Formula 1: Andretti bid row reflects turbulent relationship among F1’s powerbrokers

On the face of it, the Andretti bid looks attractive.

Andretti is a big name, steeped in motorsport heritage, with a successful record in other categories such as IndyCar and the FIA’s own all-electric Formula E series, and reputed to have a significant amount of money behind him.

GM is a major American company and Cadillac the sort of high-end brand that seems to fit nicely with F1’s image.

But many stakeholders in F1 have concerns as to whether, if a new team is to enter F1, this is the right one.

The key phrase that keeps coming up is whether Andretti would “add value” to F1? This is about competitiveness and investment.

Firstly, has Andretti really understood what it will take to run a serious F1 team, people wonder?

Within F1, there is a general sense that many of those racing in America in categories where teams buy cars off the shelf and run them with fairly small-scale operations don’t quite grasp just how high the level is in F1, how complex the task.

Andretti is said to have told people his aim is to enter F1 in 2025, but a number of existing teams don’t think that is even close to realistic.

They point out that they already have the basics of 2025 cars sketched out, while Andretti also has to scale up a factory, and employ 600 or so people by then.

His decision to base the team in America rather than Europe has also raised eyebrows, even if Andretti is planning what he describes as a European “satellite shop” that will deal with F1 and other categories in which the company is racing.

Andretti says his new facility in Fishers, Indiana, will be “one of the most advanced racing facilities in the world when it’s completed”.

But an existing F1 team boss described the plan to base the team in the US as “insane” and suggested that Andretti appeared not to have learned the lessons of his own brief flirtation with F1 as a driver.

Andretti abandoned his career as a front-runner in IndyCar – he was champion in 1991 and one of its most successful ever drivers – to race for McLaren in 1993 as Ayrton Senna’s team-mate, but was sacked three races before the end of the season because of a lack of competitiveness.

At the time, his decision to commute from the US rather than base himself in Europe was regarded as one of the biggest stumbling blocks to success for a man whose ability was not in question.

An existing team – Haas – also have a US HQ, but their car is designed between their satellite base in the UK, and a team embedded in the Ferrari factory in Italy.

Andretti insists his plan is in good shape.

“We’ve done a lot of hiring,” he said last week. “We have quite a few people already working for us. We have hired the main engineers. So yes, we’re very much down the road on that. We have our technical director already hired; we’ll announce that down the road as well.”

There is also the way Andretti has handled himself in his dealings with F1.

Andretti turned up at the Miami Grand Prix last May and went round all the team principals asking them to sign a document saying they agreed to his entry to F1.

Only Alpine – whose parent company Renault have agreed to sell Andretti an engine – and McLaren, run by Andretti’s long-time friend and occasional business partner Zak Brown, did so.

One senior figure describes this strategy as “naive.” And it did not go down well with F1 president Stefano Domenicali, who is said to have pointed out to Andretti that this was not the way people went about things in F1, and not to try to bully him into supporting his bid.