F1 doesn't deserve Andretti, but desperately needs them

A quick recap of what led up to this. Andretti Global, a motorsport organization owned by 1978 F1 champion Mario Andretti and his son Michael, has been trying to get on the F1 grid for years now. They’ve had success in other championships, most notably IndyCar and Formula E, but couldn’t quite break into F1 yet. The FIA was in their corner and approved them in late 2023, but the F1 teams were a little more hesitant. Only Alpine and McLaren were open to Andretti joining, everyone else was wary because it would mean that they’d have to share the income with a new contender. 

The final decision was up to Formula One Management, spearheaded by F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali. Domenicali had to find a solution between the interests of Andretti, the F1 teams, and the commercial rights holder Liberty Media. Eventually he decided that Andretti wouldn’t be a good enough addition to the grid, and that is the end of that (for now at least).

Andretti was prepared, but F1 wants more

Andretti was ready to go. The plan was to join in 2026, so that they’d be properly prepared to come in swinging. They were in talks with former Alpine team principal Otmar Szafnauer to become their team principal. They had a crew of 120 people working on the F1 operations. They even had a mock-up of a car which they were preparing in a windtunnel. Andretti was not only hopeful, they were confident. But reading the statement by F1, it is clear that F1 did not share that confidence.

“The presence of an 11th team would not, on its own, provide value to the championship. The most significant way in which a new entrant would bring value is by being competitive.”

Yes, being competitive. You know, like Haas. Or Sauber. Or AlphaTauri.

Andretti is competitive in every championship they enter. Sure, the results vary, but at the very least they’re a solid upper midfield team. Third in Formula E last year. Two wins and three podiums in IndyCar in 2023. Second in IndyNXT. In total, Andretti competed in seven championships in 2023. That’s more than Ferrari and Alpine combined. 

And yet F1 insists that “F1 would bring value to Andretti rather than the other way around”. Sure, participating in F1 would give a massive boost to Andretti’s standing as a team, but it’s not like they’re some no-names right now. If it were about Bob’s Racing Team from Ipswich, then yeah, I could get this point. But for Andretti? Come on F1. 

F1 needs Andretti

Conversely however, F1 desperately needs an additional team, even if they like to pretend that they don’t. The FIA estimated that the competition can field twelve teams without problems. More than that, and we’d be going back to the days of pre-qualifying and nobody wants that mess again. But twelve teams should be fine.

For years now, we’ve been hearing how difficult it is for young drivers to get in F1. Veterans like Alonso, Hulkenberg and Perez stick around for longer which leaves less space for rookies to get in. And with less and less opportunities for testing, the rookies that do get in will struggle a lot, like Nyck de Vries or Logan Sargeant. It leads to stars like Liam Lawson, Theo Pourchaire and Felipe Drugovich being left on the sidelines.

Getting an eleventh team will somewhat open up the driver market and allow teams to maybe loan their promising young drivers to someone else. But there’s another reason why F1 needs Andretti so much. The sport is in one of its best eras ever, both commercially and competitively (if you ignore the fact that there was no battle for the title, that is). If you want to prove how strong your championship really is, you’d want to have other teams come in and prove their worth. Andretti is just the right team to do that. As I said before, they have the pedigree and the history, they can be a midfield team at the very least. Them coming in and joining the fight on the midfield straight away wouldn’t just be a testament to Andretti, it would showcase just how strong F1 is as a championship.

2028

But it is the last paragraph of the statement that really tells us what the endgame of F1 is here. “We would look differently on an application for the entry of a team into the 2028 championship with a GM power unit, either as a GM works team or as a GM customer team designing all allowable components in-house.” 

That date of 2028 wasn’t an accident. It was chosen very deliberately. First of all, that’s the year that General Motors will - presumably - enter as an engine supplier. That would mean Andretti would have their own private supplier, just like Aston Martin will have with Honda, Alpine with Renault, and Audi with… well, Audi.

But it also gives F1 a very convenient way to hide what this has secretly not so secretly all been about from the beginning: money. If Andretti makes it to the grid in 2025 or 2026, they will do so under the current Concorde Agreement, which is the set of rules all F1 teams abide by and agree on. But that current set of rules is up for renewal in 2026. Currently, it states that a new team will have to pay $200 million before they can enter. Anyone want to take a guess if that number is going to go up or down in the next agreement?

Hint: it’s going to be more. So much more.

Talk in the paddock was already that a new team would have to lay down a crisp $600 million to enter. LKY SUNZ, who like Andretti were hoping to join the grid, immediately upped the ante by saying they were willing to pay up to a billion dollars for an entry spot. It’s impossible to say what number will be stated in the new Concorde Agreement, but I think we can safely assume that it’ll be closer to that 1 billion than to the 200 million. 

So what’s next for Andretti? I’ll go over the different possibilities in another article. But for now, it seems like this is the end of the road for a possible 11th team in Formula 1.