F1 News: Toto Wolff Bringing Eleventh Team On Might "Dilute" The Sport
Mohammed Ben Sulayem, president of the FIA, posted to Twitter that he has requested for an "expressions of interest process" to be started for an eleventh team to potentially be added to the F1 grid.
“I have asked my FIA team to look at launching an Expressions of Interest process for prospective new teams for the FIA F1 World Championship."
The last time a new team was added to the grid was Haas in 2016. Haas achieved their first pole position during the 2022 season with Kevin Magnussen taking pole for the Brazilian Grand Prix sprint race.
Prior to Haas, the last teams to be added were Lotus, Hispania, and Virgin, who all joined the grid in 2010, however, were not as successful as Haas.
Mercedes team principal and CEO, Toto Wolff, commented on the possibility of an additional team joining the grid when rumours started to circulate of this last year. He said at the time that he was worried another team might "dilute the sport". He explained:
“If a team comes in, how can you demonstrate that you’re bringing in more money than it’s actually costing: because the 11th team means a 10 percent dilution for everybody else.
“So, if one is able to demonstrate that, then we should all be sitting on the table, and cheer for such an entry. But that hasn’t been demonstrated yet. And that may sound a bit dry, because it comes down to the numbers, but the value of Formula 1 is that it’s a limited amount of franchises. And we don’t want to dilute that value by just adding teams.”
Nothing has been confirmed yet but we will be keeping an eye out for any further statements on this.
For now, F1 fans are eagerly waiting for the 2023 season to start with the Bahrain Grand Prix on Sunday 5th March.