Michael Andretti says prejudice against American motorsport is behind Formula 1’s opposition over his proposed bid to become the sport’s 11th team.
Andretti was the only bidder to win approval from the FIA, world motorsport’s governing body, to form an 11th team in 2025 or 2026.
However, he must now navigate commercial negotiations with Formula 1 itself to get onto the grid
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F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali has long expressed scepticism of the need to expand the grid.
“I think that 10 teams are more than enough to create a show for the business and the attention that we want to see on the track,” he told the Beyond the Grid podcast earlier this year.
Domenicali’s opposition also appeared to be at least partly in deference to the teams, most of which are vehemently against an 11th constructor diluting their shares of the prize pool.
“I need to also respect the ones that have invested in Formula 1 in the last period, because we forget too quickly the respect, and now everyone wants to jump in the coach that is very fast,” Domenicali said.
There are no deadlines to negotiations, with paddock speculation suggesting Andretti may not get a final answer until some time next year.
But appearing in Bloomberg’s Power Players series, Andretti said it was prejudice above all else obstructing his entry into the sport.
“They think that we’re a bunch of hillbillies over here and we don’t know what we’re doing,” he said, having previously described the sport as “snobbish” and a “European club”.
“I know there’d be some resistance, but I didn’t expect as much as there is.
“We’ve got to realise what we’re getting into. We’re getting into a lot of politics and things like that. It’s just the way it is. We’ll deal with it.
“I didn’t think it would be this hard to get in, but we’ll prove our weight to get in.”
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Andretti is the son of motorsport legend and 1978 F1 champion Mario Andretti and the owner of Andretti Autosport, the vehicle for his family’s dynastic ambitions to become a major international racing stable.
Andretti Autosport competes most notably in IndyCar, where it last won the Indianapolis 500 in 2017, as well as in the IMSA SportsCar Championship, the Formula E world championship, Extreme E, and the Supercars in a joint venture with Tom Walkinshaw and United Autosports.
Andretti intends to operate a hybrid American-English Formula 1 team, with head office and some design and production work based in new headquarters in Indiana but the bulk of the team run from a base in the UK.
He has previously expressed a desire to shift the team to being mostly based in the United States and intends to field at least one American driver.
The 61-year-old believes forming a racing team with the United States as paramount to its identity will help the sport capitalise on the current boom in American interest.
“We feel that adding more cars is only going to help the sport,” he said. “Yeah, it’s going take a piece of their pie of prize money and things, but we feel like we can bring more to it than what we’re going to take out of the pie.
“Having a true American team — you have an American driver, a car that’s built here in the US and you have an American engine built here — I think that’s going to create a ton of interest for the US.”
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Formula 1 already has an American team, with the Haas having joined the grid in 2016.
But while Haas is based in North Carolina and races with an American licence, its race team is located in the UK, its chassis are designed by Italian company Dallara and it has a close technical relationship with Ferrari.
“They have no infrastructure. They can’t build their own car,” Andretti said. “They’re mini-Ferrari because they just buy everything, as much as they can, from Ferrari. They even have Ferrari engineers.”
Andretti considers his team to be a more fulsome attempt at an American entry.
“We have a lot of experience in racing,” he said. “We might come at it from a different angle than everybody else, and it might work.
“We feel like we have a fantastic plan. We have GM and Cadillac behind it, which is huge.
“I think we have all the ingredients to be a competitive team one day, and hopefully we can come to terms with Formula 1 to be able to be there.
“If we do get in there, it’s going to be great for the sport.”
And if he doesn’t?
“It’d be a huge disappointment, I can tell you that. But I won’t give up. I’ll figure out something.”