Money is not the issue.”Īndretti said he doesn’t have the personal funds needed to launch an F1 team – there’s an initial $200 million buy-in fee – and he won’t reveal his backers. Let us have a shot and we will beat anybody else that’s out there. “I talked to (Liberty Media CEO) Greg (Maffei) and I asked him, `Just let it go to a bid, we’ll beat everybody,’ ” Andretti told AP last week. Petersburg, Andretti said he hoped to be a month from gaining approval. He said he has the infrastructure and plans in place but the longer the process takes, the less time he would have to properly prepare a team. With each passing day, Michael Andretti’s hopes dwindle of reaching the grid. Several F1 teams have publicly said they are against expansion because adding two cars will dilute the purse, and there are indications that Andretti isn’t the only one asking about starting a team.
There’s been almost no movement since the FIA, F1 and Liberty Media, the American company that owns the series, have said very little publicly about Andretti’s quest. In February, his father Mario, the 1978 F1 champion, revealed that his son had asked F1’s governing body to expand the 20-car grid and admit Andretti into the top series in motorsports. So I don’t give a crap what anyone says, we were never going to do a deal in which we bought the team but didn’t have control of the team.” They changed that two days before the deal was supposed to be signed. They wanted veto power on every decision. “It fell apart because all of a sudden they changed the terms and they wanted to control everything. “No, 1,000% no, that’s not what happened,” Andretti told The Associated Press. He refuted speculation that he didn’t have the cash needed to complete the deal. Michael Andretti fell short in his bid last fall to purchase the Sauber team when negotiations fell apart over control of the organization. His boss, meanwhile, awaits word on his request to start a Formula One team (which would be known as Andretti Global) and bring a true American team to the grid. Instead, the 22-year-old Californian is headed to the inaugural Miami Grand Prix as a spectator. If things had gone according to the F1 plan for Michael Andretti, Colton Herta would be in Miami preparing for the fifth Formula One race of his career.
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