Everyone knew about the main news at the beginning of the week in advance, but now the FIA has officially confirmed that the application submitted by Andretti Formula Racing LLC has been approved, i.e. The federation considers the project of Michael Andretti and his partners from General Motors to be quite sound and meeting all formal requirements.
But this does not mean at all that a new team will appear in the World Championship in the near future, since approval at the federation level is only a preliminary stage, and the last word still belongs to Formula 1, namely Liberty Media and the ten existing teams.
We have talked more than once about their attitude towards the prospect of the appearance of an 11th participant, to put it mildly, with restraint, but this was all theory, and now Formula 1 has to take certain practical steps. What they will be will be shown by further developments, but for now one indicative fact can be cited: on the official website of the championship over the past 24 hours, the news that Andretti’s application was approved by the FIA did not appear.
During this time, there were many different messages on Formula 1 pages on social networks, but not on this topic. However, the championship owners did make a short statement, and it was quoted by Sky Sports: “We have taken note of the FIA’s findings regarding the first and second phases of their process and will now conduct our own analysis of the merits of the only remaining application.”
That’s all. The contender for participation in the championship has not even been named. Sky Sports suggests this is purely for commercial reasons and the next phase of Andretti’s bid could drag on for months.
Michael Andretti is unlikely to be surprised by this, because at the beginning of the year, in an interview with Forbes, he said that the negative reaction from some teams is explained by the fact that they are “too greedy and think only about themselves,” because they do not want to divide the Formula 1 prize fund into more number of parts.
The main condition put forward by the F1 management and traditional teams is formulated extremely vaguely: the appearance of a new participant should “increase the value” of the championship. Therefore, Andretti Cadillac’s application will be analyzed solely from a financial perspective, and this process may last indefinitely.
On the same topic, it is worth quoting a few sentences from the text of The Race, which is given the characteristic headline “Formula 1 is embarking on the worst-case scenario in connection with the Andretti Cadillac application”: “One or another resolution of the situation, which has been dragging on for a whole year, could be helped by either full approval, or immediate categorical refusal. Instead, Formula 1 will stall in a fog-shrouded intermediate stage: if the application receives formal approval from the FIA, then for many people it will mean an 11th team in the championship. However, a discussion of the “commercial component” will soon begin, which may turn out to be fruitless, which will only lead to further delay of the entire process.
And the way F1 is going to conduct a full inspection of Andretti Cadillac and make its decision could cause an extremely negative and even hostile reaction from many people.”
2023-10-03 15:22:00
#reacts #restrainedly #news #Andretti
