Andretti looking at F1 Team *New Team application made*

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#31

Post by erwin greven »

Bottom post of the previous page:

Toto Wolff, Christian Horner, Franz Tost and Otmar Szafnauer all raced in GT or minor classes.
Wolff is a Nürburgring 24h winner.
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#32

Post by MonteCristo »

In the mid-to-late 90s Zak Brown also raced Indy Lights and British and German F3, as well as GT2.
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#33

Post by PTRACER »

erwin greven wrote: 2 years ago Toto Wolff, Christian Horner, Franz Tost and Otmar Szafnauer all raced in GT or minor classes.
Wolff is a Nürburgring 24h winner.
I remember Christian Horner as an F3000 driver. I guess he made it to F1 after all!

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#34

Post by Everso Biggyballies »

PTRACER wrote: 2 years ago
erwin greven wrote: 2 years ago Toto Wolff, Christian Horner, Franz Tost and Otmar Szafnauer all raced in GT or minor classes.
Wolff is a Nürburgring 24h winner.
I remember Christian Horner as an F3000 driver. I guess he made it to F1 after all!
Hehehe I cant say I remember Frank Williams in his racing days, but I well remember his Frank Williams Racing days.... I remember clearly at Brands close to 1970 seeing him turn up at Brands with an F1 car on a very tatty open trailer behind a very aged and decrepit Ford Zephyr estate car absolutely loaded to the gunwales with tyres and spares thrown in..... its arse was dragging low and the front wheels almost in the air it was so loaded. Very low key. The.next time he had gone relatively up market and remember an old tatty bus in Marlboro colours at a time when others had comparatively modern custom built coaches and trucks.

A far cry from when he got the Saudia Air (and Bin Laden :wink: ) money when suddenly he had the best trucks and set up in the paddock, all in team uniforms etc.

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#35

Post by Ruslan »

erwin greven wrote: 2 years ago Toto Wolff, Christian Horner, Franz Tost and Otmar Szafnauer all raced in GT or minor classes.
Wolff is a Nürburgring 24h winner.
They are not the owners.
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#36

Post by Everso Biggyballies »

Ruslan wrote: 2 years ago
erwin greven wrote: 2 years ago Toto Wolff, Christian Horner, Franz Tost and Otmar Szafnauer all raced in GT or minor classes.
Wolff is a Nürburgring 24h winner.
They are not the owners.
Almost correct.....

Toto Wolff owns as many shares in the Merc F1 F1 team as anyone else..... He, along with Lauda were always shareholders of the team when it evolved from Brawn, (Ross might have fleetingly had a small share through 2010, and which Daimler purchased by the start of 2011) and Wolff had a slightly larger share than Niki, with the balance being held by Daimler Benz.

After Lauda's passing and the arrival of sponsorship from Ineos, a new ownership of the F1 team was undertaken with Daimler, Ineos and Wolff all owning 1/3 each.

Franz Tost was never anything more than Principal at Toro Rosso or Alpha Tauri. When Toro Rosso was born out of Minardi Red Bull bought it and then Gerhard Berger took a 50% ownership in the team. That only lasted a couple of years before Red Bull bought back the 50% Berger owned and retained full ownership.

Otmar Sznafnauer has no shareholding in Aston Martin F1. That is wholly owned by the Lawrence Stroll consortium that took over Force India.

Horner owns no part of Red Bull Racing. That is wholly owned by Red Bull, as are all the ancillary companies such as RB Powertrain and the Engineering company (Red Bull Advanced Technologies?) they set up to get round either RB team being classed as a customer (RBAT AFAIK own the IP of the cars). RBAT also undertake external customer work like the Aston Martin Valkyrie.

As an aside I reckon divisions such as RBAT are going to be well used in some form of loophole arrangement with Budget Cap stuff (I believe Newey is employed by RBAT as are many other senior and highly paid staff)

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#37

Post by Ruslan »

Everso Biggyballies wrote: 2 years ago
Ruslan wrote: 2 years ago They are not the owners.
Almost correct.....
Correct enough to make my point.

The point being that Formula one teams used to be run by drivers, racing engineers and race car mechanics, like Enzo Ferrari (driver), Colin Chapman (engineer), Frank Williams (driver and mechanic), Ron Dennis (mechanic), etc.

Now...hardly at all. Toto Wolff is sort of a racing guy and sort of a owner. He owns 33% of the Mercedes team. He raced off-and-on for almost two decades, winning a category victory in the 24 Hours Nurburging in 1994. But, he made his money in investments in internet and technology companies and entered F1 as an investor.

On the other hand, Ron Dennis started out as a racing mechanic at 18-years old. How many F1 teams are headed by a former mechanic? Are any F1 mechanics in this day and age going to end up owning an F1 team? It is now a series for big factories and billionaires like Dietrich Mateschitz and Lawrence Stroll.
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#38

Post by Everso Biggyballies »

Andretti explains where it went wrong..... control issues not financial reasons.

Well we seem to have been told initially it was a financial stumbling block with the current owners wanting to hang in their for another couple of years when value of teams is set to increase due to the $200 new team commitment cost and also the budget ca making the concept more sustainable. Now Andretti says it was down to control issues.... seems odd to me. I thought that if you buy a controlling share of 80% as suggested, then you get control. End of story.

He has also confirmed that Herta driving was a major part of the plan.


Andretti says control, not money, killed Alfa Romeo F1 buy-in
Michael Andretti has refuted rumours that his plans to enter Formula 1 with Sauber-owned Alfa Romeo hit a financial roadblock, and instead says it was about control of the team.

Speaking at the announcement that Devlin DeFrancesco will complete the team's four-entry IndyCar line-up for 2022, the Andretti Autosport CEO said: "I'd just like to put an end to some of these rumors that the deal fell through because of financial reasons. That couldn't be further from the truth. It had nothing to do with that.

"It basically came down to control issues in the final hours of the negotiations. That's what killed the deal.

"I've always said if the deal is not right, we're not going to do it, and in the end it wasn't right. So we continue to look for other opportunities."

Andretti later added: "Unfortunately at the 11th hour, control issues changed, and it was a deal that we had to step away from because we couldn't accept it. I always said that we're only going to do it if it's right for us, and in the end it wasn't right for us."

Asked by AP to clarify if he meant that Andretti Autosport was expected to "buy it and not control it", Andretti nodded and said, "Basically."

Andretti, who has 42 wins to his name in IndyCar, publicly confirmed for the first time that transferring Colton Herta from U.S. open-wheel to Formula 1 had indeed been part of his expansion plan.

"Obviously if we do ever get a team, [Herta] would lead the way for us in terms of wanting to bring an American driver," he said. "He'd be the perfect guy to do it. I mean, we definitely were going to try to get him into the seat because I believe he could be a competitive driver in Europe. I really do. There's no reason why he wouldn't."

He agreed that there was plenty of enthusiasm in F1 for an American and the return of the name Andretti, but that Liberty had not been actively involved in trying to make it happen.

"Liberty? No," he commented. "I think they would like it, obviously, because they're really pushing the American market, but they weren't doing anything to help us… I think it would have been a huge story. It's a shame it didn't work out. But I don't give up…

"Our eyes are always going to stay open. We're always going to look for opportunity there… not just there but in other formulas, as well, other types of racing. That's what we do. We're in the racing business, and we're always looking for opportunities to expand.

"But when we do expand, we have to make sure that it's a proper deal that we know we can be competitive because that's very important for our brand – to be competitive in anything that we do."

Andretti also confirmed that had Herta been switched to Formula 1, 2021 Indy Lights champion Kyle Kirkwood would have taken his place in the team's IndyCar line-up.
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/andr ... s/6744664/

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#39

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Yea, I don’t completely buy that explanation. Peter Sauber is 78 years old. He is fighting tooth and nail to maintain operational control of the team?

At that age, most people are more concerned about banking a little more money for their kids (he has two sons, I gather one works for Sauber).
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#40

Post by erwin greven »

Andretti wanted to have free hands to work on the team. But another family which has some 20% of the shares wanted to keep more say in the team than the 20% should allow. That is the reason Andretti pulled back.
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#41

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erwin greven wrote: 2 years ago Andretti wanted to have free hands to work on the team. But another family which has some 20% of the shares wanted to keep more say in the team than the 20% should allow. That is the reason Andretti pulled back.
Legally, can't the 80% just overrule the 20%? Can someone holding 20% of the stock veto the sale or make demands that must be responded to?
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#42

Post by erwin greven »

I have no idea how much % Andretti is purchasing.
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#43

Post by Everso Biggyballies »

erwin greven wrote: 2 years ago I have no idea how much % Andretti is purchasing.
It was mentioned as 80%.... perhaps the owner of the other 20% who was I believe Swedish billionaire Finn Rausing, who basically owns the company that currently owns Sauber wanted a seat on the board of the proposed Andretti Sauber business. I know of all the shareholders in his company he was one who was personally going the own the 20% Andretti were not buying.

From what I have read Rausing wanted some sort of additional payment in addition to the actual sale price of which I heard was $250 million, a figure Andretti was comfortable with.

Auto Motor und Sport reported that Rausing wanted a fee for the team that Andretti seemed willing to pay (250 mill) but also a $50m-a-year guarantee for the team for five years – paid upfront.

This would be to ensure Sauber had the funding to run at the budget cap in case there was any issues with sponsorship. I understood it was these extra costs that Andretti was not prepared to put up.

That is why I dont understand this talk by Andretti of control issues. Im sure that with 80% of the shares Andretti has majority rule and in effect control. However with an individual like Rausing owning 20% and on the board I can imagine it could well lead to Rausing being difficult and perhaps regularly raising issues.... especially if he sees Andretti having a different vision of the team to Rausing the previous owner.

I feel the extra 50million surety (for want of a better word) to it seems be like a contingency fund.... maybe that is what is being interpreted as a control issue. What happens to that 50 million a year if there are no sponsorship shortfalls?

Perhaps it is Rausing reading too much into the talk of the cost cap and 200 million entry fee for new teams making F1 teams potentially billion dollar businesses. Perhaps Rausing is the part of the current shareholding that wants to hang on to the team for another couple of yers to reap any increase in team value?

As an afterthought maybe Rausing wants Vasseur to continue running the team in day to day terms, and Andretti wants to do that job himself and ditch Vasseur. Andretti is going to be pretty busy running an F1 team 23 weekends a year and also running an Indycar team 17 or whatever it is times..... and Monaco / Indy weekend would be a challenge with no Concorde anymore to make things easier

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#44

Post by Ruslan »

There is more to this story.
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Post by PTRACER »

I hate to say, but this is a non-story from start to finish. I'd like to go into space, but does that deserve a news story on all the astronomy websites?
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#46

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PTRACER wrote: 2 years ago I hate to say, but this is a non-story from start to finish. I'd like to go into space, but does that deserve a news story on all the astronomy websites?
But on the conspiracy theory cites it would read:
"Man denied trip to space by UK Government because he works for a Japanese company. Click here for more."

So obviously someone is proffiting at this story. :wink:
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