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❗ Here comes a new challenger?

(c) GPStPete on Twitter

Some unexpected, but intriguing Friday night news dropped as the thought of an eleventh team could emerge on the Formula 1 grid in the form of Mario Andretti’s son Michael expressing his interest in entering a team. 

And it’s an interesting link to the past, with the Drive to Survive generation getting a chance to witness the next step in a direct link to the sport’s history with the name and added publicity. Mario Andretti is the last American to win an F1 race, and the last to win the championship, taking the chequered flag first for the last time in the Netherlands in 1978. But while it was the father who announced their intention to join the grid, it’s the son who would be running the team. Michael Andretti, a jobbing F1 driver who achieved one podium before being replaced by Mika Hakkinen in 1993, is something of a mainstay in CART, winning the title two years before his sabbatical in F1, as part of over 300 races and 42 wins, in the days before the series merged with IndyCar. 

And while the name Andretti is something of a dynasty in the United States, they also have name recognition among Formula E fans, with Jake Dennis and 2019 Indy Lights winner Oliver Askew behind the electric cars. Something of a middling outfit, they’ve taken wins in the sport, most recently through Dennis in London. 

So would that make Dennis or Askew a potential driver for Andretti should they enter Formula 1? It’s possible, but it also directly increases the chances of bringing in a driver from IndyCar, and there are some excellent ones available - this isn’t to say that F1 is a definite step up from Indy, but as the sport continues to grow in the US, a true world championship might appeal to some of the faster drivers in IndyCar, with Colton Herta the probable one to watch.

Askew is their first driver from the US in Formula E, so it’s by no means guaranteed that a seat would exist for at least one American, but there is talent in the junior ranks. Logan Sargeant in the Williams junior program is one part of a new generation of US racers, who work under a brighter, silent spotlight as the sport continues to grow in North America. 

It also exposes the curious situation at Haas, which markets itself as America’s F1 Team. A Russian and German driver, on a car in the colours of the Russian flag doesn’t scream America’s team, although it keeps the team funded, and a gap in the crowded market certainly exists for Andretti to use that heritage and a base in Indianapolis as an advantage. 

And is F1 ready for an eleventh team? The days of bored businessmen turning up with a car and having to pre-qualify for a race are long gone. F1 is a tightly-controlled, fully professional sports league and nothing less than total commitment to F1 will see you onto the grid, let alone winning points and prize money. F1 prize money is also notoriously opaque, with a system that rewards short-term and long-term success, any new team would need to have a couple of points-scoring years before they could consider themselves eligible for the big guaranteed money and would be loss-making ventures for those initial seasons. 

There is one potential way in which some of this pain could be mitigated, and break a little bit of the bottleneck as drivers age out of F2 and other feeder series and that could be a partnership with the team that only supplies itself so far. Alpine have limited data because they only have two cars running their engines. They could partner with a new Andretti team, and give them engines, time in a wind tunnel and everything an upstart outfit needs in exchange for one of its seats. Put Herta in one car and say, Oscar Piastri in the other and spread the risk of running a rookie driver elsewhere while your established drivers compete for Alpine. 

Over time, as Andretti builds its factories and tunnels and all the other things an F1 team needs, they can get full control over both seats again. 

F1 is trying to even the playing field a little, with the cost cap imposed on all teams aimed at stopping anyone tempted to buy themselves a world title, and try to add some certainty to a team’s expenditure over the course of a season. 

But there is one final nine-figure elephant in the room that Andretti would have to consider. Any new team that joins Formula 1 would have to pay the other teams $200m to others as a “dilution fee” - that is, with another party getting a slice of pie, they would have to compensate the others - even though that pie overall is significantly larger than when the rules were written. Maybe an enterprising lawyer could talk their way out of that, or reduce that payment, given that it gives F1 a link to its past in motorsport tradition and its future in America. 

With Andretti interested in joining F1, there are several questions to answer. The biggest is “why?” Looking at the grid, there are car manufacturers, who want to bring technologies learned at the top to their road cars, as well as enjoying the advertising given just by being on the grid, there are energy drink manufacturers, finding common ground with the high-adrenaline world of the sport, and there are still a couple of enthusiast teams, who are racing for the sake of racing. Andretti probably fits into the latter of these categories, joining the likes of Williams and Haas. The problem is those teams tend to sit at the lower end of the grid, with the other two categories hoovering up the points and prize money. 

 
 
 
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From Mario Andretti’s comments to Racer, it seems like they want to do this, and do it in a way that ensures a presence in the junior formula too. With Formula 1 growing all the time, it’s natural to assume that the grid would also expand. Despite ill-fated attempts in recent years, few new teams have the name value Andretti does. But merely getting on the grid within 107% of the leading times is not the end of the battle.

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