Andretti barred from co-locating all their teams in massive Fishers, IN. facility

Andretti Global is building a massive facility in Fishers, Indiana (shown) with plans to house all their race programs (F1, IndyCar, Formula E, Indy NXT, IMSA, etc) but surprise – they can’t.

–by Mark Cipolloni–

Formula 1 rules do not allow a team to house multiple race programs out of the same shop to prevent cheating on the cost cap regulations.

Andretti officials have begun seeking out additional shop space on the north side of Indianapolis in recent weeks, multiple sources said, after they realized F1 will not let them do what they planned.

F1 teams’ annual budgets for almost all of their expenses at $135 million, and it must be a ‘closed’ environment, meaning the only thing that is being worked on in a F1 facility is F1, thereby keeping teams from hiding operating costs in multiple programs’ buckets.

Andretti expected to conduct some F1 activities within the new space while it served as the main headquarters for both the Andretti Global IndyCar and Indy NXT programs, as well as the Wayne Taylor Racing IMSA team.

Now they can’t, and they now not only have too much space for just the F1 program, they now have to rent another facility for the rest of their programs.

Much of the F1 work will be done out of their Silverstone, England facility that they rented.

In hindsight, they should have built the massive Fishers, Indiana facility in England and housed the entire F1 operation there, and kept their existing IndyCar facility on Zionsville Road on Indy’s northwest side for everything else. Instead, they sold it to Arrow McLaren and now are scrambling to find another facility.

Related: one rumor going around is that McLaren may get out of IndyCar because their new Abu Dhabi owners want them to focus on sportscar racing, which has far more synergies with their production car business.  They are losing money and need to sell more cars to make it profitable. IndyCar racing does not help them sell production cars.

McLaren could use their soon-to-be owned Andretti facility for both their IndyCar and IMSA programs, should they decide to remain in IndyCar.

F1 Cost Cap Rules