Martin Brundle has claimed that there is ‘lots of rationale’ behind F1’s decision to reject Andretti Global’s proposed entry onto the grid for the 2025 and 2026 seasons. The news broke on Wednesday after the American constructor had completed work on a full-scale car that adhered to the current technical regulations.
The FIA has been keen to admit Andretti onto the F1 grid, green-lighting the project during the latter stages of 2023. However, the ten teams that make up the sport have been much harder to convince, and on 31 January 2024, they decided to reject the application.
Andretti is one of the most famous names in motorsport and would have brought unrivalled interest from the United States into the world of F1. The team are currently competing successfully in IndyCar, Formula E and the IMSA SportsCar Championship, and were hoping to expand their involvement into the world’s premier open-wheel category.
According to the teams, the main motivation behind rejecting Andretti’s application was a perceived lack of value brought to the sport by the American team. They also cited concerns over their ability to be competitive so close to the end of the current regulation period.
Speaking about the debacle on Sky Sports News, Brundle explained: “They’re quite rightly saying that for Andretti as a new team, ‘novice’, as they called them, to build a brand-new car for 2025 and then when the regulations change fundamentally for 2026 to start all over again, it’s too much of a tall order.
They think they won’t be competitive. Andretti will no doubt say, ‘Well, give us a chance. We’re a mighty organisation with a lot of funding, we’ll show you what we can do and look at some of the other teams on the grid’ – so this is going to run for a good while.
Also, a really punchy line in there says that ‘this would do more for the Andretti brand than it would for Formula One’. Of course, there’s the logistics too of getting an extra team in the pit lane and around the world for what is a 24-race calendar this year.
“It’s not just as easy as going: ‘Well, yeah, let’s just put two more cars on the grid.’ We’ve got to get them on the grid, have a garage, have a pit lane big enough, and so on and so forth. So I’d say lots of rationale
