Cadillac racing in F1 with Andretti

[FW17]

What a lot of people miss when the subject of ''team value'' in F1 comes up is the value inherent in having a current team.

The exclusivity drives up team value. If the only way for a prospective F1 entrant is to buy one of the 10 golden tickets on the grid, that makes the value of those 10 golden tickets go up massively. Conversely, printing an 11th ticket makes the value of the existing 10 go down.

This is constantly missed in conversations about marketing value, Andretti's pedigree as a racing team and addition to the quality of the product (hint: no one really cares about this one that much) and the value added by having a luxury sedan manufacturer written on the camshaft cover. Andretti being allowed on the grid as an 11th team seriously devalues the existing 10 teams. None of the existing 10 teams want that. Liberty Media doesn't want it. And there you go; accountants looking to maximise the left side of the balance sheet ruin everyone's fun.

There are currently 10 top class racers on the grid. They are absolutely fantastic and love seeing them year after year. Some I have been seeing them for 30 years others a little lesser. They are absolute class of the world.

And for no reason would I wish anyone of them to end their association with the Show/Circus. It is not about the money, these guys are here for the passion of racing. Why would it bother them what the value is? They dont wish to sell. I dont want them to sell and miss seeing these top class guys next year.

I rather see a new entrant coming in as the 11th team.

[Vaexa]

What a lot of people miss when the subject of ''team value'' in F1 comes up is the value inherent in having a current team.

The exclusivity drives up team value. If the only way for a prospective F1 entrant is to buy one of the 10 golden tickets on the grid, that makes the value of those 10 golden tickets go up massively. Conversely, printing an 11th ticket makes the value of the existing 10 go down.

This is constantly missed in conversations about marketing value, Andretti's pedigree as a racing team and addition to the quality of the product (hint: no one really cares about this one that much) and the value added by having a luxury sedan manufacturer written on the camshaft cover. Andretti being allowed on the grid as an 11th team seriously devalues the existing 10 teams. None of the existing 10 teams want that. Liberty Media doesn't want it. And there you go; accountants looking to maximise the left side of the balance sheet ruin everyone's fun.

There are currently 10 top class racers on the grid. They are absolutely fantastic and love seeing them year after year. Some I have been seeing them for 30 years others a little lesser. They are absolute class of the world.

And for no reason would I wish anyone of them to end their association with the Show/Circus. It is not about the money, these guys are here for the passion of racing. Why would it bother them what the value is? They dont wish to sell. I dont want them to sell and miss seeing these top class guys next year.

I rather see a new entrant coming in as the 11th team.

Every team is either (partially) owned or backed by someone who wishes to make a lot of money off their association with or ownership of an F1 team.

Mercedes - Daimler, Ineos, Toto Wolff himself.
Red Bull Racing - well... says it right there on the tin, doesn't it?
Ferrari - ditto, though they might be the closest to pure-blooded racers we can get in 2023
Alpine - entirely owned by Renault nowadays, who are notoriously fickle on actually wanting to own a team
McLaren - Bahrain's sovereign national fund.
Alfa Romeo - Longbow Finance. An investment firm.
Aston Martin - Stroll consortium.
Haas - says it right there on the tin
Williams - Dorilton Capital. An investment firm.

It doesn't matter how much gasoline flows through the veins of the folks running the teams. They have the specter of private ownership by people who like making lots of money hanging over them. Maximising the value of an asset like that is in their best interests; a more valuable team begets more valuable sponsor contracts and outside investment, and if they ever want to exit, they can do so at a tidy profit. Dorilton must find all the manufacturer interest in F1, and F1's insistence on not letting more teams in, absolutely mouth-watering.

This house of cards comes tumbling down the moment an 11th team comes in. It's like if there were only 10 chairs in the entire world, and everyone really wants a chair, so the people who have the chairs get to ask really high prices for them if they ever get bored of sitting down. Someone gets a hammer and some wood and builds an 11th chair. Of course the guys who can get rich off their existing chairs are going to light it on fire.

Contrived metaphor, but you understand my point, I hope. It's an abstract, somewhat extreme form of artificial scarcity, and if you're an accountant who likes seeing a number get bigger on the balance sheet, it all makes sense. Accountants aren't racers. We're long past the point of racing people like Frank Williams, Bruce McLaren and Peter Sauber wholly owning their own teams. Every team is now owned or backed by people who're really just in it for the money. Mister Dorilton or whatever his name is doesn't care how many titles Williams do or do not win, he cares about the number on the port side of the balance sheet. Lawrence Stroll is as close as it gets to a true petrolhead team owner and he's still reporting to a huge consortium of people who just don't really care about racing in its own little vacuum, but care far more about how the racing makes the line go up.

[NL_Fer]

I am still unsure about the commitment of Alpine/Renault and they already said they want to invest in future development, maybe this can be without F1? So how about Andretti buying the Enstone team and Cadillac buying/funding the engine department? That would give them a solid baseline to start and free Renault of their financial burden.

[mwillems]

Same with Alpine.. It's just a brand name under General Motors

But the brand that you attach to F1 has some significance, right? Alpine make fast cars.

Cadillac is not a brand associated with speed so it seems like they are trying to transform that brand a little, move it away from the boat on wheels image. I couldn't think of many "Less F1-esque" brand than Cadillac for GMs first entry into F1.

I was rather hoping for a Ford entry too, I miss them in the sport.

Cadillac have a presence in motorsport. Just not in Europe.

https://www.motorauthority.com/news/113 ... -the-track

Plenty of evidence in posts above about fast Cadillac cars..

They may be in motorsports but it doesn't change the brand perception in many parts of the world. If you ask most what Cadillac is associated with it won't be speed or agility.

It's like Skoda, they were making quality cars for years but it took years for the brand image to change.

F1 would be the method to change that.

[Sevach]

I believe Andretti's case now with GM backing is pretty much as good as it gets and they will get the nod, F1 teams are putting forward a mean face because maybe they can get something out of FOM, something along the lines of "if we get X% of the profits to share between 10 teams, with 11 teams sharing the pot it should be X+5 %"

I am still unsure about the commitment of Alpine/Renault and they already said they want to invest in future development, maybe this can be without F1? So how about Andretti buying the Enstone team and Cadillac buying/funding the engine department? That would give them a solid baseline to start and free Renault of their financial burden.

Renault has pretty much been the stingiest OEM to get involved into F1 since forever
Which is a good case to team up with GM, can they do something where instead of simply paying for supply they actually split the bill?

[JordanMugen]

Why would it bother them what the value is?

It would bother them as some of the existing F1 teams are owned by Venture Capital companies, not "racers"!

In terms of GM, any entry from them would be the second for Stellantis, after Ferrari.

General Motors is not part of Stellantis.

Stellantis is Fiat (Lancia, Alfa Romeo, Maserati) + Chrysler (Jeep, Dodge, RAM) + Peugeot (Citroen, DS, Opel, Vauxhall).

As for Cadillac, though many still view it simply as a luxury brand, it's target audience here in the US seems to have moved more towards the younger generations as compared to what Cadillac was years ago.

Cadillac certainly have better brand recognition as a stand-alone luxury brand than DS at least! Unfortunately for PSA, I think most people have never heard of DS, even if they are familiar with the classic Citroen DS.

Unfortunately for Formula E fans, I think Formula E is still obscure enough that DS racing in Formula E would have done little to raise the profile of DS as an equal to Cadillac or Mercedes.

[mwillems]

Why would it bother them what the value is?

It would bother them as some of the existing F1 teams are owned by Venture Capital companies, not "racers"!

In terms of GM, any entry from them would be the second for Stellantis, after Ferrari.

General Motors is not part of Stellantis.

Stellantis is Fiat (Lancia, Alfa Romeo, Maserati) + Chrysler (Jeep, Dodge, RAM) + Peugeot (Citroen, DS, Opel, Vauxhall).

As for Cadillac, though many still view it simply as a luxury brand, it's target audience here in the US seems to have moved more towards the younger generations as compared to what Cadillac was years ago.

Cadillac certainly have better brand recognition as a stand-alone luxury brand than DS at least! Unfortunately for PSA, I think most people have never heard of DS, even if they are familiar with the classic Citroen DS.

Unfortunately for Formula E fans, I think Formula E is still obscure enough that DS racing in Formula E would have done little to raise the profile of DS as an equal to Cadillac or Mercedes.

Yeah sorry meant Chrysler not GM.

Regarding DS, I had no idea that the FE team was related to DS from PSA

[AR3-GP]

Yeah sorry meant Chrysler not GM.

Ferrari is Ferrari. Ferrari is not owned by Stellantis.

Stellantis don't have a foot in F1 besides Alfa Romeo.

[johnny comelately]

The thinking starts with the size of the pie, Liberty want to increase that by what could be termed nefarious methods that degrade F1 but that would prevent the dilution effect for teams BUT...
it will lead to an oversize grid with still only one to three teams winning, it will be Andretti are not last but second to last.
It is not like there is an abundance of talent for design in the rules personell matrix, money isnt the answer.
So unless there is a shakeup for parity to produce many winning teams it is a zero sum game.

[NL_Fer]

Maybe it is time for a reduction of revenues flowing from viewer to race team.

We have seen an enormous increase of ticket prices for years, same for television view, where F1 has been hidden behind the decoder/app only to see for the paying fan. This increasing stream of revenue is flowing to the teams als price money.

Now with the budget limit teams maybe it is time to stop the increasing cost for viewers and balance the income from price money and sponsors. Than it would be less of a problem whenever a new team wants to enter and take a piece of the price money.

[FW17]

Looking at the grown up numbers
FWONA stock pre announcement was $53 and post announcement of Cadillac was $58

[Stu]

The thinking starts with the size of the pie, Liberty want to increase that by what could be termed nefarious methods that degrade F1 but that would prevent the dilution effect for teams BUT...
it will lead to an oversize grid with still only one to three teams winning, it will be Andretti are not last but second to last.
It is not like there is an abundance of talent for design in the rules personell matrix, money isnt the answer.
So unless there is a shakeup for parity to produce many winning teams it is a zero sum game.

F1 doesn’t currently suffer with an oversized grid, the target was always 30 car grids (and this remains the case). I really don’t see how the teams get such a massive say in this kind of thing (they all have a vested self-interest in reducing competition to their own benefit), if they achieve the blocking of a new entrant (both chassis and engine) the tail has gotten too strong for the dog.
I remember the last time the teams thought they had the upper hand politically, that ended up with many of them leaving after Bernie finished listening to the sabres rattle for a while. Give ‘em enough rope…

[johnny comelately]

The thinking starts with the size of the pie, Liberty want to increase that by what could be termed nefarious methods that degrade F1 but that would prevent the dilution effect for teams BUT...
it will lead to an oversize grid with still only one to three teams winning, it will be Andretti are not last but second to last.
It is not like there is an abundance of talent for design in the rules personell matrix, money isnt the answer.
So unless there is a shakeup for parity to produce many winning teams it is a zero sum game.

F1 doesn’t currently suffer with an oversized grid, the target was always 30 car grids (and this remains the case). I really don’t see how the teams get such a massive say in this kind of thing (they all have a vested self-interest in reducing competition to their own benefit), if they achieve the blocking of a new entrant (both chassis and engine) the tail has gotten too strong for the dog.
I remember the last time the teams thought they had the upper hand politically, that ended up with many of them leaving after Bernie finished listening to the sabres rattle for a while. Give ‘em enough rope…

Formula One does suffer from oversized grids.
It is a racing series.
The number of teams competing for an actual win is usually one, two or three.
Think of the previous few years...one team...
The other seven or so teams last year just bulked out the show.
As I said "It is not like there is an abundance of talent for design in the rules personell matrix, money isnt the answer.
So unless there is a shakeup for parity to produce many winning teams it is a zero sum game."

[mwillems]

Yeah sorry meant Chrysler not GM.

Ferrari is Ferrari. Ferrari is not owned by Stellantis.

Stellantis don't have a foot in F1 besides Alfa Romeo.

Ferrari is 23% owned by Exor who also part own Stellantis. The structure has changed but it is the same people and the same organisations. Exor is 50% owned by Giovanni Agnelli BV. I doubt Ferrari will ever lose its links to the Agnelli family or that they will let go of Fiat.

I'm not sure you can say they aren't in F1, apart from that F1 team they own. I totally forgot about AR. The Exor group / Agnelli family have 2 teams in F1 then via all of their different companies.

[gshevlin]

The $200m anti-dilution entry fee exists in order to compensate teams for the negative revenue impact of a new team entering the championship.
The problem with the fee is that it was set a few years ago before the recent upward surge in the value of teams, and the teams now regard the "correct" current value as closer to $500m.
I suspect that the teams would argue that any new entrant before 2026 is getting an unfairly discounted entry ticket cost. However, the fee is baked into the current Concorde Agreement, which cannot be re-negotiated until the 2026 season.