Mario Andretti on “personal” factors that meant Michael was not part of Cadillac F1 plan

Mario Andretti insists that there is no lingering sadness within his family that their eponymous team had to morph into Cadillac to secure an entry in to Formula 1.

In an exclusive interview with Autosport, the 1978 world champion has opened up on how there will be unanswered questions about why Andretti’s operation faced hurdles which have now been cleared for F1’s latest squad.

Earlier this week, Liberty Media announced that it had agreed in principle with General Motors for its Cadillac brand to enter F1 in 2026.

This comes in the wake of previous efforts by the Andretti-Cadillac operation being rejected because it was not felt that it would bring any benefits to F1.

The new project took off after Andretti Global chief Michael Andretti stepped back from day-to-day involvement, a move viewed by some as a key element in helping transform how F1 saw the plans.

While the latest effort means Michael Andretti will not see through in his dream of running an F1 operation, his father Mario, who will be a director on the board of the Cadillac operation, insists there is nothing to be upset about.

Asked if there were bittersweet feelings about Michael not being a part of it, Andretti said: “Yeah, but you know what? There’s a celebration here with him as well.

“There’s no big issues that I see among the group here that would linger or anything else because, I guarantee ultimately it wasn’t just [about] Michael. It’s not that simple.

“There were a lot of things going on, but it happened. It may have made it look like that was the key factor; but it wasn’t.

“One way or another, he might’ve stepped aside a little bit more about the day-to-day situation with them [anyway], so we’re not losing a beat anywhere by going forward here.”

F1 accepted a plan for Cadillac because it felt that a works team in the long term would justify expanding the grid to 11 teams more than the previous customer plans for Andretti-Renault cars that was originally on the table for 2025.

There remains some intrigue though about how big a role the departure of Michael Andretti played in moving the project forward.

Sources have insisted that his exit was not a demand that F1 had laid down, but Mario Andretti thinks there were some “personal” issues at play amid the controversy over its F1 entry rejection earlier this year.

Asked why Cadillac had got approval where Andretti…