For more than a year now, Michael Andretti has been openly applying for a place in Formula 1. The son of former US F1 world champion Mario Andretti, who took the title in 1978, would like to contribute to the top class of motorsport with another team.
Recently, the cooperation with Cadillac was announced. If successful, Andretti would be the eleventh racing team in F1 and the second overseas team after Haas.
After it had been a little quiet around the 60-year-old recently, there was now news around the USA GP in Miami. There, Andretti revealed to “Sky Sports F1” that things are now getting serious.
Andretti F1 ‘big signings’
According to recent reports from the USA, Andretti’s first driver will be Colton Herta. The 22-year-old American has been active in the IndyCar Series since 2018, where he drove for Andretti Autosport in recent years, but that’s not all Andretti has signed on as a partner with both Renault and GM’s Cadillac brands coming on board.
TJ13 believes that most likely Andretti will run in 2027 with a Cadillac built engine but plans to enter the sport with Renault in year one in 2026. The FIA has already announced the six manufacturers that have signed up under the new engine regulations, so a GM entry for 2026 is ruled out: Mercedes, Ferrari, Renault, Honda, Red Bull-Ford and Audi having signed up before the deadline.
General Motors group now says it can imagine entering Formula One as an engine manufacturer – but not until 2027 at the earliest.
“It’s something we’re looking at,” chief executive Eric Warren confirmed to Autosport. “We are looking at the power units.”
US built engine
Cadillac already owns an engine shop and produces naturally aspirated 5.5-litre V8 engines for LMDh prototypes at the GM Performance and Racing Center in Pontiac, Michigan. Warren cannot say whether the Formula 1 engines would also be manufactured entirely there.
“I think it’s difficult for a manufacturer to say that an engine is 100 per cent of their own production,” he says. “They always have technical partners they work with. But I think we have capabilities that would contribute significantly to that.”
“I think we could do that,” he says of a possible engine programme, “but whether we choose to do that and which elements is still to be determined.”
Golden ticket
For Andretti, bringing in GM and Cadillac is the golden ticket, and a box ticked in terms of partnering with a proactive and very large manufacturer.
“We’re bringing one of the biggest manufacturers in the world now with us with General Motors, motors in Cadillac,” Andretti said.
“So we feel that that was the one box we didn’t have checked that we do have checked now.
“That, I think, will be bringing a tremendous amount of support now to Formula 1.
“It’s hard for anyone to argue with that now.”
Application completes ‘this week’
“We are working on it. We are in the middle of the application process with the FIA,” the 60-year-old Michael Andretti said in response to a question from Sky reporter and ex-F1 driver Martin Brundle during the Miami GP.
He also added: “We’re submitting our [final] documents this week and hopefully we’ll get an answer in mid-July, so we’re making good progress.”
What this translates to is that earlier this year, the teams interested in joining, of which Andretti is the most prominent, had already submitted their applications to the World Governing Body of Motorsport.
According to concurring media reports, the decision-makers have recently provided written information on the changes the teams still have to make in their applications.
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Andretti will know more by mid-2023
Andretti now seems to have processed, implemented and sent all documents off. In two months at the latest, there should be certainty for the racing team owner, who would prefer to enter the race as early as 2025 or 2026 with Renault.
Andretti has been preparing everything in the background for quite some time. At the end of last year, construction began on the new “Andretti Autosport Headquarters” in the US town of Fishers in Indiana, which is to devote a huge area to the F1 ambitions of the former Formula 1 driver.
His team’s work is “already in full swing” even without the approval of the FIA and Formula One, said the apparently extremely confident 60-year-old.
“We are in the process of building the F1 team,” Andretti said. Among the ten existing racing teams, however, Andretti’s entry plans had recently received only a mixed reception.
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