FIA to start process for new teams to join F1

[Star]

Bottom post of the previous page:

It seems like Andretti are officially the team getting the nod then, as has already been said.

[Aty]

Andretti’s Andretti Global and General Motors announced in January that they planned to compete in F1 using the Cadillac brand and employing at least one U.S. driver.

Is employment of the US driver(s) precondition for the entry? Maybe Mercedes should toss one (or both) of their drivers out and hire Vettel instead. They will receive my support.

[XcraigX]

Andretti’s Andretti Global and General Motors announced in January that they planned to compete in F1 using the Cadillac brand and employing at least one U.S. driver.

Is employment of the US driver(s) precondition for the entry? Maybe Mercedes should toss one (or both) of their drivers out and hire Vettel instead. They will receive my support.

Yes. And Mercedes have done that to an even higher level when they entered in 2010 with 2 german drivers and 1 german reserve driver (for a total of 3 just in case you are not counting).
So that seems to be a fairly standard new team policy. Give it a few years and they will likely contract whomever they think can give them wins.

[Aty]

Andretti’s Andretti Global and General Motors announced in January that they planned to compete in F1 using the Cadillac brand and employing at least one U.S. driver.

Is employment of the US driver(s) precondition for the entry? Maybe Mercedes should toss one (or both) of their drivers out and hire Vettel instead. They will receive my support.

Yes. And Mercedes have done that to an even higher level when they entered in 2010 with 2 german drivers and 1 german reserve driver (for a total of 3 just in case you are not counting).
So that seems to be a fairly standard new team policy. Give it a few years and they will likely contract whomever they think can give them wins.

Good that you count, but I know nothing about standard you are talking about. I would call it coincidence.

Schumacher was invited to complete car development (for which he is denied any credit); that is not exactly equal to Schumacher is fighting for WDC.

Regarding Nico - not too many consider him a German, despite his passport and birth certificate. At Mercedes he was hired to play second fidddle, as we witnessed on several occassions.

[Everso Biggyballies]

Andretti may well have got through the first hurdle of getting the grid, but it seems now they have no engine deal with Alpine due to the 'pre-nuptial' agreement having lapsed. As we know, the FIA announced last week that it had accepted Andretti’s entry and it was now being passed on to FOM to consider a commercial deal, it has emerged that the plan for customer Alpine/Renault engines is no longer in place.

Alpine says Andretti F1 engine option has now expired

Alpine says a pre-contract agreement it had to supply customer engines to Andretti’s new F1 team has now lapsed. Alpine (interim) TP Bruno Famin said the situation changed earlier this year when its pre-arrangement lapsed.

“We had a pre-contract with Andretti, which has expired because they were supposed to be granted an F1 entry before a given date,” he said.

“It means right now, if we want to do something with Andretti, we need to negotiate a full contract, a formal contract. So right now, we have absolutely no contract with Andretti.”

Famin explained that, after the option expired several months ago, there have been no further negotiations, and that there were no plans to resume discussions until it was clear from FOM that the Andretti entry was being approved.

Everybody knows what the situation is,” added Famin. “We need something, and we need a decision from F1 before resuming with Andretti.

He goes on to talk about the long lead times to set up a customer engine programme and sort of hintd that time was running out even for 2026. He also said that whole scenario is compounded because until Andretti get a confirmed ok from FOM / the other teams they dont even have a starting point.

Then he dropped the bombshell that he isnt in favour of an 11th team in F1 anyway, using the same unless they can increase the value of F1 substantially to the financial benefit of the existing teams. I thought in the Otmar days Alpine were OK with an 11th team. That seems to have gone out of the window with Otmar and the Alpine stance seems to have changed..

Interesting times ahead for Andretti.... I cant see FOM looking in a positive way at a prospective team without an engine. Compounded that none of those able to provide customer engines dont want an 11th team. And one of them has Ford badges on it!

Time for Cadillac to step up to the plate and commit to building an engine? Cant see that happening as there is a huge difference to a marketing type badge / branding exercise to a full blown engine provider from scratch..

[Aty]

It's quite late to start from scratch. US based automakers (GM, Ford, Stellantis) actually make very few parts of their cars. They do mostly only design, and assembly. Buy rest of it on the outside. To think that Cadillac shall just drop everything and enters F1 business is rather optimistic (if not unrealistic) - methinks. They want to sell image, and probably that's all.

[Star]

It does seem like the F1 teams are against Andretti coming into the sport, is it personal to him or is it just about the prize money and them all getting a smaller slice? My friend sent me a link to this story and asked me what it's all about, I don't have answers for him to be honest but it does seem very strange.

It's been a rocky road for Michael Andretti's plans to make the Formula 1 grid come 2025 or 2026. The American racing organization has faced disdain by Europe's Billionaire Boys Club, even after securing as massive an automaker partner as there is in General Motors. Now, the Associated Press reports that F1 management went as far as asking the manufacturer to partner with someone else.

"[Michael] Andretti can make a case that keeping him out of F1 is indeed personal: Three different people with direct knowledge of the conversations confirmed to AP that F1 asked General Motors if it would partner with someone other than Andretti," wrote Jenna Fryer in her latest AP column.

Back in January, Andretti Global confirmed it would partner with the Cadillac brand to form the Andretti Cadillac F1 team. Earlier this month, F1's governing body, the FIA, approved Andretti Global's application—the only one it greenlit of seven applicants. It was at that point that things got serious, though it didn't quite mark a victory for Team Andretti yet.

As we've reported before, joining the F1 circus requires two approvals, at the very least. The first one is from the FIA—check. The second one is from Formula One itself, owned by media conglomerate Liberty Media, whose CEO is ousted Scuderia Ferrari boss Stefano Domenicali but run parallel (and similarly to a mafia) by the current 10 F1 teams. That's the box Andretti is currently struggling to check. And as Fryer highlights, the world is starting to see through the team boss' claims that "it's not personal."

The constructors' stance is easy to understand: they don't want to split the money in more ways. As FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem said before, "It’s about the money. It’s only about the money. That’s what’s personal. They don’t want to share the money."

What's not as easy to understand is F1's own reluctance to welcome Andretti and General Motors, especially given its desire to expand in the United States. Domenicali has reportedly been ghosting Michael Andretti during most of this process, though that's no surprise given his earlier remarks that the sport "has no need" for the new entry.

Things are so bad that when Mario Andretti presented Domenicali with an award from the National Italian American Foundation last week, he reportedly did not respond to a congratulatory text from Michael. Per the AP report, Michael had to essentially ambush Domenicali in Austin for a meeting.

Similar to high school drama, this situation between Andretti Global and F1 may have to be resolved in the principal's office if they can't amicably figure it out themselves. As Fryer cleverly said, that office may be the U.S. court of law.

https://www.thedrive.com/news/f1-asked- ... dium=email

[XcraigX]

Is there old bad blood from back in the old (90's) CART days? Remember when we had Villenueve come in, there was some thoughts that CART and F1 were close (it was at least considered a step above F2). Andretti Autosport (or whatever the team was called back then) was at it height. Perhaps some of the F1 teams think that Andretti could work its way into being an actual threat? Someone with the knowledge to build a winning team? Hmmm...

[Aty]

Why is Liberty not supporting Andretti? How about increasing the (financial) pie allowing for one more hungry neck at the table?

[Michkov]

I don't think that it has anything to do with the 90s connection. I wonder how many people are even still in power that were involved in the early 90s anyway. F1 has turned into a money maker with the budget cap, so the teams make money. Bringing in an extra team makes them lose some and they don't like it. Even if it is for just a couple of years. I doubt Liberty cares much either way, from all I've seen of F1 since they took over, as long as people talk about F1 they are happy.

Not that either party should have a say in who gets to race. That's the FIAs responsibility. As far as I'm concerned if someone, shows up with a car, the yearly budget and an entry fee, they should be allowed to qualify. We got the 107% rule for anyone too slow to make it.

[Everso Biggyballies]

It does seem like the F1 teams are against Andretti coming into the sport, is it personal to him or is it just about the prize money and them all getting a smaller slice? My friend sent me a link to this story and asked me what it's all about, I don't have answers for him to be honest but it does seem very strange.

Its nothing to do with anything other than money. Team values have rocketed in just 3 years. Dorilton paid what, 120 million for Williams, and Stroll likely less for Force India. All of a sudden teams like Alpine are now valued on recent share transactions at a billion dollars, McLaren moreso. Made more valuable because of budget caps keeping costs less than they were. (the reality what we see as a 140 million cost cap isnot the cost of running a team as we all know...... All the factory improvements, wind tunnels and stuff which despite what the FIA might try to make us believe are under control are at best restricted. All the tens of millions of marketing costs are included in budget caps. Drivers salaries, key personnel salaries, not to mention the hundreds of people that work in the factories each day but apparently ddont work for the F1 team but are on 'other projects' None the less the costs are restricted now compared to pre cap days.
The existing teams teams dont think that the 200 million dollar dilution fee is enough and at 200 million it is really a number set when team values were under 200 million. They feel a number of 600 million is nearer the mark. They are probably right when you compare the cost of other major (particularly American) Sports 'franchises'. Whatever that dilution fee is by the way would be split equally between the existing 10 teams

The big money bitch is in a. way one of fear...... F1 teams have got used to the fact that the F1 pie is split 10 ways and they all get a slice of it related to where they came in the WCC the previous year. Throw in an 11th team and that is suddenly 10% out of the pie potentially, or even that one of the existing teams will come 11th and get nothing. Yes it is all about money and not so much about Andretti the man. Its more about Andretti is the one on the cusp of potentially taking what is seen as someone else's slice of pie.

@Star your friend. might be interested in this thing I posted in the Liberty thread a while ago about how all the Concorde money side works, where it comes from and who gets what at the moment.

How F1 prize money is divided

Currently, teams enjoy a $35 million flat payment from F1 for taking part in the championship, a simple $350 million pot split 10 ways.

In addition to that is a performance-linked payment based on their constructors’ finishing position the previous year and some other bonuses for teams who’ve won multiple championships or finished in the top three of the previous year’s championship.

Ferrari also receives a bonus, believed to be five percent of the total prize money fund, which itself is calculated at 45 percent of F1’s forecast income for the current year.

Given Liberty Media is a listed company, its earnings are publicly available. For 2022, it had an income of $2.573 billion.

From that, we know the prize money fund was worth $1.158 billion.

It’s also known that performance-based payments are based on a sliding scale, understood to vary from 14 percent for the championship winner to six percent for the team that finishes 10th.

There is a separate $400 million fund that is split off. How it is distributed is unclear.

Nonetheless, we can calculate with some accuracy what each team earns through prize money.

For instance, with the information available we can estimate Red Bull received $84.4 million in prize money in 2022 as a result of finishing second in the championship in 2021.

Ferrari, which was third, earned $139.2 million after its bonuses were included, while Haas received just $56 million.



It is important to note that while the prize money pot is paid out of the forecast earnings for that season, it is based upon the results of the previous year, meaning last year’s payments, derived from F1’s 2022 income, were made against the results of 2021.

In the first half of this year, F1 is much on par with its 2022 earnings, within one percent, meaning we can roughly forecast the year-end being much the same, too.

Red Bull, which won the 2022 constructors’ championship, will therefore likely pull in $87.6 million.

Ferrari, because it finished second last year, will see its income rise marginally to $142.3 million.

Meanwhile, Williams, which finished 10th in last year’s constructors’ championship, will only receive $59.6 million.

Armed with that information, how does the addition of an 11th team impact prize money payments?

https://www.speedcafe.com/2023/10/12/an ... -f1-entry/

It was part of a much longer article about the implications of Andretti but it was the non new team bits relating to current teams payments that interested me.

[Star]

Thank you my sweet, I will pass that information on to my friend. I've tried to encourage him to join us so that he can learn all this kind of thing from experts such as yourself, but he's not a forum type person.

[Aty]

General Motors said Tuesday it has registered with Formula 1’s governing body to become an engine supplier starting in 2028 in what is seen as a huge boost to Michael Andretti’s bid to join the global motorsports series.

https://www.grandprix247.com/2023/11/14 ... -supplier/

[Aty]

STROLL SELLS ASTON MARTIN F1 TEAM SHARES TO ARCTOS
REUTERS 16 NOVEMBER, 2023 1 MIN READ

Aston Martin Formula 1 team reported it had agreed on an investment by United States private equity firm Arctos Partners in exchange for a minority shareholding.

Owner Lawrence Stroll has sold his stake in the team valued at one billion euros ($1.09 billion) to Arctos, a person with knowledge about the matter told Reuters.

https://www.grandprix247.com/2023/11/16 ... to-arctos/

[DoubleFart]

That isn't clear - has he sold shares, or all of his shares?

"Sells shares" could be any amount.
"Sells his shares" could mean sells shares, but from his portfolio, not other shareholders.

[Everso Biggyballies]

STROLL SELLS ASTON MARTIN F1 TEAM SHARES TO ARCTOS
REUTERS 16 NOVEMBER, 2023 1 MIN READ

Aston Martin Formula 1 team reported it had agreed on an investment by United States private equity firm Arctos Partners in exchange for a minority shareholding.

Owner Lawrence Stroll has sold his stake in the team valued at one billion euros ($1.09 billion) to Arctos, a person with knowledge about the matter told Reuters.

https://www.grandprix247.com/2023/11/16 ... to-arctos/

Stroll has sold a minority stake in the Aston Martin team to US private equity firm Arctos Partners.

The investment by Arctos, which has a stake in the Boston Red Sox and Liverpool Football Club owner Fenway Sports Group, values the F1 team at about £1 billion ($1.2 billion), according to a person familiar with the deal.....

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... #xj4y7vzkg


Nothing that changes anything structually or the running of the F1 team other than maybe Arctos might get a seat on the board depaending on the percentage of their minority holding. More what it has done is now officially given his team a billion dollar plus valuation due to the price paid for the shares..