Andretti Cadillac says it “strongly disagrees” with FOM’s decision to refuse its entry into Formula 1 and will continue to work the project.
The brand already competes in FIA-sanctioned series such as Formula E, as well as IndyCar and Extreme E, under its group identity Andretti Global. The FIA approved its application to enter F1 in October last year.However FOM announced today it had turned down Andretti’s application to enter in either 2025 or 2026. It gave several reasons for turning down Andretti’s application, including claiming its name had too little recognition among the sport’s fans. FOM also stated it did not believe it needed to expand the grid beyond the current 10 teams and argued Andretti was unlikely to be competitive if it was allowed to enter.
A statement issued by the team said: “Andretti Cadillac has reviewed the information Formula One Management Limited has shared and strongly disagree with its contents.
“Andretti and Cadillac are two successful global motorsports organisations committed to placing a genuine American works team in F1, competing alongside the world’s best. We are proud of the significant progress we have already made on developing a highly competitive car and power unit with an experienced team behind it, and our work continues at pace.”
FOM’s decision has prompted a vociferous and negative reaction among F1 fans on social media. “Andretti Cadillac would also like to acknowledge and thank the fans who have expressed their support,” they added.
Mario Andretti, father of team owner Michael Andretti, said he felt “devastated” by Formula 1’s refusal to allow his son’s team to enter the series.
The 83-year-old raced in F1 over a 15-year period from 1968 to 1983, winning the 1978 F1 world championship and 12 grands prix. “I’m devastated,” he said in a social media post. “I won’t say anything else because I can’t find any other words besides devastated.”
F1’s statement did leave open the possibility of allowing Andretti’s team to enter in 2028, provided it secures a works engine supply from General Motors. Andretti previously announced a tie-up with the Cadillac brand.
“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,” said FOM in a statement. “In this case there would be additional factors to consider in respect of the value that the applicant would bring to the championship, in particular in respect of bringing a prestigious new [original equipment manufacturer] to the sport as a [power unit] supplier.”
Don’t miss anything new from RaceFans
Follow RaceFans on social media:
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
Formula 1
- “You need to be more on it”: 12 unheard radio exchanges from the Chinese GP
- F1 CEO Domenicali wants more than six sprint races per year
- Hulkenberg named Audi’s first F1 driver for 2026
- Ricciardo needs to show “head-turning form” for 2025 chance – Horner
- F1 Commission defers decision on points change and approves new rear cameras
Arthur (@aegges66)
31st January 2024, 19:13
I guess they did not ask anyone of the members of RaceFans then ….
Among its reasons for turning down Andretti’s application, FOM claimed its name had too little recognition among the sport’s fans. “While the Andretti name carries some recognition for F1 fans, our research indicates that F1 would bring value to the Andretti brand rather than the other way around,” it said.
… because here I mostly see fans recognizing the value that an Andretti team would bring to the grid.
SteveP
31st January 2024, 19:38
The nub of the issue is this bit:
Basically, FOM feel that Andretti would profit from the entry whereas FOM would not, or not as much as Andretti.
If you’re running a business, you provide a product the customer wants in a way that increases your profits; you do not run the business to assist the customer in profiting from association with your brand at your expense.
Others have said many times, F1 isn’t about the viewers’ enjoyment as a primary aim, their primary aim is making money.
Radoye
31st January 2024, 20:08
The thing is – the viewers are the actual customers here, teams are part of the business that is making money. There is no F1 without the teams, no teams no product to sell and no money to be made. F1 as a business does not exist without teams who put cars on the track. And ultimately it is the viewers who pay for everything, either directly / buying tickets and merchandise or indirectly by making F1 events and broadcasts attractive for sponsors.
And even the dilution argument is moot – yes, dividing the pie into 11 pieces would make each piece smaller than if it is divided into 10, but if including the 11th team actually grows the size of the pie then 1/11th of the larger pie can be more than 1/10th of the original one.
There are 26 places on the F1 grid. There should be 26 cars starting each race. Anything less is cheating the paying customer.
MichaelN
31st January 2024, 22:43
That’s further downstream. FOM’s customers are the broadcasters who buy the rights to show the races and the venues that pay them to fly over and give a good show.
The normal folks are those parties’ customers, and so they are important, just not directly. And in the case of some races, normal fans are quite irrelevant since the tracks are 100% state-sponsored and don’t really care if they attract an trackside audience or not.
ECWDanSelby (@ecwdanselby)
1st February 2024, 9:33
and that’s exactly why the manufacturers will ask for the number of teams to be capped at 10 in the next Concord Agreement. Very, very sad.
drmouse (@drmouse)
1st February 2024, 11:08
To be fair, I don’t we are actually the customers. We are the products, to be sold to advertisers.
MurasamaRA300 (@murasamara300)
1st February 2024, 9:39
Spot on, and this is exactly why I never watch any live F1 anymore. F1 is not a sport anymore, it’s a playground for the extreme rich and I’m definitely not in the clique. So I’m not going to send my hard earned money to F1, they are already swimming in it and are better off without my near-worthless pennies.
And claiming that Andretti has “too little recognition” is such an insult… seriously, it’s beyond belief insulting.
Anyway. What to do with my Sunday afternoons, flum-di-flum-di-flum (I’m humming like the Swedish chef in the Muppet show).
Obviously, watching F1 is out. For sure.
Luckily the caption competitions are still great fun.
And this website is very good, so I’ll read the reports here.
Might try and join some dirt track racing league on iRacing or something.
Plod around the back of the field like a dirt track Andrea Moda (probably failing to prequalify hahaha).
stefano (@alfa145)
31st January 2024, 20:18
ù
It’s a good thing we have our good old VISA CASHAPP RB Team this coming year, at least.
Radoye
31st January 2024, 21:05
…and the Kick Stake F1 Team too…
Jungle
1st February 2024, 8:49
It’s a business now no longer a sport.
That being said with the current interest in America now probably close to its peak, why reject an American team with racing heritage and pedigree. GM are also on board FFS!
How and why is this happening? Who is running the show?
Toto et al.
Jungle
1st February 2024, 10:27
As much as I was glad to see Bernie move on if he was still around he would of made this happen….
Exediron (@exediron)
31st January 2024, 21:04
Joke reasons. The real one is that the current teams are afraid of losing a share of their guaranteed profits. They’ve become a bunch of corporate fat cats, happy to cash their checks and afraid of having to actually achieve results to get paid.
Pathetic, is what it is.
MichaelN
31st January 2024, 22:46
I look forward to a year of reporters asking all the non-winners what they’re contributing to F1 given that they’re not competitive. At each event. Every single day.
Tristan
31st January 2024, 21:47
Makes sense, buy HAAS, its so obvious as a way in. Otherwise bring the PU. Don’t use the PU brand as a lie to get in before it “drops out”. There’s no honest sense to joining 3 years before your PU.
If they are serious they will take up FOM’s offer to join in 2028 with GM. Otherwise the con has simply been exposed for what it is.
Radoye
31st January 2024, 21:57
Haas is not for sale.
Tristan
31st January 2024, 22:33
That’s where FOM should get involved. There has to be some sort of arbitration that could see HAAS replaced by Andretti if they are seriously concerned about the value each team brings.
Otherwise I think it calls into questioning their current reasoning for denying Andretti legally.
Alan Dove
1st February 2024, 8:52
That opens a can of works and would actively undermine the ownership of each team, so much so no team would sign that contract.
pcxmac (@pcxmac)
1st February 2024, 14:51
the guys at the top of the food chain can’t handle real competition. Haas are great as long as they are competing for last place.
Stephen Crowsen (@drycrust)
1st February 2024, 9:21
Haas is for sale, it just isn’t going to be sold at a price normally expected for a team which finished the 2023 season last place in the Constructors’ Championship.
APracticedObserver
31st January 2024, 21:59
Why would Haas abandon the money tap? They can keep coasting around the track and taking in profit.
That’s a nice perk of racing in this club series.
Tristan
31st January 2024, 22:14
That’s the problem that needs to be addressed more than this Andretti one.
MichaelN
31st January 2024, 23:06
It has only become a problem now that there’s a new team wanting to join. Thanks to the awful 2014 regulations, there wasn’t any interest at all despite F1 trying desperately to lure manufacturers in, having lost a lot of them in the late 2000s. That relative calm allowed Liberty to ‘buy off’ complaining teams.
But now those teams don’t want to go back, and since nothing has fundamentally changed, Liberty’s poor leadership has caught it between the existing teams, now addicted to free money, and potential new teams, who can easily revive the abandoned legal proceedings against the highly questionable role of FOM.
This badly written refusal, full of nonsensical reasoning, shows how weak their position is. It’s really the teams that run this show.
kpcart
1st February 2024, 4:32
What con? Andretti has wanted to join F1 for years… are you new to F1? F1 has wanted to make an imprint in USA for years… all your commentary sounds like you have only watched F1 in the Verstappen era of the last 3 seasons. HAAS deserves to be in F1, i bet you dont know Gene Haas has had cars in F1 in previous generations?? The Andretti name has won world titles in F1. you just dont get it at all.
RBAlonso (@rbalonso)
1st February 2024, 8:38
I’m not very impressed by this comment kpcart. What difference would it make when someone became interested in our sport? You shouldn’t use that as a stick to beat people with.
As for the Haas comment, it’s ironic that you accuse Tristan of only watching the sport recently and confuse the history of Haas. Beatrice Haas of the 1985, which Alan Jones worked with, was ran by Carl Haas – of Newman/Haas CART fame. Gene Haas first involvement was in 2016.
Shimks (@shimks)
1st February 2024, 9:29
No need to be rude while making your points, kpcart.
Tristan
1st February 2024, 10:44
The con, I think, is more from the GM side than the Andretti side by the way. I don’t see them joining F1 and even if they do, why are they refusing to work with any other teams?
FOM has an excellent point of a) Why can’t andretti secure an engine deal if they want to enter F1 rather than rely on forced provision from a supplier, and b) Why are they entering at all without GM if that’s entirely their plan.
It’s all fishy to the point of stinking and while I think Andretti is a valuable name and FOM got that bit wrong, it’s not so valuable as to ignore these other issues.
SteveP
1st February 2024, 12:41
I thought there was a regulation in place that mandated a low use PU supplier to make a PU available to a team without any other supplier – it’s sort of referenced in paragraph 11 of the FOM announcement:
If GM were the PU supplier dealing only one team, then they would be compelled to supply a team without an engine supplier.
S
1st February 2024, 13:35
They did initially, and it would have resulted in the exact same engine being supplied to them either way.
FOM then insisted that Andretti find another (new) engine manufacturer to bring in to F1 with them, so they did – which effectively ended any deal they had (or would likely otherwise have continued to have) with Renault.
Andretti is a race team. A ‘constructor’ to use F1’s terminology – they build and race cars, in exactly the same way that all the existing F1 teams do.
Why do all those teams participate in F1? For the exact same reasons Andretti wants to.
If you’re asking ‘Why don’t GM open their supply to other teams?’ – Perhaps also ask Ford, Audi and Honda the same question.
GM and Andretti have a mutually exclusive deal with each other that relies on Andretti getting cars on the grid – seems like a very sensible and responsible arrangement to me – for both parties.
SadF1fan
1st February 2024, 7:45
Haas F1 is so divided as a company that one is just burning money. Useless locations in 3 different countries of which 1 will never be available because it’s also the Nascar locatoon. No own technological development infrastructure.
Anyone taken over Haas will have to waste an inordinate amount of money and invest on top of that to build the infrastructure necessary for a modern F1 team.
Michael (@freelittlebirds)
31st January 2024, 22:05
I think the feeling is unanimous among long-term fans that we would like to see another team join. It seems to me that the folks in charge are completely out of touch with the fans and the sport especially as we head into another season where Red Bull will be slowing down to make sure they are not that far from the 2nd car and Perez’s car is going to have trouble keeping up with a F2 car and yet somehow he’ll still end up P2 in the championship…
MichaelN
31st January 2024, 23:36
As much as this little pamphlet is annoying in what it says about how F1 operates today, Andretti exposed himself to something like this by not sorting out his engine situation. That is a big problem.
As it stands, joining F1 in 2025 without an engine would mean that Renault have to supply him since they don’t supply anyone else and are just first in line to pick up the slack. But going in to 2026, there are going to be three one-customer teams in Honda (Aston Martin), Renault (Alpine) and Audi (Sauber). So who gets to supply Andretti if nobody wants to…
Aston Martin isn’t going to stand for their exclusive supplier also tossing engines to another team. Renault’s commitment is questionable, and Audi is not going to want to supply a client in their first season. it’s a mess, and – as much as I’d like another team – Andretti can’t expect others to solve it for him.
kpcart
1st February 2024, 4:29
Well they let Honda back into F1 with Mclaren….
drmouse (@drmouse)
1st February 2024, 11:15
As far as I understand it, they had “sorted out their engine situation”, but the FIA and FOM delayed things long enough that the offer they had in place expired and the supplier refused to extend it.
That said, it’s something teams need to be able to deal with. They need to be prepared for FIA and FOM to be inconsistent, change their mind, change the rules, and generally mess them around. If they are not prepared to deal with their rubbish, F1 probably isn’t right for them.
Archibald Bumfluff
31st January 2024, 23:19
who is this guy trying to make his way into F1,
Andretti? Cadilac? General Motors? who’s heard of that?
Sounds pretty lame to me.
I’ll be wearing my Kick Stake t-shirt and my Visa Cash App hat for each race as I support the teams who really “add value to the championship.”
Jeanrien (@jeanrien)
1st February 2024, 7:53
You mean Andretti doesn’t bring neither cash nor stake to the grid!
I don’t get the argument about building two new cars in successive years either. One could argue they could get inspiration from current grid to get an understanding of how the car works to prepare to build their first car the next year. Instead they should rather start 2 years zone everyone else on a new cycle. Can’t see how the approach will make them more competitive.
JJ81
1st February 2024, 0:19
Wow…all of F1 tried so hard to distance themselves from Bernie E, that they wound up becoming just like him.
JJ81
1st February 2024, 0:23
Bring a GM power unit and not allow fake badging, huh…Red Bull still use a Honda, will further make “Honda” engines and then will badge that Honda as a Ford. Argument is valid, thanks for the long doc on why not.
Malcolm
1st February 2024, 0:26
Sounds like F1 wants GM and not Andretti. I hope Andretti withdraws from the F1 bid and takes Cadillac with him to NASCAR or something he’s not already in. Don’t want Andretti, don’t get GM either.
kpcart
1st February 2024, 4:28
They should build the car, and do demo runs with it at all the world’s great tracks, set some lap records, and stick it to F1 by showing F1 in a more entertaining fashion. A few demo laps before the INDY 500, a lap record at Nordschleiffe and Laguna Seca. A lap record at Bathurst etc… build up more and more exposure to this most worthy effort to get into F1. Red Bull and Visa Cash App are the ones not deserving to be in F1.
Shimks (@shimks)
1st February 2024, 9:31
I really like that idea!
Ferdinand
1st February 2024, 6:58
Wow, FOM/Liberty really don’t stop for anything to maximise revenue, don’t they? I feel FIA should try to enforce FOM/Liberty is no longer at liberty to use the word ‘Sport’ when it comes to F1.
Hahaha, really!? Not only is this a lie, it is also not an argument at all. No you can’t compete in this football match since your name is not well established.. what a joke. So there will be no room to build a legacy, you have to enter already having it?
Shimks (@shimks)
1st February 2024, 9:17
I can tell you what’s going to happen between now and 2028. That anti-dilution fee is going to jump up from $200m to something ridiculous probably close to $1bn.
Tristan
1st February 2024, 10:52
GM had a net income of 9bn last year according to Wikipedia, so it’s probably not that ridiculous really. If they are serious that is (which I bet they are not.)
S
1st February 2024, 13:48
Neither is anyone else at that kind of figure.
Nobody enters any part of F1 without the prospect of ROI and profit.
Jungle
1st February 2024, 9:18
FOM stands for F&@# off Michael!
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
2nd February 2024, 14:07
True, didn’t consider that!
Sham (@sham)
1st February 2024, 9:34
Don’t worry Michael, we are all strongly disagreeing too. In fact it seems to me that the only people who don’t strongly disagree are the money men in the other 10 teams. FOM’s reasons are so unbelievably weak that I can only imagine that they have simply caved to the teams.
The sporting men in the teams would surely relish the competition.
tielemst
1st February 2024, 9:52
What the… Hamilton to Ferrari??
MurasamaRA300 (@murasamara300)
1st February 2024, 15:24
Yes, they are probably trying to bury the Andretti vs FOM story.
All the world’s a stage now.
Phil Norman (@phil-f1-21)
1st February 2024, 9:56
In other news, Autosport is reporting that Lewis might be off to Ferrari in 2025. Replacing Carlos of course!
Aquila_GD
1st February 2024, 11:44
I fully agree with FOM decision. There is no added value to F1 if Andretti team enters F1 however F1 gives them value. If they are very interested on entering F1, then they should try and join forces with one of the teams already on the grid
MacLeod (@macleod)
1st February 2024, 13:10
They tried but got nowhere and folks said created your own team.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
2nd February 2024, 14:09
What about having more than 10 teams, like in the past? It used to happen, you know.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
2nd February 2024, 14:09
Otherwise if the less teams the better, let’s get rid of uncompetitive ones, let’s only keep ferrari, red bull, merc and give a year to aston martin to see if they’re in or out!
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
2nd February 2024, 14:10
Aston martin and mclaren*
American Motorsport Fan
2nd February 2024, 2:26
“Andretti will continue to work on the project”.
Good lord why?
Join a series that is ACTUALLY competitive like WEC or IMSA.