 factory in Charlotte. A source tells me he spent four hours at the facility this AM”
“A cue for some suggestions on how he managed to stretch his visit out for that long!”
Would I be a bad person if I suggested he was trying to find a car in the parts bin? 🙂
I have huge respect to Peter Windsor, but I really don’t see there’s any way out but finding a resolution w/ Campos or Stefan in order to make it to Bahrain…
In all probability the formal reason for Whitings visit was to assess Ken Andersons request to miss four races without being thrown out of F1.
What interests me much more is: Does the FIA have any legal base on which they can revoke the team’s F1 entry *before* even the season has started? Or do they have to wait for those three races?
Can’t imagine how it got this far based on what’s been reported. After that Speed TV walk-through months ago, you would think that someone at the FIA with a clue would have paid a visit to verify progress. Craw was a Mosley shill, and his “it’s all good” comments only kept the scam alive. This whole debacle speaks to the selection process, but no one from FIA wants to go there.