McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown suggested that “the numbers are always there” for Andretti to make a bid and sell if a rival team wants a foot on the F1 grid.
FIA president Mohamed Ben Sulayem said this week that anyone wanting to enter F1 should “buy another team”, reversing his previous position which had called for a search for teams interested in expanding the grid at the start of 2023 and which said Andretti was the only team that met the FIA’s standards.
Zak Brown: ‘There are always numbers’ as Andretti looks to make a bid to buy current F1 team
The Andretti Cadillac entry proposal was rejected when submitted to Formula One Management, who rejected the idea of ​​expanding the grid.
To join the grid, Andretti would have had to pay an anti-dilution fee of $200 million to existing teams, but FIA president Ben Sulayem agreed that F1’s huge success in recent years should allow that price to rise significantly for new teams.
When it was suggested to McLaren’s CEO that Andretti should buy an existing constructor, Brawn explained that even if none were publicly available for sale, he could offer a price that would make any team consider selling.
“That would certainly be the easiest thing to do,” Brown told ESPN when asked about Andretti buying another team.
“At the moment it seems like no one is willing to sell, but that just means the offer has to be bigger.
“There are always numbers, but from what I’ve seen, no home has a ‘for sale’ sign on the door.”
Andretti’s F1 bid and recent developments
👉 FIA president tells Andretti to “buy another team” and abruptly withdraws from F1
👉 Opinion: Don’t tell Andretti to buy an existing F1 team when there is no team for sale
The caveat for Andretti in this scenario is that acquiring an existing team now would likely be significantly more expensive than joining the grid as a new team under the current terms of the Concorde Agreement.
But as Brown explained, the race grid is now in a much more profitable position than it was before, given the influence of Liberty Media, the sport’s commercial rights holder.
“Historically in F1, you just enter and go and the sport doesn’t care if you don’t make it halfway through the year,” Brown said.
“In the past, Lola started a team but it went bankrupt after three races.
“I think the Liberty is in a position right now where they have 10 very healthy teams, so they’re going to apply extremely high standards and thorough due diligence to the 11th and 12th teams, and I think that’s the right thing to do.”
“Before, there was always a team that would go bankrupt the following year. Now, more than half the grid is making a profit.”
“And the value of this franchise, I think Williams was acquired for $150 million, but I don’t see how you could acquire that team five years from now for less than $1.5 billion.
“So the value creation has been enormous.”
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