11/02/2023
NEWS STORY
Haas team boss claims that allowing Andretti to join the F1 grid would bring no benefit to the sport, only risk.
The Italian's point of view is somewhat ironic, because not that long ago team owner Gene Haas was desperate to sell the American outfit, feeling that in terms of spreading the word about his CNC machine tool business it was mission accomplished, while the team faced a future resigned to fighting for scraps at the back of the field.
However, all that changed, to a certain extent with the budget cap, but mainly due to Drive to Survive, which almost overnight brought the sport a whole new audience, the resultant boom increasing the value of the sport and those teams participating.
Consequently, while potential entrants are now looking at having to fork out around $600m in an anti-dilution payment due to the money the existing teams would 'lose' as the prize pot would be reduced accordingly, while the powers-that-be insist that ten teams is enough the only other hope is to buy an existing team, and at this point in time it is very much a seller's market.
"What upside is it bringing?" Steiner tells Sky Sports of Andretti's efforts to enter the sport. "There is just risk, no benefit.
"Five years ago, you could get teams for nothing, you could pick it up," he adds. "Nobody wanted them and they went out of business.
"Now, all of a sudden, everybody wants a team. But it's a lot of people that want to come in and the ten teams which are here are all financially stable, all well set up. It's a very good environment at the moment, no one is struggling.
"If you put an eleventh team in and we get a little bit of a dip in the economy or something all of a sudden maybe people are maybe struggling to survive.
"Why take that risk if there is no upside? It's not up to me to decide."
Thus far, only Alpine and McLaren appear to support Andretti's bid, while Christian Horner suggests that as opposed to coming in as a new entity, the American buys an existing outfit.
"Red Bull Racing was Jaguar, which was Stewart Ford," he tells the Daily Mail. "You look at Mercedes, that goes all the way back through Honda to British American Racing to Tyrell. Aston Martin go back to being Jordan. That has been the procedure for many years.
"There's absolutely nothing against Andretti," he insists, "they're great people and Cadillac is a wonderful brand, but we need to come up with a criteria for 2026 that doesn't diminish the value of, particularly, the smaller teams, and deals with the elephant in the room of: who is actually going to pay for it?
"In terms of a new entrant, putting down a down-payment that doesn't devalue the 10th franchise, and at the same time, Liberty and the teams accepting that, inevitably, compromises need to be made.
"There is, of course, also the practical elements of, are there enough garages at some of these new venues that we go to, to accommodate an 11th team? It needs to be dealt with in the right way.
"Andretti is a great team," he admits, "Mario Andretti is a name synonymous with Formula 1. Cadillac, GM, is one of the biggest car manufacturers in the world. So it would be great to see them in the sport, but it's just got to be done properly."
Check out our Haas VF-23 track debut gallery, here.