A storm is brewing in Formula 1.
At first glance, the dispute flared up because the potential entry of the American Andretti team to the Cadillac automobile company.
But this is only a means by which it is played out. In fact, it is about the usual – power, money and influence.
And while the debate may have taken place behind closed doors, the governing body’s president, Mohammed Ben Sulayem, announced it publicly.
In doing so, he opened a window into the latest in a series of rifts between the FIA, F1’s commercial rights holder, and the teams that have marked his tenure since he took over at the end of 2021.
What is the dispute about?
At its core, the controversy revolves around US racing legend Michael Andretti’s desire to enter Formula 1 with his own team.
First, the 60-year-old tried to buy the Sauber team last year. When that failed, Andretti announced plans to start his own team. This, too, was met with reluctance from Formula 1’s power brokers, who were not convinced the project was credible enough to add the necessary value to a sport experiencing a significant increase in global interest, particularly in the US.
Andretti was effectively told, “Go away and find a car manufacturer that will support your proposal, and we’ll look at it again.”
So he did. He’s hit it big: American icon General Motors, once the world’s biggest car company but still one of the biggest, announced last week that it would join forces with Andretti using its Cadillac luxury brand.
Andretti now believes he has done enough, and the FIA has also expressed its belief, saying in a statement last week that it was “particularly pleasing to have interest from two iconic brands”.
But F1 was lukewarm. It said there was “great interest in the F1 project at this time, with a number of talks ongoing but not as prominent as others”, adding: “Any new request would require the consent of F1 and the FIA”.
On Sunday, Ben Sulayem issued another statement on Twitter.
“Surprisingly, there has been some backlash to the Cadillac and Andretti Global news,” he wrote.
“We should encourage potential bids from global manufacturers like GM and thoroughbred racers like Andretti and others.”
The strange thing about this was that there was no “backlash” to the Andretti news – at least not publicly.
Insiders say Ben Sulayem’s tweet was likely a response to F1’s lukewarm response to Andretti’s announcement, as well as opposition to the closed-door bid from existing teams, who have no official voice in the process but certainly have a powerful voice.
An FIA spokesman said on Monday: “The FIA has made no indication or comment on the potential success or otherwise of any organization expressing an interest in participating in the championship.”
They added that the process “will follow strict FIA protocol and will take several months.”
What worries Andretti?
At first glance, Andretti’s proposal looks attractive.
Andretti is a household name with experience in motorsport, with successful results in other categories such as IndyCar and the FIA’s own all-electric Formula E series, and is believed to have a significant amount of money under his belt.
GM is a big American company and Cadillac is a high-end brand that seems to fit perfectly with the F1 image.
But many F1 stakeholders are concerned about whether this new team is the right one to enter F1.
The key phrase that keeps coming up is will Andretti add ‘value’ to F1? This is about competitiveness and investment.
First, has Andretti really understood what it takes to run a serious F1 team?
There’s a general feeling in F1 that a lot of people who race in America in categories where teams buy cars off the shelf and run them in fairly small operations don’t quite understand how high the level in F1 is, how difficult the task is.
Andretti is said to have told people his goal is to enter F1 in 2025, but many existing teams don’t think that’s even close to being a reality.
They point out that they already have the main car models for 2025, and Andretti also needs to expand the factory and hire about 600 people by then.
His decision to base the team in America rather than Europe has also drawn surprise, even as Andretti plans what he describes as a European “satellite shop” that will handle Formula One and other categories in which the company competes.
Andretti says his new facility in Fishers, Indiana, will be “one of the most advanced racing facilities in the world when it’s complete.”
But the current F1 team boss called the plan to base the team in the US “crazy” and suggested Andretti appeared to have failed to learn the lessons of his own brief flirtation with F1 as a driver.
Andretti left a leading career in IndyCar – he was the 1991 champion and one of the most successful drivers – to drive for McLaren in 1993 as Ayrton Senna’s teammate, but was fired three races into the season. due to lack of competitiveness.
At the time, his decision to commute from the US rather than be based in Europe was seen as one of the biggest stumbling blocks to success for a man whose abilities were not in doubt.
The existing team – Haas – is also headquartered in the US, but their car is developed between their satellite base in the UK and the team based at the Ferrari factory in Italy.
Andretti insists his plan is in good shape.
“We’ve been hiring a lot,” he said last week. “Many people already work for us. We hired chief engineers. So yes, we are already on that path. We have already hired our CTO; we will announce it as Well.”
There is also how Andretti handled himself in his relationship with F1.
Andretti appeared at the Miami Grand Prix last May and bypassed all the team managers, asking them to sign a consent document for his participation in Formula 1.
Only Alpine, whose parent company Renault agreed to sell Andretti the engine, and McLaren, run by Andretti’s longtime friend and occasional business partner Zach Brown, did so.
One senior official describes the strategy as “naive”. And that didn’t go down well with F1 president Stefano Domenicali, who is said to have pointed out to Andretti that that’s not the way people in F1 do business and made no attempt to get him to back his bid.
What about Cadillac?
For many in Formula 1, Cadillac’s involvement does not appear to be a genuine, committed manufacturer’s involvement.
At last week’s announcement, GM president Mark Reuss insisted that the company’s “enormous engineering resources will bring proven success and invaluable contributions to this partnership.”
Andretti added: “The capabilities that GM has are at the level of any Formula 1 team. This will help us become even faster.”
But it will take more than that to convince the F1 people, who have heard similar talk from car manufacturers before, only for the results to fall short of confidence and ambition. Jaguar and Toyota are classic examples of the 2000s.
Insiders say that, at least initially, GM will simply put the Cadillac name on a Renault-powered car.
In that sense, some see it as akin to Alfa Romeo’s title sponsorship deal with Sauber, rather than a serious attack on F1 by the so-called OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer).
The appeal of Cadillac paying for F1 to promote its name around the world is obvious. This is a relatively cheap and easy way to gain significant brand exposure.
But the idea that a rival manufacturer could benefit from it, when companies like Mercedes and Ferrari pour hundreds of millions into F1 each year, is less palatable to those already involved in the sport.
And this comes at a time when the deal with Alfa, which is considered acceptable because the brand is part of the Ferrari family, enters its final year through takeover of Audi by Sauber before its official entry in 2026.
Show them the money
Formula One’s latest contracts, agreed several years ago, stipulate that any new entrant must pay $200 million, which must be split between existing teams to offset a drop in revenue from the prize pool, which is shared among more than 10 competitors. .
But as interest in Formula 1 has grown in recent years, team bosses are questioning whether $200 million is enough.
One senior insider noted that $200 million would effectively compensate other teams for lost prize money over just over two years, and suggested that a figure closer to $600-700 million, or about five years, would be more appropriate.
The teams also argue that the $200 million significantly understates the entry point to F1, and point to the recent discovery of a new franchise in the North American Hockey League , the NHL, which cost the Seattle-based group $650 million in “expansion fees.” the name of the dilution fee.
Who is Andretti’s rival for a place in F1?
For F1, the FIA and the teams, it is not just a question of whether they want Andretti in F1, because they are not the only potential new entrants.
Last year, the Volkswagen Group announced that its brands Porsche and Audi planned to enter Formula 1.
Audi’s entry into Sauber continues.
But despite the fact that Porsche’s attempts to unite with Red Bull as the engine partner eventually collapsed his interest has not died, and the company is still looking for ways to enter Formula 1.
Another big name in the picture is Ford – GM’s biggest competitor in America.
Senior sources say the company is in talks with Red Bull about a partnership similar to Porsche’s original plan and could eventually expand to its own team.
With Porsche and Ford in the picture, Andretti’s offering is less appealing to some than it might first appear.
There’s also a project known as Panthera Team Asia that says it’s willing to participate in the expression of interest process, but is likely to be a little lower on the wanted list.
What is going on between F1 and the FIA?
Ben Sulayem’s public statements have raised questions.
Why, the insiders wonder, is he voicing his support for Andretti when the FIA’s position is to be an independent arbiter in any process of accepting new teams?
Why is he apparently publicly questioning Formula 1, with whom the FIA is supposed to work?
And why he is issuing these statements from his private Twitter account and not officially through the FIA’s communications department, an approach one team boss described as “a bit strange”.
Ben Sulayem insisted in comments made at the Dakar Rally on Monday that he was “opening the door, not endorsing” Andretti’s bid, adding: “There’s a lot of process and due diligence to be done first. There is a guide. We want them to succeed and I have no doubt that FOM (Formula 1 management) and Liberty would also like to see that.”
He added: “If you want to keep the sport sustainable, you have to open it up to the rest of the producers.
“We are allowed to have 12 teams on the grid, and to have a big company like GM that is in the top five in the world, we have to encourage them to come to Formula 1.”
In Formula 1, this whole situation is viewed through the prism of the strained relationship between the FIA, Formula 1 and the teams since Ben Sulayem took charge of the team.
This is characterized by a number of difficulties, such as a ban on jewelry for drivers, dissatisfaction how the FIA deals with safety issues and political controversy over number of “sprint” racing weekends this year.
Many senior figures believe that Ben Sulayem is trying to demonstrate his power and influence even in areas where he technically should not interfere.
Just five months into his presidency last year, F1 bosses openly told teams they were looking for ways to remove the FIA from the sport’s day-to-day operations.
This calmed down for a while over the summer – not least because it’s difficult to do since the FIA owns the F1 world championship rights and F1 simply leases them – but the concerns never completely went away.
As one team leader put it, “It’s all happening, and it’s getting worse.”
Andretti appears to be just the latest man to be drawn into a wider power struggle at the heart of Formula One.
