Why opposition claims about a new F1 team are a self-preservation exercise

When new FIA president Mohammad Ben Sulayem threw his support behind the opening of a new team application process, it went against the existing teams' general consensus of keeping the number of entrants on the grid pegged at 10. Amid all of the controversies that Ben Sulayem has got himself entangled in since winning the presidential election at the end of 2021, his support of opening the tender process suggests that he is not willing to kowtow to the growing power of F1's current teams - for better, or for worse.

The application process closed on 15 May, with a decision due in the near future to determine if any of the applicants have earned a place on the 2025, 2026, or 2027 grid. Of those applicants, the Andretti application is arguably the most high-profile, having linked up with General Motors brand Cadillac to bolster its chances and has already been on a recruitment drive to collect talent with F1 experience.

F2 and F3 entrant Hitech Grand Prix has also lodged an application, having sold a 25% stake in the team to Kazakhstani billionaire Vladimir Kim, who is according to Forbes the 609th richest person in the world after making his fortune in the mining industry. Craig Pollock's Formula Equal is also believed to have submitted its bid to join the circus, the ex-BAR F1 boss putting together plans to run a team with an equal gender workforce and to be operated from an unspecified "Gulf area country". Asian team LKY SUNZ, featuring a number of shareholders from the previous Panthera Team Asia bid from 2019, has also thrown its hat into the ring and has investment from the US to support its efforts.

Hitech may well have a fellow F2/F3 team for competition, as Rodin Carlin was initially interested in exploring the possibility of an entry. Australian businessman David Dicker took a stake in the team through his Rodin Cars business, and the team is believed to have submitted a formal entry for the FIA's approval.

The FIA will assess each team's business case, potential for longevity, and determine whether any of them are good enough to fill the 11th space on the grid that has been vacant since Manor departed the championship at the end of 2016. The more, the merrier in many people's eyes, including this writer's, but the current teams do not necessarily agree with that axiom. Instead, there has been cold opposition from some of the current entrants, and it's largely to do with money.

With the appearance of the fictitious APXGP in the Silverstone garages over the British Grand Prix weekend, featuring lead actor Brad Pitt and directed by Joseph Kosinski, the question of a real 11th team was raised once again. After all, F1 can accommodate a fake one, its actors and a full film crew - so why not a real one? Mercedes boss Toto Wolff, one of the leading voices against introducing an 11th team, stated that his opposition remained "pretty much unchanged" amid his team's assistance of the APXGP project.

The F2 race-winning Hitech team is facing opposition to its plans to join the F1 grid - both from other prospective new entries and current grid stalwarts

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

"We have no visibility of who the applications came from, and what the proposals are," Wolff stated during the British GP. "I think all the stakeholders – and I think mainly the FIA and FOM – will decide on such a new entry, will assess if the proposal is accretive for Formula 1: What does it bring us in terms of marketing and interest, and whether they want to think about introducing that.

"Our position was very clear: buy a team. But you know, there's a lot of consequences. When you look at qualifying sessions, I mean already now we're looking like on a go-kart track, we’re tripping over each other. There is a safety concern: we haven't got the logistics, where to put an eleventh team. Here in Silverstone, we can accommodate the Hollywood people but on other circuits, we can’t."

That's not entirely true, given that most of F1's venues accommodated 11 teams during the 2016 season, and the newer circuits on the calendar have enough finance and resource to build more garages if required. Sure, F1 is never going to return to the halcyon days of the late 1980s and early 1990s when 20 teams were crammed into a finite space, some using tiny awnings to fit their token efforts within, but an added team is hardly much of a stretch. Maybe Monaco today is a challenge to fit an extra team in, given that the FIA and F1 now occupy harbour space with their own motorhomes, but they can surely scale down if they have the desire to do so.

It's not a team's profile, its pedigree, or its ability to go fishing in a saturated sponsorship market, it's simply whether it can afford to sink millions into the anti-dilution fee pot.

Wolff also cited safety, which was again not invoked when Haas was successful in retrieving its F1 entry for the 2015 - which later became 2016 - season. And besides, if F1 is concerned about the safety ramifications of having more than 20 cars on track, why does it not influence the 30-car grids in F3 to scale back? The F3 chassis is smaller, granted, but there's still a situation of having 30 drivers of wildly varying skill levels occupying the same stretch of circuit.

"Then people like Audi and the venture capital fund have been buying into F1 teams for considerably higher valuations," Wolff added. "And so all of that is a picture that the FIA and FOM have to access. And, as I said before, if a team can contribute to the positive development of Formula 1, then… and in a way that the other teams have done, over the many years, have suffered over the many years… yeah, we have to look at it."

"For once, I'm pretty aligned with Toto, that first you can’t compare the impact of the movie and the impact of a team," added Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur. "Have a look at what happened last week. It was already a mess in Spielberg on track, with the track limits. Imagine if you have 10 per cent more infringements. But more seriously, we didn't change at all the position, so I think it could make sense for F1 only if it’s a huge push in every single direction."

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So what would the "huge push" and "contribution to positive development" entail? It seems like a nebulous concept at best, one perhaps defined vaguely so that the goalposts can shift on command. Perhaps one of those ideas could be to tap into investment and grow talent pools in certain areas around the world, growing F1's influence in places where interest has been moderate at best. Not so, says Vasseur, who suggests that a team's nationality is not a particularly relevant USP.

Wolff has most recently listed safety concerns as a reason not to expand the grid beyond 10 teams

Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

"Very often we are speaking about the nationality of the team but for me, it’s absolutely not an argument," he said. "F1 is not just a UK championship because we have 70 per cent of the teams based in the UK. The attractivity of the F1 is much more based on the nationality of the drivers and so it’s nothing to do with the nationality of the team."

"As Fred said, the team's nationality plays no role," Wolff added. "We have [had] an American team for a long time, we need to have a good points system that we attract more drivers from the US, that we make them eligible for a superlicence. We need to support young drivers like Logan Sargeant to give them enough time. Because like we've seen with Fernando in Spain, you've got a race at the front. If you're not racing at the front your fellow countrymen are not going to follow."

Those seem like pointed comments in the direction of the potential Andretti entry, which has been formulated in conjunction with a US brand (GM/Cadillac) to profit from the greater attention that F1 has received from North America.

The Haas team has, by comparison, struggled to attract American sponsors and slot into the US market, while the suggestions are that a "name" like Andretti might have a slightly easier time in doing so. After all, the team is able to fund a four-car programme in IndyCar each with separate sponsors like Gainbridge, DHL, and AutoNation funding the cars, so Andretti's marketing team has experience operating in that area.

So if a US-based team with US-based sponsors and investment isn't considered enough, what is? This might sound cynical, but there's only one criterion that the other teams care about: it's not its profile, its pedigree, or its ability to go fishing in a saturated sponsorship market, it's simply whether it can afford to sink millions into the anti-dilution fee pot.

Currently, the anti-dilution fee - in essence, the amount of cash required to make up for prize money being divided by 11 rather than 10 - stands at $200m, but the teams have been strongly in favour of marking that up to $600m given the expanded popularity of F1. That goes beyond prize money, as the added $400m that the teams want will theoretically cover off the loss of income from sponsorship and merchandise sales for each given the booming popularity of F1.

"There's been a lot of debate about this, and everyone has an opinion, but there's really only two entities that make the decision, Formula 1 and the FIA," said McLaren CEO Zak Brown. "So I think, everything has been submitted to them from my point of view. I think it would be easiest if they bought one of the 10 teams, and then that way, there wouldn't have to be this debate.

Andretti's IndyCar arm has enjoyed commercial success with four fully-funded cars

Photo by: Phillip Abbott / Motorsport Images

"But you know, to me, it's all about being accretive to the sport. What are they bringing to the table? What's the appropriate size? Franchise fee? I think when we started this journey five, six years ago, the sport was radically different. So yeah, let's see what happens. I think it's in the hands of the decision makers, and hopefully, there'll be a decision soon."

Rather than go through the rigamarole of minor things that an 11th team could affect, Brown at least has the moxie to mention the franchise fee aspect. Although he has been an ally of Michael Andretti over the years, he remains sceptical of the benefit that Andretti - or any of the other potential new teams - could bring. But, he says, the decision is ultimately out of the teams' hands, and they cannot influence the FIA. However, as FOM and Stefano Domenicali also have to agree on the decision, the teams could ultimately cajole the decision through that avenue.

The teams are only interested in self-preservation, which is natural given the difficult few years F1 faced in the mid-2010s

"Growing the pot sufficiently", per Williams boss James Vowles, will be the sole way to get the teams onside. If one applicant fits that bill, one would imagine that concerns over safety and logistics would melt away reasonably quickly. F1 can operate with 11 teams - or more, as the early 2010s proved - and despite Vasseur's protestations, countries with vast untapped resources can offer much in the way of added capital to F1.

But let's cut through the bulls**t: it's always about money, and it always has been. The teams are only interested in self-preservation, which is natural given the difficult few years F1 faced in the mid-2010s, and that spectre of financial ruin still resides somewhere in F1's deepest crevices. But due to increased fan interest and the potential to give more drivers a chance at the top table, an 11th team will surely be a net gain - and F1 must find a way to market that rather than resist it.

Hollywood brought a fictitious 11th team to the grid at Silverstone, but the prospects of one in reality continue to hang in the balance

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images