Cadillac is pursuing a meeting with Formula 1 over its rejection of Michael Andretti’s bid to run the sport’s 11th team.
Andretti Formula Racing and Cadillac, a subsidiary of American auto giant General Motors, were approved by the FIA to form a new team late last year after a months-long application process.
The all-American team run by Michael Andretti, son of the 1978 world champion Mario Andretti, was the only bid to win approval from world motorsport’s governing body to field a team in 2025 or 2026 based on its sporting and technical ability as well as its financial capacity.
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However, Formula 1 Management (FOM), which holds the sport’s commercial rights, must also give assent to any prospective team that makes it through the FIA selection process.
FOM rejected the bid in January after several months of deliberation, arguing in a lengthy statement that Andretti was unlikely to be competitive and would bring no additional value to the sport.
The statement also said Andretti had been invited to present its case in December but did not take up the offer. The would-be team later said the email invitation had been caught by its spam filter.
Speaking at the postponed Daytona 500 at the weekend, General Motors vice-president of performance and motorsports Jim Campbell said that GM and Andretti were pursuing a meeting with F1 bosses given the difference of opinion between the FIA and FOM.
“In terms of our application with Andretti, we feel great about our application,” he said, per Autoweek.
“The FIA studied it against other applicants and then gave our application a vote of confidence and approval.
“So obviously the FOM made their statement, and we have asked for a follow-up meeting with FOM, and so we will work through that.”
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FOM’s judgement argued strongly that the “novice” bid not only was unlikely to be competitive in the short term but also had seriously underestimated the challenge of competing in Formula 1, questioning Andretti’s “understanding of the scope of the challenge involved”.
The statement also cast doubt on whether General Motors would succeed in Formula 1.
Campbell said he remained confident in the competitive capacity of the bid and reasserted that the team was continuing to be built in anticipation of winning access to the grid.
“We do believe between Andretti and Cadillac that we have got the capability of fielding a competitive entry,” he said.
“We are not saying that it is easy, but we do between our two organisations have examples in our history of where we have been successful in other motorsports categories, and that is true of Cadillac and Andretti.
“With that said, our joint teams are continuing to develop our car at pace. That is where we are at.
“As I said, we believe in the application we submitted, and in that application we articulated the abilities of both Andretti as a race team and Cadillac as a manufacturing and engineering entity.
“We feel confident in the application and are asking for a meeting with FOM.”
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Despite FOM’s comprehensive rejection of the bid, it did leave the door open to a reassessment for entry into the 2028 season, when Cadillac says it will have its first power unit ready for competition.
Andretti originally bid to enter the sport as an independent constructor, with Cadillac joining the application after it became clear Formula 1 would be reluctant to entertain new entries without the backing of a major manufacturer.
The team had planned to race with customer engines in its early years, having entered into a supply pre-agreement with Renault that has since lapsed with the bid’s rejection.
FOM took issue with Andretti’s need to use an external engine supplier, but Campbell said the technical regulations left General Motors with no room to enter sooner than 2028.
“When you register to be a power unit, there is a deadline to do that, and for us it was last June for 2028,” he said.
“If you wanted to develop an engine sooner, then you would have had to register the previous year for that. It’s simply a regulation.”
While registration does not bind a power unit manufacturer to enter the sport, it does lock a prospective engine builder into the cost and development limits designed to work as equalisation measures.
In a series of statements following his team’s rejection, Andretti said work on building up its F1 operations “continues at pace”.
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