Formula 1 CEO Stefano Domenicali has defended the series’ handling of its refusal to allow Andretti to enter as an 11th team.
It announced last month it had rejected Andretti’s entry. F1 said the Andretti brand was not sufficiently well-known, cast doubt on their likely competitiveness and claimed the benefits of adding an 11th team were insufficient.
Domenicali said the subject of adding an 11th team “for sure is a point related to the Concorde Agreement” between the team, F1 and the FIA – which approved Andretti’s bid in October last year.
“It is a point of a joint work that has to be done between the FIA and FOM in regard to the different kinds of evaluation that we need to do,” Domenicali told investors in a call today.
“With regard to what has happened, I think that the process has been followed, and we presented the result in the right way.
“For the future it’s a matter of discussion, of course, with the teams, with the right commercial and technical propositions that will be discussed accordingly within this year.”
The current Concorde Agreement expires at the end of next year. Domenicali expects the coming negotiations between the parties involved will be straightforward.
“We expect to address the renewal of the Concorde Agreement with the teams very, very shortly,” he said. “Our view, that is basically shared with the teams, is that basically the Concorde Agreement will not need any substantial changes this time around.
“So we’re going to start very, very soon. We had priority to finalise before the end of season talking about regulations and other stuff with regard to other things that need to be solved before. So now we’re getting close to the time where we’re going to start this discussion, very, very shortly.”
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Formula 1
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