A man on a mission

Michael Andretti is 60 later this year and he knows that if he wants to have a Formula 1 team, time is ticking away. Michael is an ambitious man, and although he might not wish to admit it, he has unfinished business in Formula 1.

His father Mario was the last American to win the F1 World Championship, back in 1978, driving for Team Lotus. Since then no-one has even got close.

As a driver Michael wanted to follow his father in F1. He was fortunate that at the end of 1992 McLaren needed a replacement for Gerhard Berger, who had decided to join Ferrari. At the time McLaren needed a new engine partner, as Honda had decided to stop the super-successful alliance with the Woking team. McLaren boss Ron Dennis tried to do a deal to get hold of Renault engines, but ended up with a Ford V8 deal for 1993. It was short-term solution and Dennis was looking for a manufacturer which would commit – as Honda had done. He saw potential in doing a deal for the powerful Lamborghini V12 engines. The Italian firm was then owned by the American giant Chrysler. The firm had changed bosses in the autumn of 1992 with Bob Eaton, the former boss of GM Europe, having been hired. Eaton understood the power of Formula 1 and wanted to ramp up the promising Lamborghini programme, and to change the name of the engine to Chrysler. Thus an American driver was a good choice for McLaren, on the basis that it might help doing a deal. The Andretti name was powerful and Michael was obviously a good Indycar racer.

But it all went wrong.

Michael struggled to get up to speed against Senna. It was simply too ambitious a step to take on the best driver in F1 at the time, not knowing the team, the tracks nor how F1 worked. He opted not to settle in Europe, but to fly backwards and forwards – which did not help. He was replaced before the end of his first season, with McLaren opting for the rising star Mika Hakkinen (later a double World Champion) instead.

It hurt.

It was clear that Michael was better than the results suggested but he had needed more time. One can point to a number of things that might have been done differently, but in the end it was all academic. Michael came and went.

Back in the US he was soon a winner again and since then has built an impressive empire in Indycars and various other formulae. It has been clear for some years that Michael has been wanting to get into F1. He was a bidder for Force India back in 2018 and last year he tried to buy Sauber. The bid failed. Now it seems he is looking to go it alone. That is going to be a huge challenge, not only because of the money that will be required, which includes a $200 million payment up front to open the F1 door.

To build a suitable F1 team, capable of being competitive, will cost plenty and success will not be quick in coming – F1 isn’t like that. It will require a big budget and a long-term commitment. One wonders, therefore, whether buying a team would still be a better idea, although perhaps that is impossible because the starting price these days is around $500 million… and perhaps Michael does not have that much available and hopes to gather the finance required as he goes along.

But Andretti has advantages as well. Alpine, for example, is looking for a customer team and will help if it makes sense. There is, of course, the possibility of new engine suppliers in 2026 and so having an Andretti team up and running in 2024 is necessary. Andretti is American and F1 is booming in the United States, with big corporate sponsors looking at the sport and considering jumping in, as Oracle has done. Michael has some well-heeled supporters and a driver with talent and ambition in Colton Herta, who has been backed in his career to date by the Steinbrenner family, which owns the New York Yankees, one of the world’s biggest sporting franchises. These are the kind of people now looking at F1.

We will see how it goes, but the first hurdle is to convince the FIA that the team has all that is required to get an entry…