The soap opera surrounding the tenuous state of USF1 heading into the 2010 Formula One season has reached a climax. And unfortunately for the Charlotte-based outfit, they couldn’t live long enough to see the closing credits.

Autosport is reporting that USF1’s team operations have ‘effectively shut down’, signaling the end of months’ worth of uncertainty on whether the team can make it to the Bahrain Grand Prix for the opening race of the season.

While no official announcement has been made by anyone in-the-know, this report comes only a few days after the team SpeedTV reported that USF1 requested a one-year delay on their F1 entry. With the likelihood of missing the entire 2010 season becoming more and more probable, the team appealed to the FIA to have their seats kept warm just in time for the 2011 season. The FIA has not yet ruled on the team’s request, although SpeedTV’s report said that the Formula One’s governing body was supportive of USF1 with the FIA’s racing director, Charlie Whiting, making a trip to the US to meet with the teams higher-ups.

Continued after the jump.

What we do know after all of this is that we won’t be seeing the team in 2010. After that will depend on whether the team can get the financial backing and the technological know-how to run a full-scale F1 team. In the meantime, though, Stefan GP – the team that applied for a seat in 2010 but missed the deadline back in December – is licking their chops at the thought of filling the vacancy left by USF1 on the 2010 grid.

In any case, the season-opening race in Bahrain is only a few weeks away so you can expect that this whole saga would eventually come to a close soon.