Andretti Cadillac "impossible to ignore"

Sam Hall
Thursday 12 January 2023 18:28

Andretti Global recently dropped a bombshell announcement that GM/Cadillac will be supporting the team's F1 bid, seemingly making the application too much for the sport to ignore.

After FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem invited expressions of interest from prospective teams looking to join the F1 grid, Andretti and GM were quick to respond, answering questions as to what they would bring to the party to benefit F1.

The news certainly stirred the GPFans staff, as you can tell from the reactions taken from the recently released edition of the Stewards' Room Podcast.

Editor-in-chief - Ian Parkes

F1, in its own way, has been saying, 'We're not quite sure about you guys. Are you big enough to join us?'.

But the F1 teams are so protective over what they've got and they're so protective at this particular point in time because the sport is on an upwards trajectory, the revenue pot is getting bigger that they're sharing between the 10 of them. And they don't want a dilution of that.

If an 11th team comes in, that means the pie is that little bit smaller for each team.

There's been a little bit of greed going on but now, I don't think any one of those 10 teams currently in Formula 1 can have any complaints about Andretti joining forces with what is, at the end of the day, one of the world's biggest car manufacturers.

Without a shadow of a doubt, this is a major coup for Formula 1 and if F1 and the FIA do not get this over the line with the 10 teams, it will be one of the biggest injustices we would have seen in F1 for a very long time.

Deputy editor - Sam Hall

You can't turn this down. It's one of, if not the biggest automotive brand in the world. It's got to happen.

I'm not worried about Andretti being a backmarker team, I don't think they would be.

And for Andretti as well, this is about so much more than just Formula 1.

In the press conference, Michael Andretti, the team owner, was talking about building a facility in Europe and racing in other categories in Europe. Whether that would be with Cadillac or not remains to be seen.

But you can imagine Andretti taking this really seriously and setting up a young driver programme with maybe an F2 team, an F3 team and building through the ranks to get an American driver through with the relevant super licence points.

For me, this news is about as exciting as you could get. I don't know how you would top this.

F1 writer - Ewan Gale

If you think about all the fanfare that we got last year with Audi and Porsche coming in - 'Oh wow, it's the Volkswagen Group'. This is almost the American version of that but on a bigger scale because of how much they sell year-on-year.

It's a massive opportunity and is almost impossible to ignore now.