The battle to add an eleventh team to Formula 1 is reportedly becoming personal.
Mario Andretti, the former Formula 1 champion whose son Michael is pushing for grid expansion, had a controversial clash with Greg Maffei, the CEO of Formula 1 parent company Liberty Media, during the Miami Grand Prix earlier this month, according to NBC. News.
The elder Andretti reportedly said he was at an invitation-only breakfast reception at the Palm Club when Formula 1 CEO Stefano Domenicali asked him about a recent visit to Washington. Andretti had recently spoken at Congress after F1 rejected Michael’s bid to race in 2026.
Andretti reportedly told Domenicali that he had been invited by Congress, at which point he claimed Maffei entered the chat. Via NBC News:
“I was asked to go there. And just when I was trying to explain that to Stefano, Greg Maffei, Mr. Maffei interrupted the conversation and said: ‘Mario, I want to tell you that I will do everything I can to ensure that Michael never gets into Formula 1 . ,” Andretti said.
Maffei reportedly walked away after the comment and has not spoken to the elder Andretti since.
Andretti was apparently surprised:
“I couldn’t believe that,” he said. “That really floored me. …We’re talking business. I didn’t know it was such a personal thing. That was really – oh my god. I could not believe it. It was like a bullet through my heart.”
Unsurprisingly, a Liberty Media source had a different recollection of the discussion:
“Andretti approached Greg over breakfast to talk to him,” the source told NBC News, adding that Maffei indicated to Andretti during the conversation that their application to join the grid in 2025 or 2026 was for good business reasons had been rejected.
The bid for an eleventh team has become controversial, with Congress entering the fray and demanding answers as to why Andretti Global must now wait until at least 2028. A dozen members of the US Congress wrote a letter calling on the Sherman Antitrust Act and highlighted the potential employment benefits for General Motors. , whose Cadillac-branded engines would power Andretti cars starting in 2028.
Formula 1 is dominated by European-based teams, but Liberty Media is an American company.
Andretti had already been approved for an F1 team by the FIA, the sport’s governing body, but F1 and its ten teams rejected the application in January, citing upcoming rule changes and the two-year gap between a 2026 entry and the readiness of the engines. 2028.
