F1: New teams must bring value to the sport

Alpine executive director Marcin Budkowski has warned any prospective new team in F1 it must “bring value to the sport”.

F1 agreed to the introduction of a $200million anti-dilution fee for a newcomer looking to join in an attempt to prove the validity of the outfit and avoid a swift exit or collapse.

With one of the most affluent junior academies on the grid, Alpine now finds itself struggling to place Guanyu Zhou and Oscar Piastri at a time when both are excelling in F2, with many citing a lack of opportunity on the 20-car grid as a limiting factor.

Asked if the anti-dilution fee should therefore be scrapped, Budkowski replied: “It’s a complicated question. I’m going to try to give a simple answer.

“It would be good to have more teams in Formula 1. I think we would all welcome that, but they need to be the right teams, and they need to bring value to the sport [Editor’s Note: How do you measure that, Marcin?].

“I think that’s one of the reasons that the anti-dilution fee was brought in, to make sure that people who come are really financially sound and solid, to be able to run a Formula 1 team, which as you know is a very expensive business to run.

“Equally, it was also a way to ensure that when the Concorde Agreements were negotiated that all the teams would be reassured that the cake wouldn’t be split into more slices, with newcomers entering the sport in an uncontrolled manner.

“It was a measure that was mostly brought to give confidence to the existing 10 teams that they would be looked after if there were new teams coming.”

Pushing the attention of the question away from the teams, Budkowski added: “To be honest, it’s a question for the commercial rights holder, a question for Stefano [Domenicali, F1 CEO] in that case.

“But yeah, more teams would bring more diversity to the sport, bring more drivers in the sport for sure.

“I think it’s a better outcome than having three cars per team as has been mooted by some other people in the recent past.”