Andretti’s GM-backed entry wanted to enter F1 in 2025, but F1 says no

The Formula 1 grid will stay at just 20 cars for the next few years. Earlier today, F1 revealed it has rejected a bid by Andretti Global to join the sport for 2025. The move was not unexpected; neither F1 nor most of the teams have shown any enthusiasm toward Andretti’s entry. The sport sent out a lengthy statement explaining its reasons for turning down the Andretti entry but said that “it would look differently on an application” in 2028.

It’s a blow to both Andretti and its fans, but the move also signals increasing disharmony between the FIA, the sport’s organizing body, and Liberty Media, which owns the commercial rights to the F1 world championship.

Andretti Global first announced its plan to enter F1 last January, seeing it as a natural expansion for an organization that already races in IndyCar, Formula E, Extreme E, and IMSA sportscar racing, among other series. A month later the FIA formally opened an application process for new teams to enter the sport, but of the four applicants only Andretti had the backing of a major automaker behind it—in this case General Motors’ Cadillac brand.

The FIA said yes

The FIA spent several months conducting its due diligence and then in October accepted Andretti Global’s application.

“The FIA was very clear in establishing stringent criteria for entry from the outset of the Expressions of Interest procedure. Our objective, after rigorous due diligence during the application phase, was to only approve prospective entries which satisfied the set criteria and illustrated that they would add value to the sport,” said FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem.

“Andretti Formula Racing LLC was the only entity which fulfils the selection criteria that was set in all material respects. I congratulate Michael Andretti and his team on a thorough submission. I also want to thank all prospective teams for their interest and participation,” Ben Sulayem said.

But these days, it’s not just up to the FIA to accept new entrants into F1. Any successful entry must also have an agreement with the sport’s commercial rights holder. Those rights currently belong to Liberty Media, and among the changes made to the sport since the sale to Liberty is that the teams each get a much larger slice of the revenue.

New entrants are supposed to bring a $200 million “anti-dilution fee” with them to offset the money the existing 10 teams would lose when the billion-dollar pie has to be sliced 11 ways. But that amount was determined before F1’s recent rise in popularity and value, and existing teams have called for it to be tripled to $600 million.

F1 says no

F1 says it conducted its review process, where it considered the value that would be added to F1 by Andretti Global’s joining, “including value to fans, the prestige and reputational value of the sport, the competitive balance of the Championship, and the sustainability goals of the sport.”

Among its considerations were how competitive the new team might be, where the team was getting its engines from, how the team might add new fans, and how an 11th team would impact the organization of a grand prix weekend. F1 says that it consulted with key stakeholders but also says it did not speak to any of the current 10 F1 teams as part of the process.

Michael Andretti had almost as much success in IndyCar racing as his father, Mario. But his brief foray into F1 as a driver in the 1993 season was a disaster.

Credit: Pascal Rondeau/Getty Images

Some of F1’s objections to the Andretti entry appear quite reasonable. F1 notes that the deal with GM to build Cadillac powertrains only begins in 2028 and that there’s no engine supplier in place for 2025 or 2026. Renault has previously said it would be open to supplying Andretti Global with powertrains as a customer team if its bid were accepted, but there is no concrete agreement between the two. In fact, Renault would probably be obliged to supply powertrains to Andretti under the rules governing powertrain constructors in the sport.

F1 also points out that the technical rulebook for the sport changes quite dramatically at the start of the 2026 season. “The Applicant proposes, as a novice constructor, to design and build a car under the 2025 regulations, and then in the very next year to design and build a completely different car under the 2026 regulations,” it writes.

“Further, the Applicant proposes to attempt this with a dependency on a compulsory supply from a rival PU manufacturer that will inevitably be reticent to extend its collaboration with the Applicant beyond the minimum required while the Applicant pursues its ambition of collaborating with GM as a PU supplier in the longer term, which a compulsory PU supplier would see as a risk to its intellectual property and know-how,” F1 continues.

While the Andretti name carries some recognition, F1 thinks that “F1 would bring value to the Andretti brand rather than the other way around,” but it says the most significant way to bring value to F1 would be by being competitive, which it does not believe Andretti would be. F1 concludes that Andretti Global would not add value to F1, but it does leave the door open for a few years’ time:

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. 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 OEM to the sport as a PU supplier.

If you want to talk about added value…

F1 is probably not mistaken when it comes to assessing Andretti Global’s chances of competitive success were it to join the F1 grid next year. Charitably, it’s the fourth-best team in IndyCar racing, and its star driver, Colton Herta, has not managed to place better than 10th in the championship in the last two years, a factor that has ruled him out of eligibility for an F1 “Super License.”

Andretti Global also wants to split its departments across multiple sites—car design and the race team would be based in Silverstone, England; the aerodynamicists would work in Cologne, Germany, using Toyota’s wind tunnel (an approach recently abandoned by McLaren in favor of building its own); and vehicle dynamics would be conducted in Charlotte, North Carolina, at the GM Motorsports facility. This kind of split approach has been tried with little success by the Haas team.