FIA president tells Andretti to ‘BUY’ an existing F1 team rather than set up a new one… as Mohammed Ben Sulayem explains how some outfits on the grid ‘need to be refreshed’

The ambitious Formula 1 team Andretti should buy an existing team instead of setting up its own team, says FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem.

Andretti’s bid to compete in 2025 or 2026 was rejected in January by Liberty Media, Formula 1’s commercial rights holder, despite backing from the FIA.

That leaves the American team waiting until at least 2028 to join the ten teams currently active in F1.

Ben Sulayem said: ‘I would advise them to go and buy another team, and not come as an eleventh team.

‘I think some teams need innovation. What is better? To have 11 teams as a number or 10 and they are strong?

Team owner Michael Andretti had earlier this year rejected a bid to join F1 in 2025 or 2026

‘I still believe we should have more teams. But no plows. The right teams.’

He did not reveal which teams he was targeting, but possible candidates include Haas and Alpine, who have scored nine points between them all season.

However, Alpine owners Renault and Gene Haas are not interested in selling, according to senior F1 sources via the BBC.

F1 felt Andretti’s participation was lacking and claimed in January that it ‘did not believe the candidate would be a competitive participant’.

However, F1, the commercial rights holder, said on Wednesday it was prepared to revisit the issue in 2028, when General Motors will have an engine ready for competition.

F1 said it did not believe Andretti would be a competitive team, that the Andretti name does not carry the value that Michael Andretti thinks it would, and that it would be a challenge to stay on the grid in the next two years to face something the team has never had to deal with before. .

“We do not believe there is a basis for admitting a new candidate in 2025 as this would mean a novice entrant building two completely different cars in the first two years of its existence,” Formula 1 said.

‘The fact that the applicant is proposing this gives us reason to doubt their understanding of the scope of the challenge involved.

Ben Sulayem argued that ‘some teams need to be revamped’, although he did not reveal who

F1 is only interested in allowing Andretti if General Motors has an engine to compete

“Formula 1, as the pinnacle of world motorsport, represents a unique technical challenge for constructors of a nature that the applicant has not yet faced in any other formula or discipline in which it has previously competed,” F1 continued. “On this basis, we do not believe that the applicant would be a competitive entrant.”

F1’s governing body, the FIA, accepted Andretti’s entry last year and agreed that they had met the necessary criteria.

However, the sport’s commercial arm, Formula One Management, rejected the team’s bid after discussing the matter with the ten teams currently on the grid, claiming it would not be competitive in 2025 or 2026.

This month, twelve members of the US Congress wrote a letter to Formula 1’s parent company, Liberty Media, demanding answers about Andretti Global’s rejected bid to join the grid.

‘[We have] concerns about the apparent anti-competitive actions that could prevent two American companies, Andretti Global and General Motors (GM), from producing and competing in Formula 1,” the letter said.

They also noted that the decision to exclude Andretti, along with his partners GM and Cadillac, could be “a violation of U.S. antitrust laws.”