Formula One Management made its reluctance to expand the grid from 10 teams to 11 unequivocally clear last year.
The FIA, the governing body of motorsport, approved Andretti’s application in October 2023. But three months later F1’s commercial rights holder FOM turned up its nose and turned down Andretti. An expansion of F1’s 20-car grid “would not, in and of itself, provide value to the championship” it sniffed while closing the door.Eventually, FOM dropped its obstruction and, last week, confirmed an 11th team would be allowed in. Exactly why it changed its position is a matter of some conjecture.
FOM made a song and dance about the team being rebranded by General Motors, but that looked like smoke and mirrors. Andretti brought Cadillac on board two months before FOM’s initial rebuff.
Was the real problem a clash of personalities between former Liberty Media CEO Greg Maffei and Andretti team founder Michael Andretti, both of whom moved on from their positions last year? Did pressure from the United States Congress, at a time when Liberty has other headaches with legislators, tip the balance?
See also: The bonus point for fastest lap, which F1 has canned for this season, six years after introducing it. At the time FOM declared awarding a point to the driver who set the fastest lap time in a race (provided they finished in the top 10) would achieve that hallowed goal to which all must be sacrificed: “Improve the show.”
Of course, it didn’t. As many pointed out before the rule’s introduction (strictly speaking, reintroduction), it was a triviality which added little besides occasional confusion.
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
That in itself was not much to complain about. For the most part, the bonus point for fastest lap was easily overlooked. But then it became a bone of contention which pointed towards a deeper problem for which FOM doesn’t have a fix, and getting rid of it proved a sticking plaster solution.
Imposing the bonus point for fastest lap and ignoring the many reasonable objections which were voiced to it (which have now been vindicated) was arrogant. In blocking Andretti, and in particular by questioning their lack of name recognition, F1 showed a dismaying lack of respect for the 16th world champion’s family. It also demonstrated a failure to understand that F1’s appeal as a ‘show’ ultimately rests on it being regarded as a true competition, not a closed club.
These aren’t the only occasions FOM has given up on one of its innovations or policies, however reluctantly. Starting races 10 minutes past the hour was quietly dropped. Two experiments with pre-race driver introductions, the last of which was supposed to be the first of many, came and went.
Of course not all of the changes to F1 since Liberty Media arrived have been undesirable – far from it. They have introduced some worthwhile innovations which have broadened F1’s appeal, by using new channels such as Netflix, embracing digital media and creating its own live streaming service. Not to mention promoting women as competitors instead of treating them as mere furniture.
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
Still, a few more U-turns would be welcome. The new rule forcing two tyre changes per driver at Monaco, introduced after F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali’s criticism of last year’s race at the principality, has all the hallmarks of a knee-jerk rule change which will produce unforeseen and undesirable consequences.
But that pales next to Liberty Media’s greatest folly: Sprint races. Or, as FOM insists on calling them, ‘sprints’, despite the fact that drivers, by their own admission, do little sprinting in them.
Even the competitors struggle to summon any enthusiasm for these forgettable sideshows arbitrarily inflicted on a handful of rounds. Drivers say they ‘don’t like them’, they ‘mean nothing’, call sprint pole positions ‘not proper’ triumphs and race victories ‘not real wins’.
F1 is deluding itself by pretending there will ever be great enthusiasm for a competition which the competitors obviously have such low regard for. Make this the next U-turn, please, FOM.
Miss nothing from RaceFans
Get a daily email with all our latest stories - and nothing else. No marketing, no ads. Sign up here:
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
Comment
- Does F1 play the wrong anthem when McLaren win? Lawson is only half-right
- Scrap the fastest lap bonus point? But fans “love” it!
- F1’s tedious furore over swearing reflects badly on both sides
- Again the stewards are “too lenient” on drivers aiming their cars at each other
- Zero tolerance for conspiracies in F1 – except when it’s everyone’s favourite
pastaman
12th March 2025, 12:32
Unfortunately, I don’t see them getting rid of sprint races. Too much money to leave on the table.
Craig
12th March 2025, 15:16
I really want to see rid of them, but we seem to be at a point where enough people running the sport have deluded themselves into thinking it’s a success.
Yaru (@yaru)
12th March 2025, 18:23
I mean, if it actually makes them more money, I don’t think it’s delusional success but actual success.
Nulla Pax (@nullapax)
12th March 2025, 13:19
Sprint weekends would be OK with me if they had nothing to do with the F1 Championships.
Two or three a year could help to liven up the boring tracks and provide entertainment for the jaded and the part-time fans.
Pat Ruadh (@fullcoursecaution)
12th March 2025, 15:52
My idea is that Sprints should only count towards the constructors, and each team should have to field a junior or 3rd driver in one of the cars.
It would help alleviate the lack of testing for juniors, incentivise teams to put the best drivers in, and make it a more interesting prospect for fans.
OllieJ (@olliej)
12th March 2025, 19:42
This is the solution. Maybe only have one car from each team (with each team’s drivers having to give up their car at half the events), and make it a 10-car race between junior drivers
Ben
12th March 2025, 22:20
Wouldn’t work for multiple reasons.
MacLeod (@macleod)
13th March 2025, 8:01
problem is you need a third car for that which is too costly…as you can’t use one of the existing cars as those engines are restricted and prone to wear.
Tony Mansell (@tonymansell)
12th March 2025, 13:23
Grand Prix racing has been changing the ‘FORMULA’ from 1904, all in the name of improving the racing. Its funny that the minutiae is what this article focuses on when overly large cars, over reliance on aero and dull engines are 3 MASSIVE elephants in the room. But no its 2 stop at Monaco, not even a race, just a jolly for the rich that concerns us.
I dont really care if the administration takes a few months to let in a team, they let 2/3 in 15 years ago that were utter failures, i’m not surprised they were a little circumspect.
The main pass time of F1 seems to be moaning about what it isnt rather than enjoying what it is, which is valid but surely the big stuff first?
Laz
12th March 2025, 13:59
They let 2/3 teams in 15 years ago with the understanding there would be a cost cap of 40 million. Those teams were dealt a lie and so had a fraction of the funds of other teams as a result. Those teams continued to run with anywhere from 90 million to 350 million. Of course they didn’t stand a chance. The better example would be Haas arriving in 2016 without a false premise of a cost cap, who built a program that made the most of their smaller resources which was still close to those at the back already. They immediately scored points in their first two races.
Unlike any of those, Cadillac/Andretti was never going to be short of backing to make this work. The hesitation to allow another team to join was nothing to do with what their performance levels might be. It wasn’t entirely financial and how the money would be split between teams and FOM.
Ben Rowe (@thegianthogweed)
12th March 2025, 13:46
Free to air live coverage would be a great u turn in terms of the sport getting more popular instead of everything being hidden behind an expensive pay wall that keeps rising.
CryptidBadger (@ninjabadger)
12th March 2025, 14:17
I feel FOM’s intentions were clear from the start.
They want F1 to be a big boys club. So they weren’t going to show interest in a new privateer team, regardless of affiliations. They just want manufactures, global brands to add to the collection, to make F1 sound bigger.
Only wealthy corporations allowed. Only recognisable brands. Because that’s what sells, be it to casual viewers, advertisers, or shareholders.
Andretti turned up at the club with GM, looking to be let in after the FIA put their name on the list.
FOM looks at Andretti: “Who the hell are you? You’re too small fry to be allowed in. You have to start as a customer team? Get out of here.”
FOM sees GM: “Hey girl. How about you ditch this guy and come party with us. You need to be a customer team? That doesn’t matter.”
And sure enough, as soon as the Andretti name was moved aside, and GM were front and centre, suddenly doors were opened.
SteveP
12th March 2025, 17:30
Andretti and friend(s) turned up at the club with a note saying GM were thinking of turning up.
GM turned up shortly after, but only the friends went in with GM.
Fair? Not really, but the process was advertised as looking for entries from motor manufacturers.
Anyway, 12 months to go until we see what GM can do (testing)
anon
12th March 2025, 18:09
@ninjabadger the thing is, Michael Andretti did also make some overly optimistic assumptions about his entry that nobody thought were realistic and eroded trust that he could deliver what he was claiming he would.
For example, Michael made the upgrades to their facility in Fishers a centrepiece of their bid to enter F1 – unfortunately, during the bidding process, the Andretti’s ended up being sued by their contractor for breaches of contract, which resulted in work being stopped on that factory. Whilst work did eventually resume, the Andretti’s had to appoint a new contractor and have a new design developed for the factory (as their former contractor had the intellectual property rights to the original design) – so, the opening date of early 2025 that Michael was claiming has now been shifted to mid 2026.
Added to that, it now transpires that Michael hadn’t properly accounted for the implications of the cost cap in that original proposal. Michael’s original plan was for the factory to house all of his operations in that one facility and share resources across teams – unfortunately, those plans have since fallen foul of the FIA’s regulations on the cost cap, which require teams to keep internal barriers between separate race teams to stop them bypassing the budget cap, which is why the rest of the racing operations are now having to find separate facilities.
CryptidBadger (@ninjabadger)
13th March 2025, 12:10
Oh, of course. There was a lot of chest puffing from the Andretti side.
Whether that’s sheer arrogance, or desperation to talk big in order to prove how serious they were taking it, is its own matter.
My point is more that it could have been anyone pitching a privateer team, and they could have the perfect set-up. And it wouldn’t matter because FOM only wants global brands.
Yaru (@yaru)
12th March 2025, 18:19
Good. They were right to sideline Michael Andretri. Glad they got the good part in while keeping the idiot out.
grat
12th March 2025, 23:23
Out of curiosity, how many racing teams have you managed or owned?
CryptidBadger (@ninjabadger)
12th March 2025, 14:22
F1 needs to decide if sprint races are good (and made a part of all race weekends), or not (and scrap it).
How many more seasons is there going to be this toe dipping, six sprint races here and there?
Its not surprising drivers/teams/fans don’t seem invested into something that F1 itself doesn’t seem fully commited to.
chimaera2003 (@chimaera2003)
12th March 2025, 15:17
@ninjabadger Agree that it needs to be an all-or-nothing approach with Sprint Races.
Yaru (@yaru)
12th March 2025, 18:17
There is no reason why it should be all or nothing.
CryptidBadger (@ninjabadger)
13th March 2025, 12:26
There’s nothing forcing them.
But my understanding was the sprint races were small in number while they experimented with the format and gauged interest; with end-goal being to make it an established part of race weekends.
Otherwise it just a part-time sideshow.
Robert
12th March 2025, 14:37
I love sprint races.
Yaru (@yaru)
12th March 2025, 18:19
Good for you.
JJ (@jjfrazz)
12th March 2025, 14:50
Agreeing that the current over-weight car regulations are silly, but two stops for tires at Monaco is just plain stupid when it is far easier to require a mandatory “pit stop tire change” no matter if tires were changed for safety reasons under any red flag(s)?
Unless it has changed recently, Monaco used to be free to watch from anywhere around the circuit that isn’t covered with stands! There are thousands of ordinary non-millionaire people living there. In the past I have taken the train into town to watch practice and the race for free. And now they have the free Fan Zone.
Yaru (@yaru)
12th March 2025, 18:11
Okay, how do you not make it overweight while keeping the hybrid and the safety features?
Hill (@pzero)
13th March 2025, 8:29
Great comment, that’s almost impossible within the current car configuration. The only way in the near future would be the new high density solid state batteries. But that’s still future talk for now.
But I do think they could’ve done a bit more about length and width. It would require some heavily revised concept, but it can be done. If they constrain the way parts are placed a bit more, they could make the car a bit less wide, a bit less long, especially behind the driver. It will affect the height and center of gravity a bit though.
But that doesn’t make a GP like Monaco any better I’m afraid. It’s just not suitable for current F1.
T
12th March 2025, 15:01
you see my problem with the FOM folded when the DOJ got involved rhetoric is that it doesn’t explain how or even why the entry is actively morphing into FOM’s wet dream
if you hold all the cards and have the power of one of the most vindictive federal government this side of the western hemisphere at your side then:
who cares if Greg doesn’t like Micheal?
why get rid of him? his shoddy business acumen with Zapata wouldn’t hinder his ability to operate as a team principal; just hire a competent CFO or mirror Mclaren’s structure in Brown and Stella
also Greg is leaving anyway, what leverage does he have especially compared to literally anyone else at negotiation table?
why would you pay over 225% the asking price of the anti dilution?
you have the federal government already blood thirsty from Google and Live Nation so wave that Concorde Agreement in their face and just insist on not getting robbed in broad daylight
why would you kick out the other teams that were supposed to share the ‘state of the art’ factory?
don’t you dare give me that accounting excuse; Ferrari and Haas quite literally share Maranello AND employees, i blinked and Di Resta is back at Ferrari after a stint at Haas so why were the other teams kicked out and stuck in an old print shop.
why reorganize the entire organization such that GM takes a more present and larger (share)hold of the entry?
TWG Motorsports did not need to exist but does just so GM can hold a stake in the F1 effort. TWG own other teams and entries across the planet and have never carved out a division just to hand a stake to someone else. TWG Motorsports didn’t need to exist unless ya know, you need to form an equal stake powertrain org for Russ to run and oh and while we’re at it, let’s build another dedicated building just for this org near our already existing Technical center in Charlotte
TWG motorsports didn’t need to exist unless you expressly want to make sure Andretti Global did not hold the (commercial) license
Andretti did bring Cadillac on board but could not answer what exactly they’d be doing
Micheal just went around saying he wish he could tell us what GM is doing
GM for their part just kept listing car parts they could help with their only concrete commitment being a formal registration to be a PU supplier in 2028 – a deadline they’ve even admitted they will not meet
but sure, smoke and mirrors and all that
it bothers me how clear it is that people just didn’t read FOM rejection
or maybe you guys did and are just being disingenuous ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Yaru (@yaru)
12th March 2025, 18:14
The current Concorde Agreement lasts until 2025. Cadillac’s entry is for 2026. The current agreement would not apply to it.
T
12th March 2025, 18:46
The entry had a provision for a 2025 start date, granting them the baked in 200M fee and a seat at the table for 2026 CA discussions.
In fact it was the start date Andretti insisted was possible to achieve and subsequently one the reasons FOM questioned their entire operation:
When Micheal was removed, that’s where 2026 came into the picture and like I said earlier, if I had the blessing of the DOJ and the Federal Government, I wouldn’t have acquiesced so quickly AND paid through the nose for it.
MichaelN
12th March 2025, 21:55
It hardly is, the Andretti operation was always pitching this as a partnership with GM a few years after coming into F1. Barely anything has changed. Based on their rejection letter, FOM had two main goals: 1) to make GM carry the title so they could pretend to the world at large that F1 attracts the big time manufacturers and – the real point of that – extract higher hosting fees and commercial rights fees. And failing that, 2) reject them under any pretense they could come up with that sounded vaguely plausible without drawing attention to the fact that FOM is in the money extraction business. That’s not all bad – in their pursuit of a greater audience they’ve done a great job making F1 more accessible online – but the idea that competitiveness was a requirement for involvement is utterly ridiculous in light of the continued involvement of hopeless outfits like Williams, Sauber and Red Bull’s test team.
T
13th March 2025, 4:31
Oh heyy, we meet again
Let’s finish what we started
Look, I can’t make you see that it is but I can point out the (accelerated) efforts and concessions that sure do look more like acquiescing than continuing “at pace”, consequences be damned
I can also point out that the fact GM can’t even meet their own engine deadline means they would have been stretched thin working on two different eras of cars and a engine. And that’s if we pretend it passed the badging exercise smell test
You call it pretense but they very clearly and explicitly make it known extracting value is their entire goal:
…
Do you know how many times “commerical” is used in that document? What do you mean pretense?? See this is what I mean when I ask if people even read the document!
I think you’re hung up on the part of the rejection that called Andretti uncompetitive and even questioned it’s understanding of the sport but you seem to have forgotten this was done because FOM couldn’t find metrics to corrobate the notion that the presence of an 11th would provide value – a factually correct statement based on financial reporting thus far.
They’re looking for value, THEY’VE ALWAYS BEEN LOOKING FOR VALUE. why do you think they kept saying “additive value”?
If nothing from the financial side can point to or even allude to the notion that this makes fiscal sense then maybe if the team is competitive enough and come in as giant killers, there may be some value there to extract but alas the entry was proposing to perform the miracle of building two different cars for two completely different eras of regulations in two years with the worst pu on the grid and to top it all off, they’ve never built a car before in their entire motorsport career.
The team doesn’t have the cache to unlock some hidden market and doesn’t have the acumen to pull a BrawnGP. Nothing showed the entry was going to put in more than it would extract and the closest thing to a commitment to not pull out was the backing of an OEM content with slapping their name on the worst power unit on the grid and a letter saying they’ll build their own engine in the future, pinky promise and even then the door was left wide open for reapplication within the rejection
What’s so shocking about this assessment?
You don’t have to like it but what precisely is wrong about it?
Where’s the pretense??
Is it in the part where they said an 11th team wouldn’t provide value
Or maybe the part where they said an uncompetitive team would be a financial drag to everyone else
Or wait wait, maybe it’s the part they kindly asked Andretti to come back later with something tactile they could extract value from like a PU from GM, oh yeah, that’s gotta be the pretense right there huh?
Also why are we pretending if Williams and Dorilton Capital or Sauber and Stake or Red Bull and Cash App applied for a commercial license Stefano would have handed it to them? What about anything that’s transpired between FOM, GM, and Andretti gave you the illusion Claire Williams would have been given the green light??
f1andrea
12th March 2025, 19:30
Another brilliant article from Keith, more of this please! I’m just waiting for $print to be deleted, but I know it will be extremely very very difficult, but if it happen, I’ll get drunk (and I’m a teetotaler).
Phil Norman (@phil-f1-21)
12th March 2025, 19:58
I don’t really know what sprint races are adding to the sport other than maybe more income. They’re not sufficiently different from the main races to make them of all that much interest. Maybe they are too long? Or maybe, if they really want to make them interesting they should try partial reverse grids. I have never been in favour of this as an idea but they need some USP. Or just scrap them.
As others have said, I don’t think FOM is really 100% committed to them and I don’t think teams and drivers are either. They come across as a bit of an inconvenience to everyone.
Julia
12th March 2025, 20:49
hahhahaha that is great