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Andretti ready to pay $200m entry fee if needed
Michael Andretti is able to pay the $200 million anti-dilution fee to existing Formula 1 teams to confirm his own entry if required, according to his father Mario.
Andretti’s attempts to enter an F1 team of his own after failing to purchase Sauber were made public on Friday by the motorsport legend, who tweeted about the work that has been done with the FIA so far. The most recent Concorde Agreement saw the introduction of a $200m fee that would be split among all existing teams to compensate for the reduced share of revenues in future, and Andretti Sr. tells RACER that the project is ready to pay that.
“Yes, yes,” Andretti said when asked about the fee. “Like I say, we’re going into this thing with our eyes wide open and we know some of the prerequisites. I don’t think Michael is asking for any special favors, we need to comply with whatever we need to comply to and go on. It’s as simple and as complicated as that, but we know what we are getting into.”
Andretti’s team would see a new facility established in the United Kingdom to run the team and cars from, but wider Andretti Autosport developments would allow some car manufacturing to take place from Indianapolis, according to Mario.
“I don’t want that to be confused -- we get some remarks even on Twitter, ‘Oh yeah, you can’t operate of the U.S.’ We’re not going to operate out of the U.S. Michael’s whole plan is to expand all operations, expand even the facility in Indianapolis where we’re going to have much more capability to be able to manufacture aspects of it, not relying on other vendors.
“But the base operation, engineering, everything is going to be out of the UK. That’s solid, that’s the way it’s going to be. We don’t need to confuse all that. A lot of people said ‘You’re a dreamer to operate out of the Us’ - no, that’s not the intent. We’re not stupid about these things.”
Click here to read the full interview with Mario Andretti about the planned team.
Presented by:
Chris Medland
While studying Sports Journalism at the University of Central Lancashire, Chris managed to talk his way into working at the British Grand Prix in 2008 and was retained for three years before joining ESPN F1 as Assistant Editor. After three further years at ESPN, a spell as F1 Editor at Crash Media Group was followed by the major task of launching F1i.com’s English-language website and running it as Editor. Present at every race since the start of 2014, he has continued building his freelance portfolio, working with international titles. As well as writing for RACER, his broadcast work includes television appearances on F1 TV and as a presenter and reporter on North America's live radio coverage on SiriusXM.
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