Ballsy Andretti bid stirred genuine excitement — until graceless F1 said no

All of the above being the case, you might have been forgiven for assuming that, when in 2022 the Andrettis announced that they were ready to enter F1, every relevant stakeholder from Maranello to Milton Keynes would have been hugely enthused, and that F1’s powers-that-be would have been equally thrilled. Well, as we all saw on Wednesday, when F1 issued a curt and graceless thanks-but-no-thanks statement despite the FIA’s having given its approval some time ago, you would have been wrong. However, the decision was not the FIA’s to make. It was the prerogative of F1, in other words Liberty Media.

The teams exerted considerable influence, too, although contrary to some media reports they do not have a veto in such matters. They were not supportive of the Andrettis’ ambitions for two principal reasons: (1) they do not want F1’s annual financial divvy-up to involve 11 recipients instead of the current 10, and (2) the value of F1 teams is obviously enhanced significantly if the only way for wealthy and ambitious outsiders to own F1 teams is to buy existing ones. But the Andrettis intended to create their own brand-new F1 team from scratch.

Well, not from scratch per se, because Andretti Autosport, which has recently and significantly rebranded itself Andretti Global, is already a motor sport powerhouse. It fields teams in IndyCar, Indy NXT, IMSA, Formula E, Extreme E and Aussie Supercars, and it has been very successful over the years. Granted, F1 is a much more complex design and engineering exercise than any of the above series, but the Andrettis know how many racing beans make five. They are very far from being the latest naive no-hopers, following in the wheel tracks of such as HRT, to name but one, whose sluggish cars were allowed to paint the rearmost rows of the world’s grand prix grids black and red from 2010 to 2012. Nonetheless, one of the reasons why Andretti Global’s application was rejected is that F1 considered that it would not be “a competitive participant”.

No shit, Sherlock. Hardly any new F1 team ever is. Not since Jody Scheckter won the 1977 Argentine Grand Prix, which was the Wolf team’s debut race, has any new F1 team been genuinely competitive from the get-go, and even then Scheckter benefited from DNFs and/or technical problems affecting the faster cars ahead of him. Indeed, only four other cars were still running at the end, just three of them on the winner’s lap. Haas is about to enter its ninth F1 season, and, apart from the odd flash in the pan, it has never been a genuinely competitive participant. Besides, backmarkers and also-rans are a grand tradition in all forms of motor sport. They provide opportunities for young drivers and greenhorn staffers to cut their teeth at the back of the field, and there is nothing wrong with that. Over time, they often improve. Indeed, look beyond Haas and the two most recently inaugurated F1 teams still in existence are Stewart Grand Prix of Milton Keynes (1997) and BAR of Brackley (1999). Stewart scored points only once in 1997, and in 1999 BAR scored no points at all. Stewart is now Red Bull, and BAR is now Mercedes. I think it is safe to say that since their formation both have become competitive participants. That is what Andretti Global should have been given the chance, and the time, to become.

Moreover, despite not having a confirmed entry, Andretti Global has been making serious preparations for a while now — further evidence of the Andrettis’ remarkable bravery and ballsiness. They have set up near Silverstone a satellite to their Indianapolis headquarters, and they have hired more than 100 technical staff, some of them lured from Red Bull, Mercedes, Ferrari and McLaren. The fact that such people were willing to leave well-paid jobs with F1’s grandee teams to throw their lot in with the Andrettis tells you all you need to know about how excited many F1 insiders were about their plans and ambitions. Indeed, that insider excitement alone should have been evidence enough for F1’s decision makers to consider moving towards giving Michael and Mario a green light.

The current F1 rules allow for up to 12 teams, so 12 teams it should ideally be; or, OK, 11, if only Andretti Global and no other new team were to enter. The addition of a new team would have sparked a fresh and compelling narrative for media and fans (many of whom have been tiring of the samey-ness of F1 in 2022 and 2023), would have provided two more drives for the likes of Theo Pourchaire, Frederik Vesti and Jack Doohan (who, despite their strong F2 form in 2023, do not look like getting their backsides into F1 race seats any time soon), and would have offered attractive new employment opportunities for technical, commercial, comms/PR, marketing and ancillary staff. As for the teams’ opposition to the admission of a new team on the grounds that it would erode the value of their franchises, all I can say is that F1 was not a closed shop when they entered it, it has never been a closed shop since then, and it should not be treated as a closed shop now. And what about their fear that an 11-way revenue split would net them a smaller share than they now receive? Well, it is timid and insular. If you are baking a pie for 10, and one of your guests asks if he, she or they may bring a partner, you bake a bigger pie. That might cost you a little more money; but in F1’s case the addition of a new team as storied as Andretti Global would have been likely to add commercial volume to the F1 ‘pie’ as an organic outcome of its introduction. Or, to quote an American almost as famous as Mario Andretti — John F Kennedy — a rising tide lifts all the boats. In addition, the 10 existing teams would have shared Andretti Global’s US$200 million ‘dilution fee’, the express purpose of which is to compensate them for the very revenue reduction about which they have been complaining.

Wednesday’s F1 statement also included the contention that “our research indicates that F1 would bring value to the Andretti brand rather than the other way around”. Not only is the tone of those words callous, but also their import is scarcely relevant. The F1 brand is bigger than that of any current F1 team with the exception of Ferrari, which is why the Scuderia has always been granted financial advantages and guarantees the like of which no other team has ever enjoyed. If I were to bump into Stefano Domenicali in my favourite local, The Cat’s Back in Wandsworth, London — unlikely I know — I would ask him whether he thinks MoneyGram Haas, Stake Kick Sauber or Visa Cash App RB bring value to the F1 brand. I doubt if he would have a good answer. No, it is clearly the other way around, to borrow the words used in the F1 statement. Indeed, Ferrari apart, only the Mercedes, Aston Martin and McLaren brands are of demonstrably higher value than the Andretti brand. And, finally, if you, dear reader, are about to protest that some circuits have cramped garage space that might make another team sometimes tricky to accommodate, I respectfully chide you for being blinkered and parochial. It is a problem hardly beyond the wit of man to solve, particularly not the wit of F1 men (and women) who solve infinitely more complex problems daily and routinely.

And then there is Cadillac, Andretti’s engine partner: General Motors, in other words, one of the largest corporations of any kind in the world, revered by millions of Americans, and the manufacturer of not only Cadillacs but also Buicks, Chevrolets and GMCs. Put it this way: if you were Domenicali, surely you would prefer to have General Motors on the inside pissing out instead of on the outside pissing in. Well, he has chosen the latter. He may have been swayed by partisan critics of Andretti Global, who had suggested that Cadillac’s contribution was likely to be akin to that of Alfa Romeo’s with Sauber in recent years — a branding exercise in other words. The Andrettis say otherwise, reporting that the American automotive giant has already been involving itself and its technical employees in CFD work, hydraulics design, the development of safety features (roll hoops for example), and more besides.

So is that it then? Is that the end of the Andrettis’ F1 dream? In its statement F1 left the door open for them to apply for admission in 2028. But there is a reason that Michael and Mario had decided to apply for admission in 2025 rather than 2026. The later year might have made more sense from a technical, logistical and financial point of view, given that 2025 will be a swansong for the current formula prior to the launch of an all-new formula in 2026. However, that all-new formula is likely to be accompanied by an all-new Concorde Agreement that may include an amendment to the current one, reducing the maximum number of teams to 10. So arguably the Andrettis had no choice. And the mention of 2028 just may have been an F1 sop, perhaps not worth much more than the paper it was written on.

It is clear that the sympathy of F1 fans is overwhelmingly with Michael and Mario. The extent of that sympathy — and the opprobrium that is consequently being hurled on social media at Domenicali, F1 and Liberty Media — may have taken them all by surprise. In truth it should not have done, for it was not only predictable but also predicted by anyone blessed with a feel for the soul of the sport. So will they change their minds, cowed by the scale of their newly acquired unpopularity? They may. Then again they may not. But they should. The situation is changing daily, perhaps hourly. F1 and Liberty Media are in the sports entertainment business, and fan fury should be a worry to them, especially if it begins to affect share prices. I am reminded of the wise remark often attributed to John Maynard Keynes: “When the situation changes, I change my mind; what do you do, sir?” It is advice that Domenicali would do well to consider.

Even so, personally, as a seasoned F1 comms/PR man, I would have counselled the Andrettis to have framed their messaging more diplomatically. Senior F1 people tend to be pernickety men, and words such as ‘deprive’ — as in Michael Andretti’s recent comment that F1 should not “deprive racing fans of the opportunity to see a genuine American works team” — perhaps sounded unnecessarily and unhelpfully cocksure to ears belonging to touchy European blowhards. The Andrettis had clearly decided that they were going to shame F1 into saying yes to them. It did not work.

Nonetheless, although they were fully aware that success in F1 would have taken them many years to achieve, they already run a remarkable organisation. In May 2017, when I was McLaren’s comms/PR chief, and Fernando Alonso opted to skip that year’s Monaco Grand Prix to tackle the Indy 500 in an Andretti-run ‘McLaren’ (a papaya Dallara-Honda, actually, but let’s not be churlish), I spent more than a week in Indianapolis with Michael, Mario and their surprisingly small but conspicuously capable staff. It was a fascinating experience, and I flew back to Woking impressed. Andretti Autosport was and Andretti Global is a company that gets things done. Meetings are run chummily, efficiently and decisively, and action points are agreed, minuted and acted upon. Things are often a bit more political than that on our side of the pond, and the result is sometimes muddle, or delay, or occasionally both. Corporate trepidation can play havoc with F1 teams’ technical and operational planning, too: specifically, it can make highly pressured engineers and technicians fearful of failure, which can deter them from daring to innovate, which is inimical to the fostering of the culture of ambitious collaboration without which no F1 team has ever won anything. I saw none of that while I was with the Andrettis.

What I did see was a magnificent motor race — albeit, for us McLarenites, a bitterly disappointing one. I watched the first half of it from an infield top-floor balcony overlooking Turn 1, and, for me, no racing spectacle has ever beaten that, even if others have come close or have perhaps equalled it. Which others? Well, I am remembering standing a foot behind the exit armco at Casino Square, Monaco, in 2003, when a sideways Kimi Raikkonen gently tapped it with his McLaren’s left rear Michelin, on his fastest lap, in banzai pursuit of Juan Pablo Montoya’s winning Williams; I am remembering leaping to my feet on the Clearways/Clark Curve grandstand, Brands Hatch, in 1978, aged 15, when Carlos Reutemann hurled his Ferrari inside his arch rival Niki Lauda’s Brabham into a lead he would never lose; I am remembering Ayrton Senna and Michael Schumacher in the rain, anywhere.

But I digress. Halfway through the 2017 Indy 500 I strolled down from my Turn 1 vantage point into the McLaren hospitality suite, so as to watch the climax of the race on TV monitors with data screens alongside. I sat down beside Johnny Rutherford, a three-time winner at Indy, two of those victories scored in McLarens (1974 and 1976). I had hired Lone Star JR, as racing’s good ol’ boys call him, to assist us as a brand ambassador in the lead-up to the big race, and he and I had got on very well. That is not hard to do: he is not only a 24-carat racing legend but is also a truly lovely guy. Alonso had led the race often, he was driving brilliantly, and in the fourth quarter he looked to be in good shape for a tilt at the win. The atmosphere in the McLaren hospitality suite was electric. On lap 179, with 21 to go therefore, he was running seventh, very much a contender in the tightly packed leading group. Suddenly, as it had so often in F1 that year and the two years before it, his Honda engine failed, and he coasted to a halt on the infield just before Turn 1. Choked and speechless, I looked at Rutherford. He shrugged, shook his head, and drawled, “Dang, dang, dang.”

Takuma Sato won the race. Driving an Andretti car. Naturally.