AMERICA'S NEXT

RISING STARS CONOR DALY AND ALEXANDER ROSSI HOPE TO

WITH THE TOP DOWN, stereo cranked, and sta-bility control off, the black BMW M6 glides throughthe neon caverns of Las Vegas. At the wheel,twenty-year-old Alexander Rossi is driving his fa-

ther's car with the nonchalance and grace you'd expect of the onlyAmerican holding an "FIASuper License-a prerequisite for racingin Formula 1. Although he's just finished an elaborate celebratorydinner after meetings with potential sponsors at the ConsumerElectronics Show, Rossi shows remarkable restraint as he cruisesthrough the typical flotsam of a Las Vegas night. He ignores ayoung reveler who's retching outside the open door of his limou-sine, then declines a challenge to street race with a sport-utilityvehicle filled with giggling hotties. In fact, he hardly pushes thespeed limit until passing well beyond the city limits on his way tohis hotel near Lake Las Vegas.

There's nothing out here-no cars, no cops, no traffic lights,just a long, straight furrow of empty road that fairly beckons forspeed. Rossi can't resist the temptation to let the V-lO sing, and the

speedometer winds past 120 mph, 130, 140. He brakes firmly andcarves into a left-hander, As the car rotates down toward the apex,he plants the gas pedal and deftly catches the sliding rear end withan effortless application of opposite lock. Up ahead, a roundaboutawaits. Rossi pulls off to the side of the road to let a few cars pass.His father, Pieter, knows what's next. "Don't hit the curb," he mur-murs, more concerned about his expensive wheels than any may-hem to come. Alexander doesn't bother to reply. When the round-about is clear, he nails the throttle, cranks in a bunch of steering,and dirt-tracks around the traffic circle in a heady haze of enginenoise and tire smoke.

After completing one full revolution in perfect drift form, hecomes to a stop. "How are your rear tires?" he asks his father.

"OK. Why?""1want to do it again."Pieter shakes his head. "Once is fine. But then somebody calls

the cops, and that's how you get into trouble. Come on, we'll beback here on the way to the airport tomorrow."

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BRING AN AMERICAN PRESENCE BACK TO THE GRAND PRIX SCENE.

And there, in a single 360, is Team Rossi in action: Alexandertakes care of business in the cockpit with verve, aplomb, and preci-sion. Pieter is the deal-maker, the sponsor-finder, the whatever-it-takes guy who keeps his son's career on the right course. Working to-gether, they've secured a highly coveted slot as a reserve driver forCaterham Fl, which means Alexander will test during free practicebefore grands prix in 2012. And next year, if all goes according toTeam Rossi's fastidiously laid plans, he'll be the first American to racein Formula 1 since Scott Speed flamed out so spectacularly in 2007.

Meanwhile, halfway across the country, the heartland racingmecca of Indianapolis is the unlikely home of another father andson chasing the Fl dream. Actually, the father-Derek Daly-spentfive seasons in Formula 1 before hanging up his racing suit. Now,he's using his Fl contacts and hard-headed negotiating skills tohelp his twenty-year-old son, Conor, follow in his wheel tracks.This year, Conor will do his second consecutive season in GP3,which is an international open-wheel series that's two rungs belowFl, and he's reportedly on the radar of at least one Formula 1 team.

So it's not inconceivable that there might be not one but two Amer-icans fighting for Fl podiums a few years down the road.

It's been a long time coming. The lack of competitive Ameri-cans in the world's most expensive, exotic, and internationallypopular form of racing has long been the source of national soul-searching, especially during an era when F1 is drawing driversfrom motors ports backwaters such as Poland, Russia, and India.After all, what do they have that we don't? The issue seems par-ticularly galling now that a U.S. Grand Prix is scheduled for Aus-tin, Texas, in November and a second Fl race in New Jersey is ten-tatively set for 2013. And as Derek Daly puts it, "Unless there is anAmerican driver in Fl, those races will not succeed:'

So plenty of eyes are on young Rossi and Daly. Not just in For-mula 1but also here in the States. Will they be the next coming ofPhil Hill and Mario Andretti, the only Americans to win worldcharnpionships? Or will they join the long list of Americans whomade a run at F1 but didn't have the talent, or money, or luck-orall three-to make it to the top?

Americans haven't always been strangers to Formula 1.During the 1960s and '70s,there was a formidable American contingent in international rnotorsports, butthe ranks of Yanks thinned considerably in the '80s. The pipeline dried up afterMichael Andretti's debacle at McLaren in 1993. Unable to get enough proper

testing time in a difficult car and unwilling to commit to living in Europe, Andretti lookedsecond-rate next to his teammate-who happened to be Ayrton Senna at the height of hispowers. The episode convinced Fl movers and shakers that there was no reason to lookfor drivers in the United States.

If the mountain wouldn't go to Muhammad, then journalist/broadcaster JeremyShaw-a Brit who'd moved to the States-realized Muhammad would have to go to themountain. With the help of various motorsports professionals, Shaw created the TeamU.SA. Scholarship in 1990 to help Americans race in the hotly contested and closelywatched Formula Ford Festival in the United Kingdom. Besides spotlighting the talent ofyoung Americans, the idea was to show Americans what it took to succeed in Europe."Here, the racing is a lot more chummy and fun," Shaw says. "Over there, it's much morecutthroat. You get thrown in at the deep end, and you're on your own."

Shaw proved to be a remarkably prescient evaluator of young talent; the Team U.S.A.honor roll includes top-shelf pros such as Jimmy Vasser, Bryan Herta, Buddy Rice, A. J.Allmendinger, and Joey Hand. Eventually, though, it became clear that one Europeanrace a year wasn't going to cut it. So the next generation of American Fl hopefuls movedto Europe. Patrick Long, Paul Edwards, Jonathan Summerton, and Josef Newgardenshowed plenty of speed, but their progress up the European formula-car ranks stalledwhen they ran out of money, and they returned to solid careers in the States. Only ScottSpeed grabbed the brass ring, largely thanks to the financial backing and marketingclout of Red Bull.

Formula car racing is hellishly expensive, especially in Europe. A ride in a premierGP3 team runs about $800,000. To that, add travel and living expenses. And insurance.And crash damage. "We didn't have a Brazilian bank account with gazillions of dollars,so we had to be creative," Pieter Rossi recalls. When Alexander was racing in the For-mula BMW series here in the States, the Rossis defrayed their expenses by putting to-gether elaborate VIP programs for paying guests. Later, they created a limited partner-ship composed of commercial sponsors and personal investors to fund their racingprogram in Europe.

Conor Daly has taken a somewhat different route. Until this year, most of his racingexpenses have been covered by scholarship money earned tile previous season. For2012, though, he struggled to come up with the funding for another year in GP3, andhis father says they came close to forming a Rossi-style investment group. Derek Dalyacknowledges that his own reputation in Europe probably helped his son secure a raceseat with a front-running team. "But no matter what doors I can open, Con or has to bestrong enough to walk through them by himself," he says. "Racing has a way of findingyou out very, very quickly."

There's not much shop taJk about racing while DaJy andRossi kill time during a photo shoot in San Diego. That'sbusiness, after all. Instead, the conversation is dominatedby the mundane stuff that interests most rwenry-year-olds.

"So, have you met any famous people in Formula l?" Dalyasks Rossi.

Rossi thinks it over. ''NataJie Portman at Cannes," he says.''Noway!''Rossi scores extra points with Jennifer Lopez in Monaco and

Paul McCartney in Abu Dhabi. The best a jealous Daly can do ishaving talked to Troy Polamalu in an airport lounge.

Rossi is the greyhound to Daly's bulldog. He's lithe as a dancer,fashion forward and quietly confident after three years of livinglargely on his own in Europe after growing up in Northern Cali-fornia. Daly is built more like a wrestler, and he's earnest and eagerto please, with a deep voice and Midwestern accent that betraysnone of his Irish heri-tage. Yet it's the simi-larities between themthat are the most strik-ing. They were bothborn in 1991.They bothstarted karting whenthey were ten. And nei-ther of them can imag-ine a life other than theone they're leading.

Rossi: "This wasn'ta hobby that turnedinto a career. It wasmore like a career fromday one."

Daly: "It's the onlything I'm really, reallygood at, and I love doingit every single day."

Although they havenever raced against oneanother, their careershave followed remark-ably similar trajectories. Both parlayed dominant performances inkarts into Skip Barber championships. For Daly, his breakout seasonwas a magicaJ year in Star Mazda in 2010. Last year, he managed afew races in Indy Lights before moving to Europe to tackle GP3.There, he endured a hero-to-zero nightmare, goingfrom first in theIndy Lights championship to last on the grid in Turkey. Althoughhe never got to grips with the peculiarities of his Pirelli tires duringGP3 quaJifying, he was a demon in race trim, putting together ah.ighlight reel full of ambush-style passes and briefly leading thefield in the final race at Monza.

"He's still a goofbaJl kid, but he's got a good head on his shoul-ders, and I was surprised by his maturity in the car:' says ChrisFinch, his race engineer in Indy Lights. "He's willing to take therisks necessary to make a Cal' go fast. But he thinks about race-craft, and he understands that you have to adjust your driving tothe demands of the venue."

Rossi's meteoric rise began in Formula BMW, an exorbitantlyexpensive junior series with the notable benefit of an interna-

tional component. (Three of last year's Fl drivers were formerFormula BMW champions.) He won three times during his firstseason, in the States. His second, he won the World FinaJs in Mex-ico City, which earned him a Sauber-BMW F1 test (and an FIASuper License). In 2009, Rossi excelled in the InternationaJ For-mula Master Champions. The next year, he won twice during afrustrating up-and-down GP3 season. Last year, he was third inWorld Series by Renault, which is one rung down from Formula 1and which has produced two world champions in FernandoAlonso and Sebastian Vettel.

"You don't meet very many people like Alexander," says StuartKing, his race engineer in World Series. "He's not arrogant, butyou can tell that he believes in himself. He's so clued in. He knowsexactly what he wants from the car, and it never seemed as if hisbrain was saturated when he was on the track. There were timeslast year when he made everyone look pretty average."

For Daly, 2012promises to be a make-or-break season. If hedoesn't win races inGP3, he realizes that he

tt:. can probably forgetabout Formula L "Thepolitics are brutal," he

_,- says matter-of-factly.Rossi, a year or twoahead of Daly, is alreadyon the cusp of FL Buthe, too, knows howquickly the dream canevaporate. "We're get-ting closer, but there isstill a long, long way togo:' he says.

Purely from a sta-tisticaJ standpoint, theodds aga.inst making itto Formula 1 are astro-nom.icaJ. This is thegoaJ of virtually every

driver in the world outside the United States, and it's uncommonfor more than five or six seats to open up any given year, so you dothe math. Back when Derek Daly was clawing his way up the lad-der in the 1970s, the map for reaching the Prom.ised Land wassimple: prove that you've got the requisite skill and determination,amass a reasonable sum of money, and you, too, could be a For-mula 1driver.

These days, the model is much more complicated. Talent is stilla given, and winning races is still a must. But Daly and Rossi realizethat they also have to aJign themselves with 'the right sponsors andfashion a persona that attracts the right team, Caterham Fl wouldn'thave been interested in Rossi if he wasn't blazingly quick on thetrack. But as team principal Tony Fernandes says approvingly, "Heconducts himself extremely well in and out of the paddock, and heis the sort of ambassador that ticks the boxes of many global brands."

It has been twenty-nine years since two Americans were in thesame F1 field. Here's betting it won't be another twenty-nine yearsbefore we see two more Americans sharing a GP grid. AM