Good. F1 said they couldn't make a competitive car, they proved they could, they brought along Cadillac as an engine manufacturer, they did everything the rulebook required. Now they say “Our assessment process has established that the presence of an 11th team would not, in and of itself, provide value to the Championship", to THE andretti racing team and cadillac.
This is all while you have dedicated tier two teams like toro rosso and HAAS which survive from RB/Ferrari scraps and don't have a chance of winning, and despite F1's push in america (Vegas, Miami) there isn't a single properly American team on the grid!
F1 Can go fuck themselves. The point of a sport is to see if competitors can compete or not. To declare a result without letting people partake in any kind of competition first is uncompetitive and means it is not a sport. It is a private league. I'm boycotting F1 untill they become a sport again.
> To declare a result without letting people partake in any kind of competition first is uncompetitive and means it is not a sport.
America's Cup yacht teams: *chokes on caviar in indignation*
The point of professional sports organizations and leagues is to make the most money for its stakeholders.
If you want pure competition for the sake of competition need to go to the amateur ranks.
The point of sports is to see who the best in the world is at something. Thats what f1 was for 70 years.
The only requirements to participate were the rulebook. Now you are already judged on your performance before even participating. It aint a sport anymore
While that may be true, budget isn't even a factor here. AG clearly has the budget to compete. FOM is just making conjectures because they don't want to share. They have openly admitted that. It's going to come back to bite them in the arse too. Liberty Media is an American company and therefore under jurisdiction of US laws such as the Sherman antitrust act. I'm 99% sure GM had this angle sniffed out a long time ago - like as soon as the FIA approved AG. FOM fucked themselves by denying AG access to compete on the grid. This was a pretty smart move by GM/AG and as well as a move that was only made possible by GM's involvement. The team principles can get fucked for all I care. F1 needs to fill out the grid to the terms they agreed on by the CA.
I highly doubt this goes anywhere under the anti-trust laws. Just like how no one has tried to force any other sports league to expand using anti trust laws. Given the rise in value of US sports franchises certainly someone would have done it if possible. Andretti is free to compete with F1 in the racing industry in a different series. Anti trust laws can't force a business to expand.
yes they actually can. The reason other sports leagues in the US aren't forced to expand is because they've all had a very long running exemption from the Sherman antitrust act; like since the 1930s. Rewriting the exemption or changing any of the lingo is far more trouble than it's worth. Liberty media is NOT part of that group that is privy to those exemptions. Nor will they be. And frankly, given that GM - a company with annual revenue in the hundreds of billions - is involved here, it would be naive to think they don't get their way. Liberty media has an annual revenue of less than 10 billion. It's a young company full of idiots. GM's legal team is likely as large as all of Liberty media. And they've been dealing with the feds for more than 100 years. This was an extremely good move by Andretti. Hell I don't even think he understood what he was getting in teaming up with GM. I think GM is pissed at what went on and now they're just gonna flex for the fuck of it.
The Sherman anti trust exemptions for sports leagues also applies to broadcasting rights, nothing about how they are run.
If they use the Sherman act to force formula 1 to expand you better believe someone is going to try the same thing with the NFL to add a franchise and there is no way the NFL lets that fly.
lol Nobody in the US is going to use the Sherman act on the NFL, ever. Especially since there are other pro football leagues operating. Also, nobody in their right mind is going to mess with the NFL.
Regarding broadcasting rights exemptions, not sure why you think that applies here - those are directed at news-media outlets more than anything. It's clear you're grasping at straws though I'm not sure to what end. This is very much a lose-lose scenario for Liberty media; especially now since the letter alone was already posted on major network websites. Even if the case doesn't actually make it to court, the fact that it's getting mainstream pub means Liberty, an American company, is about to try and tell the American sports consumer - a market F1 desperately wants - that they have a big time international product to grow in the US but they aren't willing to let the most iconic name in the US' history of that product be a part of it? That's just....dumb. Additionally, it's incredibly short sighted and arrogant to think AG would be benefitting more than F1 in the deal lol. Sure, keep trying to attract the US market on the backs of a fad Netflix show and a pseudo-American B team that doesn't even sport US colors during their "home" grands prix.
Maybe I'm wrong, but given all the actual anti-competitive practices going on in the corporate world that the US government does nothing about, I find it unlikely that they will actually do anything about this beyond some Congress reps writing a letter to appease donors and voters. I still don't see how the Sherman act can be used to force a business to expand or force them to do business with specific people.
Again, this is GM forcing the issue. They have more than enough $$$ to make it happen. And really, this is all about dollars and egos. GM has far more dollars than Liberty. Congressmen know this.
That doesn't explain why the Sherman act can be used to force formula one to expand. You're basically saying GM could force the government to let them buy whatever smaller company they want because they have more money than the other company.
I will also add that I highly doubt, if/when push comes to shove, Liberty Media has either the capital or desire to fully engage this battle through the courts. GM's legal team is likely fully aware of that. They know they can outspend FOM easily here and are ready to play that card.
No that's not what I'm saying at all. What you're missing is that FOM is run by Liberty, an American company. That's key. Additionally, the team principles were dumb enough through all of this to publicly admit that they just didn't want to share the revenue. Andretti met the terms written out by the FIA to enter the sport. Those are terms that the teams themselves, essentially FOM, had agreed to. They balked at their own written requirements simply to deny competition for dollars to an American entity in AG/GM. That's literally why the Sherman act was written. GM isn't "forcing" the government to do anything here. They simply have the $$$ to get the ball rolling and line the congressional officials pockets as needed; much more so than Liberty. When things like this end up going to the courts it's a no brainer that the entity with the most $$$ wins 99% of the time. In this case, GM has more than 10x the annual revenue of Liberty Media. It's naive to think this case won't move forward favorably for Andretti.
It’s the opposite now if anything. There’s a budget cap and wind tunnel cap as well, with the worst teams from last season being allotted the most r&d time
Of course that hasn’t actually done much to make the slower teams more competitive. But as a byproduct we got the ferrari hypercar project and whatnot so it’s not all bad
It used to be that way for Formula 1, but teams were struggling financially. Newey gave a chapter in his book about the issue before Ross Brawn came in.
A lot of racing series provide better competition than F1, but they're still driven by money more than the desire to find the true best competitor until you go to amateur competition.
This isn't true of just racing, but all professional sports. They will more often than not find the best competitor because that happens to be the best way to make money, but it's still obvious money is the driving factor.
I’d argue it’s the opposite, amateur GT2/3/4 is mainly gentlemen drivers, even a good bit of lmp2/3, or stuff like praga cup
Now of course miata cup and JCW and lemons is great racing but that’s harder to find and stream
Of course you’re going to have the occasional pay driver in f1 or lmdh but prototype in particular is cheap enough and BoP’d to a point where most teams in top class are running professional drivers with merit.
> F1 said they couldn't make a competitive car,
F1 did not say this.
> they proved they could,
They have not, and haven't even come remotely close to "proving" they could make a competitive car. Even Andretti's not making this argument. All they've built is a small-scale wind tunnel mockup using the existing regulation set (i.e. not the one he was petitioning to be involved in) from discarded components - the exact issue you have with HAAS above.
> they brought along Cadillac as an engine manufacturer,
Mostly, yes.
> they did everything the rulebook required.
They didn't do the one thing F1 required more than anything else: show how they were going to grow the sport and its revenues. Andretti relied on "A new American team will *inherently* grow interest in the US" whereas F1 wanted an actual plan and ideas to do so. He didn't get the support of other teams because they have no interest in giving up 5-9% of their revenue for nothing in return, and he didn't get the support of the organization as a whole because he didn't put any thought into how he would be additive to the sport as a whole beyond "We're American."
> because the real reason for keeping andretti out has been and will always be for money and to protect the current teams
And the only argument he's made to let him in has been that he sees a big pot of money and says he "deserves" to have a cut of it, while offering nothing of value in return to those who have built the sport making that giant pot of money. If Andretti is additive, they'll let him in; if all he offers is whining about how he deserves someone else's money, he won't be. And my bet is that he won't be.
Only the sponsor is american, the cars are built by dallara in italy, they get a good number of parts from ferrari, they ran multiple years with primarily russian backing, and they are based in europe
Before HAAS bought it out, the team was marussia/manor
Liberty Media is running the clock down so there is a new agreement in place where the expansion fee essentially goes from the 200 million it is now to 600 million.
This is a bullshit move. The are also trying to cap the number of teams at 10.
As said in another comment on this thread, they would rather half some perennial chumps like Toro Rosso and Haas pay the fees and never win, thus not really impacting the prize money, as opposed to a team like Andretti with some serious backing come in and disrupt.
They want American money, that's it. I'm not American but I'd be boycotting F1 if all they want is your money while trying to ratfuck a proper American team out of a chance at competing. Haas doesn't count since it's all Ferrari hand me downs and based on Italy. This would be a bonafide American team. Based in the US, designed and made.
It's funny because the FIA that actually governs F1 said they can join, and show up but FOM (Liberty Media) says no because of the broadcast rights. At this point I hope Andretti shows up anyway.
Liberty Media already has their other subsidiary facing anti-trust issues this year, Live Nation. Why they want to piss off Congress, especially one that is barely bipartisan but finds this to be an issue, I don't know.
You mean the company that fucked up and made the most powerful government in human history bring them back from bankruptcy is going against a whole bunch of paper pushers?
🍿🍿🍿🍿
This is a great and accurate response. Liberty Media is a shit show and they'll eat their own asses with this case. GM is WAY bigger, WAY older, and has a WAY more experienced and connected legal team than Liberty Media. This case is going to move exactly because GM wants it to. And I'm all for it. Fuck the F1 club. I love the sport but fucking hate most all of the current team principles for this shit. Especially Red fucking bull with their second rate RB team tooling around.
Gears are already in motion...Andretti was on Capitol Hill today. Did a press conference with three house members (Spartz, Pence, James) who were pretty fired up.
Didn’t Ford announce in February 2023 that they plan to enter F1 by 2026? Does this spell defeat for them as well? Seems that F1 is determined to keep it a “pure” European thing. Don’t let Americans in but have a revolving door for American wallets
Cadillac’s recent podium finish at Le Mans is a testament to their impressive performance, especially considering their relatively new entry into the competition. This achievement alone positions them as a formidable contender in the racing world. When combined with Andretti’s racing pedigree, the two could form a powerhouse team. The skepticism often faced by American teams in international racing circuits may stem from a perceived bias, which seems unfounded given Cadillac’s proven capabilities on the track. Their success challenges the notion that American teams are at a disadvantage, underscoring the potential for a strong alliance with Andretti to disrupt the racing status quo
What exactly are they going to accomplish other than saying to some campaign donors "see, we tried".
Formula one is a private organization, if they don't want to add a team they don't have to. A letter from a couple Congress reps isn't going to change that.
F1 is run by liberty media, yes they are a private organization, but one based in the US and blind to their regulations.
In specific, antitrust, F1 has a monopoly on the top tier of racing, has a set of guidelines laying out how to join F1, andretti followed every request and guideline to a T, and were still rejected.
Saying it has a "monopoly on the top tier of racing" is going to be a stretch when there are so many other racing series that compete in the United States. That's where the anti-trust falls apart in my opinion. Forcing a company to expand when nothing is stopping Indycar or some other series from competing for "the top tier" is government overreach. It would be like if they forced Tesla to partner with GM because a few years ago they had an effective monopoly on EVs.
The sanctioning body gave them the green light. Where antitrust comes into play is the fact that multiple independent companies conspired together to prevent Andretti from joining the series. That’s where Liberty gets involved in their second antitrust lawsuit.
While true they can choose who or what runs. It's just odd to claim "they won't be competitive". Personally I feel like there's more behind the scenes. Could be basic like gm staying strict on what they will supply and develop to/for. Or go to the conspiracy theory and just say someone got paid to say no.
But agreed, really it's just a pr stunt for votes.
The statement of "F1 benefits andretti more than andretti benefits F1" is the true reason. Basically they won't bring in enough new viewers and revenue to increase the per team revenue already there so why bother adding them.
F1 is just boring to watch now. Even in person.
I find a lot more entertainment and enjoyment from IMSA/ GT3 racing.
Ripped half the front off? Duct tape that bitch and get back out there! Where F1 would just pit the car and call it a day. Plus just more action on the field.
‘Amazing results’ finished last in the cars that were left running at the end of the race, and only because they were exempt from a rule that you cannot change the gearbox/engine during the race. It was a god effort and fun to see drive, but don’t over hype it.
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