Toto Wolff and Christian Horner both have concerns about Cadillac (Image: Getty)
will join the grid in 2026, becoming the second American team in the series, but the new organisation have already frustrated some of their soon-to-be rivals, including and .
In F1, all teams agree to the Concorde Agreement, a commercial agreement between the organisations and Formula One Media. The terms of the deal dictate, among other things, the ‘anti-dilution fee’, which constructors aspiring to join the grid must pay to compensate for a loss of earnings for the other 10 squads.
As the teams split F1’s prize money between them, everyone will lose out financially when a new organisation joins the sport, hence the need for the ‘anti-dilution fee’. When Haas joined the grid in 2016, the sport was in a very different place, and owner Gene Haas therefore faced no such charge.
Andretti, however, will pay a £360million ($450m) fee to the 10 existing teams, and despite the eye-watering figure, boss Wolff believes that the price should have been even higher.
“When you look at it in the first instance, we lose out,” he told Auto Motor und Sport. “We don’t know what Cadillac will invest in Formula One. The compensation fee, which is currently set at $450 million, is too low. It does not make up for the direct loss in income.”
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Cadillac are stumping up a significant compensation fee (Image: Getty)
When the specifics of the deal were being finalised, team principal took a similar stance to long-time rival Wolff, insisting that his organisation had no plans to miss out on revenue as a result of a new squad’s entry.
“And like with all these things, it comes down to the finances and how it’s going to be funded and how it’s going to be paid,” he told Sky Sports F1. “As long as, logistically, they can be accommodated, we have absolutely no problem with seeing GM come here – but we’re not paying for it.
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“We’ve got no issue with them coming. We welcome them with open arms, but you don’t want to see the prize fund diluted. It will be that question of, whose side of the cake does it come out of?”
Given F1’s increasing popularity worldwide, the compensation fee is expected to rise in the coming years. Should this go ahead, Haas may stand as the sport’s final low-budget entrant with the increasing financial commitment of joining the series now pricing out everyone but global automotive giants.