The Ticket

0:00 A new team pays its rivals

Melbourne, the eighth of March 2026. For the first time in ten years, a new team lines up on the Formula One grid. Its name is Cadillac.

Its car has never started a race. Its drivers have never scored a point for it. But its owners have already agreed, according to reports, to pay a fee just to be here.

Not to Formula One. To the ten teams it is about to race against.

0:28 Who got the better deal?

How much? The price has never been officially confirmed. The contract that sets it is confidential.

But the reports agree on where the money goes: to the ten teams already sitting at the table.

A newcomer, paying its rivals for the right to race them. One question runs through this episode. Who got the better deal: the ten teams that were paid, or the newcomer that paid them?

To follow that money, this episode keeps a ledger. One column for who paid, and one for who got paid.

One line stays blank for now: the price.

1:29 The $200 million door in the Concorde Agreement

Every few years, the teams, Formula One and the FIA sign a contract that decides how the sport's money is shared. It is called the Concorde Agreement. Its contents are confidential. The version that ran from 2021 to 2025 was signed in August 2020.

That contract contained a new rule. Any new team would have to pay two hundred million dollars to get in. And the money would not go to Formula One. It would be split equally among the ten teams already there. Twenty million each.

Before, newcomers had made a payment that came back to them over time. Now the entry money stayed with the competitors. It became known as the anti-dilution fee.

Zak Brown of McLaren spoke about it in September 2020, and he did not see it as a wall. With the value of teams growing, he said, a newcomer would get that two hundred million back, and then some, at a later date. In February 2021, Stefano Domenicali, the chief executive of Formula One, explained the thinking. That amount of money, he said, is really the value of the franchise.

The value of the franchise. That is what a newcomer would be paying for.

Dilution is the key word. Formula One pays its teams from a prize fund, mostly according to their results in the constructors' championship of the previous years. In 2021, that fund paid the teams just over one billion dollars, according to the annual report of Liberty Media, which owns Formula One. Unless an eleventh team made the fund bigger, it would take a slice of it.

Toto Wolff of Mercedes put it in one line, in May 2022. An eleventh team, he said, means a ten percent dilution for everybody else.

The teams did not decide who got in. They said so themselves. At a press conference in Miami in May 2023, Wolff put it plainly. First of all, he said, the teams had no say in this. That decision belongs to two others. The FIA, which runs the rules, and Formula One, which runs the business.

But the teams had signed the contract that set the price of the door. And at the same press conference, Christian Horner of Red Bull explained why an existing team might be in no hurry to see it opened. If a new team dilutes the income of the ten, he said, it's like turkeys voting for Christmas.

The ledger opens with a price, not a payment. Under the 2021 contract, a new team would pay two hundred million dollars, and the ten teams already in would get twenty million each.

4:20 Twenty paragraphs: Formula One refuses Andretti

One family had been trying to get in since 2021. Michael Andretti, son of the 1978 world champion Mario Andretti, ran his own racing organisation in America, Andretti Global. In 2021, he tried to buy an existing Formula One team, Sauber. That deal fell through. In February 2022, his father announced that Michael had applied to the FIA for a team of his own.

In January 2023, he arrived with a partner. General Motors would join the project, represented by its Cadillac brand.

A month later, the FIA opened a formal process for new teams. Seven expressions of interest came in. Four went through to a full application. In October 2023, the FIA announced that Andretti was the only candidate to meet the stringent criteria. Its president, Mohammed Ben Sulayem, said the FIA was obliged to approve applications that complied.

A few days later, at a press conference in Qatar, the team principals were asked what they thought. James Vowles of Williams said his team was against an eleventh team, and very strongly against. In the same answer, he said he welcomed GM open-armed. Fred Vasseur of Ferrari said it was not a secret that he was not a big fan.

That was the first key. The second belonged to Formula One. The FIA passed its findings on to Formula One's management, for commercial discussions.

On the thirty-first of January 2024, Formula One gave its answer, in a statement of twenty numbered paragraphs. It wrote that its assessment had established that an eleventh team would not, in and of itself, provide value to the Championship.

The most valuable thing a newcomer could bring, Formula One wrote, was being competitive, fighting for podiums and wins. It did not believe Andretti would be. A new team forced to use another manufacturer's engine possibly for several seasons, it wrote, would damage the prestige of the Championship. And on the name itself: Formula One would bring value to the Andretti brand, it wrote, rather than the other way around.

It also wrote that its assessment did not involve any consultation with the current teams, and that it had invited Andretti to a meeting in December 2023, an offer that was not taken up. Andretti said it strongly disagreed with the outcome, and that it had not been aware of the invitation.

But the last paragraph left a door open. Formula One wrote that it would look differently at an entry for 2028 with a General Motors engine, either as a works team, or as a customer team designing everything the rules allowed in house.

Read closely, the no came with a price list. Not in dollars. In engines, in brand, and in time.

In the ledger, a first name, and a first refusal. The FIA said yes to Andretti. Formula One said no.

7:35 After the no: Washington, General Motors, a reported price

Then the answer travelled to Washington. On the first of May 2024, members of the House of Representatives wrote to Greg Maffei, the chief executive of Liberty Media. It was unfair and wrong, they wrote, to attempt to block American companies from joining Formula One. Three weeks later, seven senators asked the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission to investigate.

In August, Liberty Media told its shareholders that the Justice Department's antitrust division had opened an investigation into Formula One's conduct concerning the Andretti application. Maffei said he believed the decision complied with all applicable American antitrust laws. By February 2026, Liberty Media's annual report no longer mentioned the investigation.

That autumn, Michael Andretti stepped back from running the organisation that carried his name, staying on as an advisor. In an open letter in October 2024, he wrote that decades of running flat out had come with sacrifice, and that it was time to pass the baton to his partner and friend, Dan Towriss. Towriss would go on to lead the motorsport business of TWG Global, the investment group of Mark Walter and Thomas Tull.

In late November 2024, in Las Vegas, Toto Wolff was asked about a new team once more. If General Motors came in as a team owner, he said, that would be a different story.

On the twenty-fifth of November 2024, ten months after its no, Formula One announced an agreement in principle with General Motors, to bring a GM and Cadillac team onto the grid in 2026. Its statement named what had changed. The team had reached operational milestones. It would carry the GM and Cadillac name. And General Motors would come in later as an engine supplier.

Put the two statements side by side. In January, Formula One had written what would make it look differently: a General Motors engine. In November, General Motors put its own name on the team and promised that engine. Same ambition, a different shape.

The British company register shows the turn in a few lines. Company number one four one nine four two one two was founded in June 2022 as Andretti Racing Limited. Eighteen days after Formula One's announcement, it became Cadillac Formula Racing Limited. Today it is called TWG Cadillac Formula One Team Limited.

Same company. A new name on the door.

On the same day as Formula One's announcement, the BBC, citing senior sources in Formula One, reported the price. General Motors and TWG would pay an anti-dilution fee of four hundred and fifty million dollars, to be split between the ten existing teams.

That would be more than double the price in the old contract.

Not everyone in the paddock recognised the number. A few days later, James Vowles of Williams said he did not think there was actually any defined amount yet, because the new Concorde Agreement had not been ratified. In March 2025, Motorsport.com reported that Cadillac had agreed to pay four hundred and fifty million dollars, split equally between the ten teams. The figure has never appeared in an official document.

On the seventh of March 2025, the FIA and Formula One approved the application of General Motors and TWG Motorsports. Cadillac would race from 2026, the first wholly new team since Haas in 2016.

The blank line can be filled in now. General Motors and TWG, a reported four hundred and fifty million dollars. The ten teams, forty-five million each.

11:38 Eleven ways: the prize fund and the eleventh slice

Two years after the turkeys, Christian Horner had a new image. At a press conference in China in March 2025, he was asked about the deal. They had all got an early Christmas bonus, he said, as part of the signing-on fee. And he was clear about why this newcomer was different. If it was anybody other than GM, he said, they would probably have a bigger issue with it.

Oliver Oakes of Alpine added that a few financial directors were probably quite happy now.

There was more. In March 2025, Formula One paid a total of fifty million dollars to the ten teams, as an incentive for signing the commercial part of the new Concorde Agreement, according to Liberty Media's annual report. Cadillac signed the same contract. The fifty million went to the ten. In December 2025, the ninth Concorde Agreement was complete, signed by Formula One, the FIA and all eleven teams.

But a fee is paid once. A prize fund is paid every year. In 2025, Formula One paid its ten teams one point four billion dollars. Under the new contract, Liberty Media says, that fund is a fixed percentage of an adjusted measure of Formula One's operating profit. From 2026, it is shared by eleven. According to Motorsport.com, Cadillac competes for prize money from its first year, like every other team.

That is the dilution the fee was meant to cover. Toto Wolff told a German magazine in January 2025 that the fee was too low, according to an English translation of the interview. Horner called it a bonus. Both can be true at once. The fee arrives once. The eleventh slice is cut every year.

For General Motors and TWG, the sum ran the other way. The ticket bought something no factory can build: one of eleven places. In November 2025, Forbes reported that Cadillac was paying more than one billion dollars in all, between the cost of building the team and the fee. Sportico, the same month, put the cost of building the team at another billion on top of the fee.

And the newcomer saw the table in its own way. In July 2025, Graeme Lowdon, Cadillac's first team principal, argued that Formula One should welcome more teams. This is not a franchise sport, he said. It is a true world championship. Formula One, for him, is the greatest team sport in the world.

Two new lines. Formula One paid the ten teams fifty million dollars to sign. And Cadillac, the team that paid to get in, is reported to be paid from the prize fund as well.

14:34 What the ticket bought, on and off the track

On the track, the first season has been hard. In Melbourne, Sergio Pérez finished sixteenth, three laps down, and Valtteri Bottas retired. After eighteen races, Cadillac is last in the constructors' championship, without a point. In August, Marcin Budkowski took over from Graeme Lowdon as team principal.

The engine in the back is a Ferrari. In April 2025, the FIA approved the engine company that General Motors formed with TWG as a supplier from 2029. Until then, the engine that helped open the door is still to come.

Off the track, the bills are in the register. The team's British company lost nearly one hundred and twenty-two million pounds in 2025, according to the accounts it filed this September. In a year without a single race.

None of that changes what the ticket bought. In November 2025, Sportico called Formula One teams arguably the scarcest sports asset, with only ten teams and an eleventh on the way. A year earlier, Sportico had written that the price of getting into Formula One by buying a team had risen in five years from roughly one hundred million dollars to ten times that.

And TWG, for one, is keeping its seat. In August 2026, at the Dutch Grand Prix, TWG said in a statement that it was not considering a sale of the Cadillac team. And all eleven teams, Liberty Media told its shareholders, have committed to racing in the championship until the end of 2030.

The next door has a new lock. Under the new contract, reports say, the fee for a twelfth team is no longer a fixed number, but is linked to the financial performance of Formula One. The better the sport does, the higher the barrier.

The ledger is full now. On one side, the money it took to get a seat. On the other, the teams that were paid to make room.

There is one thing the ledger does not show. What a team at that table is worth.

A reported four hundred and fifty million dollars, for the seat alone. Now put it next to the teams that already exist.

Every year, Sportico puts a value on each Formula One team. In November 2025, it valued the cheapest of the ten, Haas, at one point six eight billion dollars. The average team at three point four two billion. Ferrari at six point four billion. Forbes, counting in its own way, put the cheapest team at one point five billion.

Next to those bars, the ticket looks small. A seat at the table, for a fraction of what a team at the table is worth.

So who got the better deal? The ten teams shared one fee. The newcomer paid it, and keeps the seat.

17:42 Sources and next episode

A team can be built. A seat at the table has to be bought.

Every number in this episode has a source, and you will find them all below the video.

Next time: Abu Dhabi, 2021. Two drivers level on points, one lap of racing left, and a rule that gave one man, in its own words, overriding authority. That episode is called Overriding Authority.