Yeah I agree Jeri, this Gallagher chap is clearly no business expert to spout such obvious crap.
Andretti runs teams in many series so knows how team funding works, and will have sought out serious sponsorship deals to plaster names all over his F1 cars, along with partner deals from various backers.
This bid for entry by Andretti is no Haas budget operation if it's passed scrutiny by FIA, after all they (FIA) turned down some other suggested Billion dollar backed bids for entry and just approved Andretti to go forward.
Also Gallagher seems to be trying to re-write history with remarks about Manor, Lotus/Caterham and HRT teams not being up to it. He seems to have forgotten they came in with promise of budget cap, but just like Andretti they felt the squeeze from the established teams who flatly refused a budget cap, when push came to shove, to protect there own interests. Seems it's happening all over again - self interest I mean.
"This Gallagher chap" was a senior member of the Cosworth team between 2009 and 2012, and thus very much aware of the pitfalls of the 2010 teams (having been required to supply all 4 of them). So he's looking for evidence that the F1 bid from Andretti specifically is better-planned than that of USF1, Campos/Hispania, Litespeed/Lotus/Caterham and Manor/Virgin/Marussia/Manor 2 . He remembers the consequences very well: without that plan, people like the organisation he was in don't get paid. It was a significant part of the reason Cosworth dropped out in 2012 and has not considered returning since. (That, and the upcoming regulations made no sense for their outfit). The "existential crisis" referred to was near the end of 2014, where there was a high risk of there only being 7 teams in existence for the 2015 season (the team that finished 6th, plus every team below 7th). The system ran on the assumption there'd always be at least 10 teams to field the 18 cars required by TV contracts, and it turned out none of the 7 remaining teams could budget for a 3rd car, meaning F1 could have found itself unable to fund a 2015 series (despite the FIA allowing grids of down to 12 cars).
Some of the 2010 teams had or were associated with nice names. It didn't help.
Hard to come up with a plan when the running costs are about 3 times as expensive as they were back then, plus an extra $200 m dilution fee, plus whatever other costs Liberty wish to impose that it hasn't announced yet.
The "key criteria" part of the headline is doing a lot of the work, at least as far as Mark Gallagher is concerned. If the criteria are met, he'd be perfectly OK with them arriving. He just doesn't want hundreds of people's livelihoods to stand on shaky ground. All of them, though legitimate, can be resolved fairly easily, even if this article doesn't do the work to explain how:
- Acrimony with team principals: gradually work on improving this by learning to understand how each principal thinks and how to navigate the Piranha Club. There is no particular hurry to do so, especially if the team is funded enough not to need Liberty's permission (technically it can join the F1 grid with just the FIA authorisation, provided it can replace the potential funds from Liberty). An example is Colin Kolles. When he started at Jordan, he sent every team principal (metaphorically) up the wall with his aggravating antics. However, he learned how to do better at the psuedopolitical side over the intervening 18 months, so when he tried to rescue Caterham in 2014, the team principals were happy with him.
- Lack of F1-specific understanding: Do what most F1 teams do and hire good F1 specialists in key positions. American leaders are perfectly capable of combining their racing nous with F1-specific senior subordinates, as shown most obviously by McLaren. Obviously Mark won't have seen who those will be for Andretti because the time to hire them is in the future, but it's always good to foresee the obstacle when there is plenty of time to consider different ways of navigating it. And USF1 and Haas have both shown that American rank-and-file staff can turn their attentions to F1 as successfully as their bosses and resources permit.
- Possible dependence on prize money: Basically, Andretti should not assume any position better than last because F1 is tougher than virtually every team initially thinks. This is not as difficult as in the 2010s, however, since the current agreement guarantees a certain amount of money to all teams just to participate (Column 1 appearance money, rather than Column 2 prize money). If Andretti budgets for that part and covers the shortfall between it and the $145 m with non-Liberty sources, that's a perfectly workable arrangement. Andretti may think that's a silly question, but the longer-serving team principals have seen teams seriously propose to keep in F1 largely on prize money (Litespeed and Manor 2, I'm looking at you). It won't be enough for Andretti to
know he's better than that - he'll need to
write it down and be prepared to
present his real plan to people who'd actively avoid that much detail (due to the risks of accidental financial information crimes) if this was, say, Indycars.
The person who actually deserves criticism here is the article writer, Oliver Harden. Quite aside from his unnecessarily negative and scatter-gun approach to writing the article, he's also lifted a whole bunch of it from various GP Racing articles (some from Matt Gallagher's column, more from various news items) published over the last six months, without giving credit.
TL;DR: Mark Gallagher and the F1 teams have been stung. Andretti F1 needs to prove it won't sting them again if they are going to trust it. Andretti F1 has the ability to do so. The writer declined to mention the last point and is also a plagiarist.
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