Wolff rants at Cadillac as Alpine’s PR disaster is exposed – If the closing rounds of the 2024 season are anything to go by, Formula One fans are in for a treat this year as the teams conclude their finishing touchers to their 2025 challengers for the season ahead. McLaren remarkably outscored Red Bull Racing over the second twelve rounds of the year by 155 points, whilst Ferrari hounded McLaren for the constructors championship over the final triple header weekends following the Singapore Grand Prix.
Having been stymied by the FIA’s indecision over the legality of the McLaren flexi-wing design, the Scuderia boss Fred Vasseur bemoaned the fact they expected the FIA to declare the wing illegal and hence lost 8-9 weeks of catch up development time. Should the performance differences be carried into this year, then Ferrari will come out on top over the early flyaway races, while McLaren who have had a poor start to each of the last two seasons will be playing catch up along with Red Bull Racing.
This years F1 racing should be closer than ever as the teams are now in their fourth year of interpreting the latest set of car design regulations. Yet the enormous rule changes coming in 2026 for both power units and chassis design will force most of the competitors to abandon the majority of the in season development work much earlier than usual.
Cadillac shock U-Turn decision
Come 2026 and the F1 grid will be expanded to eleven competitors, as Cadillac have been given the green light to join the sport. Yet the controversy over F1 admitting a new competitor into their ranks rolls on as the commercial rights holders management company, FOM, has yet to reveal the details of the commercial deal they have struck with the US automotive giant.
One of the reasons there has been little said about F1’s new relationship with Cadillac was the speed with which FOM’s U-Turn on their initial decision to deny them entry last summer. As the US Justice department closed in threatening F1 with sanctions based on anti-competitive legislation, all hell broke lose amongst the paddock elite as Toto Wolff, Christian Horner and Lawrence Stroll arrived at the US Grand Prix in Austin with personal legal representation. The trio had been accused of conspiring to distort the process whereby Cadillac would be approved while Liberty Media who own the commercial rights were facing an NFL style fine in the region of $4.7bn.
The three parties which make up Formula One, the teams the FIA as the sporty’s regulator and FOM who control the purse strings are all bound by a legal framework expressed in the Concorde Agreement. This was most recently signed in 2022 with another expected to replace it this year or next.
Under the terms off the contract, any new team entering F1 would be forced to pay compensation to the others for the dilution of the prize money they would suffer. This was set at $200m yet in the short interval since signing the document, some of the bosses in the paddock were ridiculing the amount an eleventh team would have to pay as derisory.
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Wolff says F1 entry fee ‘too cheap’
A host of reasons were given as to why Cadillac should not be allowed to enter the sport, including the fact that Zandvoort in the Netherlands had no more room in the paddock which is already very tight when F1 is in town. Yet the Concorde agreement also binds the circuit owners and promoters and in fact provides for up to twelve teams as part of the F1 circus, so tracks and their promoters would have to comply with the number of competitors regardless.
The speed at which FOM reversed its decision to refuse Cadillac entry into F1 caught most of the paddock by surprise. Haas F1 boss Ayao Komatsu admitted he had not even been informed of F1’s change of heart and heard the news when it was announced by Sky F1.
Despite the threats to their business models, it appears that a number of the F1 team bosses remain unhappy with the deal which has been struck, which will in fact see Cadillac increase their anti-dilution fee to $450m. Speaking to German publication AMuS. Toto Wolff now claims: “When you look at it in the first instance, we lose out. We don’t know what Cadillac will invest in Formula One. The compensation fee, which is currently set at $450 million, is too low. It does not make up for the direct loss in income.”
The problem is that it is nigh on impossible to estimate what part of Cadillac competing in F1 is responsible for the annual growth of the sport’s revenues and what is already baked into the system based on deals and currently being negotiated with new sponsors and partners alike.
Red Bull refuse to accept prize dilution
Even so Red Bull boss Christian Horner has been adamant his team will not suffer any reduction in their annual remuneration from F1 as he explained to Sky F1. “And like with all these things, it comes down to the finances and how it’s going to be funded and how it’s going to be paid. As long as, logistically, they can be accommodated, we have absolutely no problem with seeing GM come here – but we’re not paying for it.
“We’ve got no issue with them coming. We welcome them with open arms, but you don’t want to see the prize fund diluted. It will be that question of, whose side of the cake does it come out of?”
Haas F1 were the last team to join the sport back in 2016. They paid no entrance/anti-dilution fee but will probably be the last to enter under such generous terms. F1 is in rude health unlike when Gene Haas proposed his new F1 team, and the likes of Marrusia, and Caterham had gone to the wall in the preceding seasons.
Alpine are garnering a reputation for shooting themselves in the foot repeatedly and with spectacular results. On receiving Sebastian Vettel’s resignation letter back in 2022, they swiftly announced the fact they were promoting their junior driver Oscar Piastri.
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Alpine PR disaster
Within 90 minutes Piastri responded on twitter, stating he would not be joining the French owned F1 squad and it later transpired he had signed a contract with McLaren. Alpine made a lame effort to challenge the legality of the deal with the c no tracts recognition board, but it quickly became clear Alpine’s legal department had done a poor job in tying down their academy driver who had cost them several million during his apprenticeship with the team.
Now Alpine are set to suffer another PR disaster having trumpeted their 2025 replacement for the departing Esteban Ocon would be Aussie rookie Jack Doohan. The team decided to bench Ocon for th final round of the 2024 season to give Doohan the opportunity to familiarise himself with the team as a driver across a full F1 race weekend in Abu Dhabi.
Doohan qualified last and finished the race ahead only of Kevin Magnussen, who’s Haas F1 team had screwed up his race. Ex-F1 racer and f1.com commentator Joylon Palmer appeared unimpressed with the Aussies efforts stating to th chequered flag podcast: “He didn’t do a lot did he? But he didn’t do a lot wrong either. It’s fine, it’s difficult to parachute someone in for a final race.”
Palmer made the point that Abu Dhabi is one of the easier tracks on the F1 calendar and with its Walmart style giant car park run off areas, Doohan could have pushed a little harder rather than playing it as safe as he did.
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Doohan decision made in haste
Alpine were enjoying a resurgence later in the year and Pierre Gasly demonstrated what the car was capable of by finishing P7 in the Grand Prix having qualified one place better the day before. Now F1 observer Nate Saunders reveals the decision to sign Doohan may well have been affected by the PR disaster the team experienced two years earlier over Oscar Piastri.
Speaking to ESPN UK YouTube channel, Saunders suggests Alpine did not want a repeat with Doohan, “so they felt he should be able to come in and adapt quickly. Formula 1 is a sink-or-swim business and Abu Dhabi did feel a little bit like that. It almost kind of coloured their decision.”
Following the final chequered flag of last year, Alpine then signed the exciting new talent that is Franco Colapinto. The young Argentinian had replaced the hapless Logan Sargeant for the final nine race weekends of the year and scored points in two of his first four outings for back of the grid Williams. Colapinto was no an inexpensive signing for Alpine, although paddock rumours suggest they paid just half the $20m price being touted when Red Bull had expressed an interest at the Sao Paulo Grand Prix.
“I don’t think anyone at Alpine has ever truly looked at Doohan in the same way they were looking at Piastri a few years ago. And I don’t know about you but promoting him, it did seem like they were like: ‘Right, we lost Piastri a few years ago, we bungled that, it was a massive PR disaster for the team. Let’s make sure we don’t do that again,” says Saunders.
Renault are ditching their own F1 power unit programme come 2026 and will become a customer of Mercedes who are hoping for a repeat of 2014, when their shiny new V6 turbo Hybrid was the class of the field – leading to an unprecedented eight consecutive constructor titles and seven consecutive drivers’ championships.
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Russell reveals why Mercedes efforts make them dark horses for 2025 – Formula One has in recent years become somewhat predictable although there have been bright spots of high drama. The climax to the 2021 season was one of the most epic in living memory as Max Verstappen had to deny off a resurgent Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes.
The seven ties champion won against the odds the three Grand Prix prior to the season finale in Abu Dhabi, to set up what proved to be a cliff hanger finish to the year as the drivers title was decided on the last lap of the last race of the year.
2024 also delivered its fair share of excitement as Red Bull and Verstappen suffered a ten consecutive F1 weekend drought of wins whilst Lando Norris and McLaren were closing in to challenge for the championships… READ MORE
With over 30 years of experience in Formula 1 as an insider journalist, I have built trusted connections across the paddock, from race engineers and mechanics to senior team figures. At The Judge 13, I and a handful of trusted colleagues share exclusive Formula 1 news, expert analysis and behind-the-scenes stories you will not find in mainstream motorsport media.
