The hockey expansion rule that could benefit Andretti's F1 bid

Watching last Monday’s NHL Winter Classic tie up between the Boston Bruins and Pittsburgh Penguins offered a welcome distraction to the fact that, now 2023 has well and truly begun, the Christmas holidays are now well and truly over.

The FIA’s mercurial president Mohammed Ben Sulayem got tongues wagging on the same day Patrice Bergeron’s Bruins snatched a 2-1 win over Sidney Crosby’s Penguins when he said he was appealing to F1’s governing body to seek out interest in adding a new team to the grid. This was followed up by the announcement by Andretti and Cadillac on Thursday of their joint plans to enter F1 in the coming years.

As Autosport’s F1 reporter Luke Smith pertinently pointed out in his subsequent analysis of Ben Sulayem’s comments, any prospective F1 team’s (and this includes Andretti) path to the grid will be much easier said than done. And this got me thinking: what would an expansion draft, similar to that deployed by the National Hockey League, look like for a new F1 team?

Before we go any further, we must add the caveats. This isn’t a serious suggestion, more a bit of fun, and the complexities of F1 contracts and sponsorship deals makes any expansion draft virtually impossible. But suppose for a moment that lucrative energy drinks deals and crumbling crypto sponsorship contracts aren’t a restraint for the F1 grid...

Firstly, how does an expansion draft work?

Well, in the National Hockey League, any new franchise must be granted approval from the league to join the fray. Doing so requires some serious money to be put down. For the Seattle Kraken, the last expansion team in the NHL having joined for the 2021/2022 season, its owners had to pay $650 million dollars to compete in the league. Andretti will have to fork out $200m under the current Concorde Agreement just to join the grid – which, frankly, seems like a bargain compared to running an NHL expansion franchise!

Andretti Autosport has broken ground on its new headquarters, but faces several obstacles before it can get onto the F1 grid

Photo by: Andretti Autosport

Let’s take the Kraken’s expansion in 2021 as our reference. It had to pick 30 players, at least 20 of which had to be under contract for the 2021-2022 season with other teams, and had to meet a certain salary cap threshold. While F1 operates to a cost cap, salaries are excluded from this. That roster breakdown was as such: 14 forwards, nine defencemen and three goalies.

Of the 31 existing NHL teams, 30 (the Vegas Golden Knights were exempt from being included in the draft in return for taking a hit on the fee it would have gained from Seattle’s expansion as it only joined the league in 2017) had to put forward a list of players it would protect.

Existing teams could only protect seven forwards, three defencemen and one goalie – or eight skaters in total and one goalie (if it wanted to protect an extra defensive player, for example), and the rest of its roster were up for grabs in Seattle’s draft.

Let’s add a caveat here: development drivers are exempt from trade, meaning someone like Red Bull couldn’t occupy a grey area by listing four of its myriad junior drivers as exposed, and would mean a new outfit would have to look at junior series for its own development driver

There were several rules on top of this. Any player who had a no-movement clause – meaning, he could not be traded – in his existing deal had to be given a protection slot, while at least one defencemen, two forwards and one goalie had to be exposed if they were under contract and had played in at least 27 games in the previous season or 54 over the prior two.

All teams’ first and second-year pros and all unsigned choices in the upcoming draft process were exempt from selection by Seattle. Players with career-threatening injuries were not allowed to be used to meet exposure criteria. Prior to it completing its roster, Seattle also had a 72-hour window in which to sign any unrestricted free agents and restricted free agents in the league it wanted.

Expansion is a somewhat confusing process with numerous caveats and exemptions, but the long and short of it is this: existing teams are always going to protect its star talent, so generally an expansion team probably won’t end up with an absolute superstar for its first season. However, it can still get decent talent – as the Golden Knights proved in 2017/18, when it went all the way to the Stanley Cup playoff final with a roster many commentators pre-season predicted would come last in the league.

So, how would this system work for Andretti?

Under the current rules, teams are limited to 58 operational personnel at a race track on each weekend – though, there are exceptions, such as catering, hospitality staff, truckers and the drivers.

NHL draft rules would give new teams a better chance of hitting the ground running as Haas did in 2016 with Grosjean

Photo by: Dirk Kylnsmith/Motorsport Images

To make an expansion draft work in F1, we’ll have to rejig this rule somewhat and assume that a new team has to draft a roster of 62: 58 operational personnel, two race drivers, one reserve driver and one development driver.

Let’s assume existing F1 teams can only protect a maximum of 28 individuals. Only one driver in total from the pool of four, six senior management figures (team boss, sporting director, technical director, etc), one race engineer, one electronics engineer, one aero chief, an engine head and the remaining 17 in mechanics and backroom engineering staff. At least three picks have to be made per team, though any deals signed prior to expansion would be counted as a pick (with the minimum number from each team adjusted if necessary).

Let’s add a caveat here: development drivers are exempt from trade, meaning someone like Red Bull couldn’t occupy a grey area by listing four of its myriad junior drivers as exposed, and would mean a new outfit would have to look at junior series for its own development driver. Any official reserve who hasn't raced in at least two years is also exempt from exposure, so Alfa Romeo can't throw Robert Kubica out to shield its race drivers.

Let’s also exclude rookies from the list of drivers who could be traded, meaning Oscar Piastri and Logan Sargeant would be exempt if an expansion happened for 2023. And no drivers who are retiring at the end of a season when the expansion draft happens can be exposed.

Like in the NHL, that protected list can be rejigged if a team wants to put an emphasis on who it protects – though the 17 mechanics and backroom staff number cannot change. That will come with another caveat in that you will leave someone else exposed. Say Mercedes was absolutely unwilling to give up both of its drivers, then that would force them to expose a senior management or engineering figure.

Naturally, contracts would have to be redrawn under an expansion ruleset to allow teams to add no-move clauses. But it would have to be tactical in its use as not to choke up its exemption list for future expansion drafts.

All of this considered, Andretti could complete its first full season with a solid line-up. A team like Red Bull would be unlikely to expose Max Verstappen and Adrian Newey, but it would be forced to put Sergio Perez up for grabs in this instance and also Daniel Ricciardo, who would be a sensible plug-in-and-play replacement as a number two driver.

Rookies such as new McLaren signing Oscar Piastri would be exempt under this system

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

A driver like Mick Schumacher could find himself back in a race seat as Mercedes would almost certainly protect both Lewis Hamilton and George Russell, though the uncertainty over the former’s career longevity this far into his tenure may prompt a shock rethink.

Thus, an expansion draft could lead to some big shake-ups both driver-wise and in the engineering and management departments, and give a new team a decent head start. Giving the team a chance to be so competitive from the outset with established personnel would also give credence to any push to allow new entrants to join, avoiding the Caterham/Manor/HRT situation of the early 2010s.

If the Andretti situation to now has taught us anything, however, it’s that F1 is probably still a few years away from any sort of true expansion given the amount of squabbling amongst existing outfits over the necessity and viability of a prospective outfit that will have to take place first

If it followed the NHL system, a list of available personnel would be issued prior to the draft, giving a new entrant the chance to see which talent is available to draft. And if existing teams could only protect one of their race drivers, it could add a fascinating internal politics dynamic over who is the ‘number one’ driver.

Come the end of it, the team will be free to negotiate contracts with any draft picks it secures for its expansion – but its original draft picks can be re-signed by their former employers.

If the Andretti situation to now has taught us anything, however, it’s that F1 is probably still a few years away from any sort of true expansion given the amount of squabbling amongst existing outfits over the necessity and viability of a prospective outfit that will have to take place first.

At least in hockey they would just throw the gloves…

An NHL-style system would cause all kinds of personnel movement across the grid

Photo by: Lionel Ng / Motorsport Images