Which teams publicly backed - and opposed - Andretti’s unsuccessful F1 bid?

With F1 rejecting Andretti’s bid to enter the world championship in the next two years, we’ve taken a look back at how the existing 10 teams felt about a potential 11th team joining the grid.

The verdict was pretty deafening, with almost all of the current teams vehemently opposing Andretti’s quest to join the F1 grid.

Here’s a reminder of the stance taken by each team, and what they said.

For

McLaren

“The pros is they can help grow the pie,” McLaren CEO Zak Brown told the Track Limits podcast.

“That pie can be fans, first and foremost; that can be television revenue; that could be increased exposure in a certain market that helps to bring in more sponsors; excitement on the racetrack.

“The downside is if the pie doesn’t get larger, and then you’re just divvying up the same-sized pie, and that’s where I think the majority of the the teams are.

“I think all of us are not that informed on what the actual proposal is, so everyone is running around with an opinion. I’ve not seen specifically what’s on the table.

“My view is as long as it’s additive to the sport – brings in more fans, brings in more revenue, brings in better television contracts, whatever that may be – if it makes the pie larger I’d rather have one 11th of a pie that’s 1,000 times than one tenth of one that’s 100 times.

“But ultimately the teams don’t have a vote in the matter, so we just need to be dependent upon Formula 1 and the FIA to make that decision as to whether they feel it’s additive.

“I think everyone has an opinion, but not anyone is that educated on actually what the proposition is.”

Alpine

"I'm very favourable. It goes along with the expansion in the US,” former Alpine CEO Laurent Rossi said in 2022.

"I think that will contribute to the show, directly generate interest in the US and, therefore, revenue.

"We need to demonstrate that it's enough to compensate for the [income] dilution. Gut feeling? I think it would, but let's do the job properly and we'll see."

Against

Mercedes

“Andretti is a great name but this is sport and this is business and we need to understand what is it that you can provide to the sport,” Mercedes boss Toto Wolff said in 2022, before later softening his stance.

"And if an OEM or a multinational group joins F1 and can demonstrate that they are going to spend X amount of dollars in activating, in marketing; that's obviously a totally different value proposition for all the other teams."

Red Bull

“Look, Andretti is a great brand, a great team,” Horner told RACER in January 2023. “Mario, what he did in Formula 1 - as an American as well - is fantastic. Obviously GM with Cadillac as well would be two phenomenal brands to have in the sport, and I don’t think there can be any dispute about that.

“As with all these things though, it ultimately boils down to, ‘Well, who’s going to pay for it?’ And you can assume that the teams, if they’re perceived to be the ones who are paying for it - or diluting their payments to accommodate it - of course it’s not going to sit that well.

“The two teams that are supporting it [McLaren and Alpine] either have a partnership in the U.S. with them, or are going to supply them an engine. The other eight are saying, ‘Well hang on, why should we dilute our element of the prize fund?’

“Then on the other side you’ve got the Liberty [Media] guys saying, ‘Well we’re not going to pay for it, we’re happy with 10 healthy, competitive franchises from an operational perspective - garages, logistics, motorhomes - it’s all more to accommodate.’ I’m sure they would prefer the Audi model, where they come in and acquire an existing franchise."

Ferrari

“It's not a secret that I'm not a big fan,” said Ferrari boss Fred Vasseur.

"Except if the new entry is bringing a massive added value to F1, and I didn't have access to the dossier of Andretti, but I think it's the first question - what is the added value for F1?

“We have already have a tenth team who is American with Haas. We have an American driver on the grid. The question for me is around this – what could be the add value?”

Aston Martin

"I think F1, at the moment, the business is on fire, the sport has never been in a better place, and I believe if it isn't broken, you don't need to fix it," Aston Martin Lawrence Stroll said.

"So, I'm a strong believer that it's working really well with 10 teams right now, and believe that's the way it should stay."

AlphaTauri/Visa Cash App RB

“I remember before the cost cap was introduced, we had three team owners who actually called us and we had discussions back then that they can’t sustain this sort of investment any longer. We had [Force India] going into administration in 2018,” said Peter Bayer, CEO of Red Bull’s rebranded sister team.

“So I think that needs to be kept in mind really and I would probably follow my colleagues.”

Alfa Romeo/Sauber

“We think that any new team must bring an added value to the entire F1 community,” said Sauber team representative Alessandro Alluni Bravi.

“And so it needs to be a solid project, not just for a five-year period, but it must be a really long-term project with a strong foundation, and of course, any new entry needs to recognise the value and all the investments that have been done by the current teams.

“The worth of the current teams has grown significantly in the past few years. We need to protect our business, but we rely on the FIA and FOM to take the right decision.

“We will be ready to welcome any new teams that have this kind of characteristic. But we need first to also understand what is the best for the entire F1 community, with a long-term perspective.”

Williams

"Williams is against the addition of an 11th team," said team principal James Vowles. "And very strongly against."

Haas

Asked if Haas were still ‘vociferously against’ Andretti joining the grid, former team principal Guenther Steiner replied: “absolutely”.

“The economic situation, we are stable, but we are not making hundreds of millions of profits,” he added. “We are still trying to get our budgets together to work on the budget cap and all that stuff. If you put more teams in there, the risk is if something goes wrong the risk is higher that we fail.

“I would like to go back to 2020 - I remember sitting in meetings when the pandemic hit and four teams were ‘are we here next year or not?’. We were all struggling, trying to keep alive, and a lot of people and a lot of team owners have put their money into it to stay alive and to make F1 what it is now. There is value to that as well.

“It’s easy to say, ‘it [Andretti] doesn’t do anything for F1’. I’ve always said, if it can be demonstrated that nothing is going negative for anybody, let’s talk about it - but I haven’t seen anything.”