Toto Wolff’s $1 Billion “Gatekeeping” Gets Logical Backing as F1’s New Teams Crusade Mellows Down

Ever since Mario Andretti and other potential suitors expressed interest in entering F1, existing teams voiced their concerns. One of the fiercest opposers of having more teams without proper financial backing is Mercedes’ Toto Wolff. Toto has, since the very first day, stressed the need for such teams to not only duly compensate existing teams for the dilution in their profit sharing, but also the need for such teams to have enough in their coffers to sustain in the league for a long and compete at the highest level. What is crucial to address both these concerns is money, lots of it.

The Concorde Agreement is currently in force. It requires Andretti or any party that wishes to enter F1 to pay $200 million to the existing teams. However, the popularity of the sport has grown multifold in the last couple of years. This prompted the incumbent teams to make a demand of $700 million from anyone who wishes to enter. Add to that, the actual cost of floating a team and a $1 billion figure does not look ridiculous anymore.

Vincenzo Landino in a recent episode of The VF1 Show said, “For new teams coming in, it’s almost going to require you to have, what Toto Wolff said, a year ago I think it was, you have to have about a billion dollars to even enter the series. A lot of people, probably including myself, were like, ‘oh my god, this is nuts! This is gatekeeping’.”

“But the more I see it, the more I see the case for no cost cap, the more Toto’s right. You’ve got to come in this with a billion bucks. You’ve got to come into this with a lot of money because what’s the point if you are entering just to be one of these teams on the bottom? There’s literally no point. This is not a money-maker. Most teams are not making money. I would rather see the absolute best racing possible.”

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Toto and Red Bull boss Christian Horner are often at loggerheads on most of the issues. However, this is one where they both stand on a similar footing.

Christian Horner drops a hint for Andretti to buy an existing team instead of floating 11th

Andretti made a big statement after announcing their partnership with Cadillac. While that does add a big value to their proposition, the current F1 infrastructure does not accommodate an 11th team. Horner highlighted that while addressing the Andretti question recently.

In an interview with Daily Mail, the Red Bull TP said, “There’s absolutely nothing against Andretti, they’re great people and Cadillac is a wonderful brand, but we need to come up with a criteria for 2026 that doesn’t diminish the value of, particularly, the smaller teams, and deals with the elephant in the room of: who is actually going to pay for it?”

“There is, of course, also the practical elements of: are there enough garages at some of these new venues that we go to, to accommodate an 11th team? It needs to be dealt with in the right way.”

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Earlier, it looked like Red Bull was looking to offload AlphaTauri after founder Dietrich Mateschitz’s death. However, team boss Franz Tost recently put those rumors to rest, ruling out any sale whatsoever. It would be interesting to see what path Andretti and Cadillac take after the latest development.