Michael Andretti’s decision to step down from running his race team on a day-to-day basis will have no immediate bearing on its bid to join the Formula 1 grid.

Autosport has learned that Andretti’s Silverstone factory continues to recruit staff in a bid to have a full 2026 chassis ready before the New Year.

Former F1 and IndyCar driver Andretti has built one of the most successful motorsport teams across the world and is currently competing in multiple championships.

But he has failed in bids for his team to race in F1 by first failing to acquire Sauber before seeing his plans for an 11th team halted by F1.

Andretti’s application had initially received the green light from the FIA in October 2023 before the governing body performed a u-turn on its decision along with a rejection from Formula One Management in January this year, rather brutally saying it believed the team would not be competitive or add value to the championship.

The news was a blow to Andretti, which had formed a new F1 base at Silverstone with a view of competing in F1 from the 2025 season onwards.

Confusingly, despite having a remit to grow the series, FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem, who had previously led calls for more teams on the grid, recently urged Andretti and its partners, General Motors in the form of its Cadillac brand, to «go and buy another team, not to come as the 11th team».

Photo by: Alexander Trienitz / Motorsport Images

After Andretti’s shock departure, insiders say this is not as a consequence of the failed bid to enter F1 and that plans are still going ahead in the hope of getting the approval to race in 2026.

In a bid to ensure the team is ready should it be granted permission to join the F1 grid, the Andretti operation is still operating as usual.

The team has been growing at an average of seven new starters every week and now totals over 260 full-time people working on the project.

Furthermore, the team is working 16-hour days in the wind tunnel in Cologne, as it is not yet bound by F1 testing restrictions and is developing parts such as nose cones and wishbones that have been crash-tested at the FIA-approved F1 crash testing facility at Cranfield.

The team is also working on suspension and braking systems and roll hoop constructions for the 2026 regulations.

In another huge step, the team hopes to have its first chassis out of the mould before January — well in advance of some of its rivals.

Andretti is now hoping for both the FIA and FOM to revise the decision to prevent them from joining F1 as an 11th team.

In stepping back, what Andretti has done is remove himself from the equation, having drawn particular heat from F1 and rival team bosses.

Andretti Cadillac logo

Photo by: Andretti Autosport

By handing the operation over to Dan Towriss, the new-look team could look to speed up the process to become a GM works team with its own engine from 2028, something that F1 had stipulated in its rejection letter.

What now remains to be seen is if the new ownership — without Andretti at the helm — or indeed the Andretti name at all — go back to FOM with a second attempt at making the cut.

Max Verstappen started 2024 with seven victories in 10 grands prix so it looked as though the Red Bull driver would cruise towards another championship.

But McLaren then made major developments to its car, and the MCL38 is now the quickest package on the Formula 1 grid meaning Red Bull is no longer dominant. 

The Woking squad now leads the constructors’ standings having won four times since Verstappen’s last victory, which came in June at Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya. 

There have been eight grands prix since then and in that time Verstappen’s championship lead has reduced from 69 points to 52 with Lando Norris as his nearest challenger.

The McLaren driver has won two of the last four races and is staging a late charge for his maiden world title — but this up-turn in form may have come too late.

So, what are the different championship permutations and when is the earliest someone can claim the title? 

Which drivers can still win the F1 world championship in 2024? 

The 2024 F1 season has six grands prix and three sprint races — Austin, Brazil and Qatar — remaining, which means there are 180 points left available. 

Zak Brown, CEO, McLaren Racing, and Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing, 2nd position, congratulate each other in Parc Ferme

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

So, seven drivers can still mathematically become world champion in 2024 from Verstappen down to seventh-placed George Russell, who holds a 176-point deficit.

Russell’s Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton is 19 points ahead in sixth and the seven-time world champion trails fifth-placed Carlos Sainz by 16 points.

That means the Ferrari driver is 141 points behind Verstappen, so it is fair to say that a near-on miracle is needed for Sainz, Hamilton or Russell to become champion.

It gets tighter from fourth-placed onwards though: McLaren’s Oscar Piastri is 94 points behind Verstappen and is the highest-scoring driver of the last six rounds. 

Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc is third and trails Verstappen by 86 points, two years after he staged a failed title fight against the triple world champion. 

Such a large gap means it is unlikely Leclerc will become champion this year, but 34 points ahead of him is Norris, who realistically is Verstappen’s only challenger. 

How can Lando Norris become F1 world champion in 2024? 

Norris must outscore Verstappen by an average of six points over the remaining six grands prix and three sprint races to become F1’s world champion in 2024.

Lando Norris, McLaren F1 Team, 1st position, celebrates on arrival in Parc Ferme

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

If that happens, the title would be decided at the Abu Dhabi season finale but the McLaren driver can of course clinch the championship before then — for example, if he takes maximum points in the final rounds and Verstappen fails to score. 

In that scenario, Norris would be champion after the Qatar Grand Prix sprint race on the penultimate weekend of the season. Coincidentally, that would make it two straight years that the championship has been won after a sprint, as Verstappen took his third title by finishing second in the sprint race at Losail International Circuit.

But Verstappen not taking another point this season is highly unlikely, especially when the Australian GP has been his only non-score of 2024.

Should Norris therefore win all of the remaining races, alongside each fastest lap bonus point, the 24-year-old needs Verstappen to finish second or lower in the last six grands prix and no higher than third in the sprints. 

So the importance of the sprint race has arguably never been this high. That’s because if the above scenario happens then Norris is champion by two points, but if Verstappen finishes second in the three sprints, alongside runner-up in the final six grands prix, the 27-year-old takes his fourth crown by one point. 

Yet Norris only has three victories this season, so it is also unrealistic to expect him to win all of the remaining races. To therefore maintain an average of six points over Verstappen in every outing, Norris needs his rival to be fourth or lower at each grand prix should the McLaren driver finish second for all of them.  

If Norris is third, Verstappen cannot be any higher than sixth, while finishing eighth or lower is not enough for the McLaren driver. Meanwhile, for the sprints, Norris realistically needs to be finishing inside the top three as fourth is only worth five points. 

There are also questions over if Norris can maintain that average points advantage. In the last six grands prix, Verstappen has scored 76 points compared to his rival’s 108, which makes an average of just 5.3 points per race in Norris’ favour. 

Lando Norris, McLaren F1 Team

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

So Verstappen is still favourite to win the 2024 world championship, especially as it is still plausible for Norris to take maximum points for the rest of the season and not claim the title.

How can Max Verstappen become F1 world champion in 2024? 

The stipulations for Verstappen to become champion are much simpler, because the maximum points tally Norris can finish on this season is 459 — only 128 more than the Dutchman’s current total.

So 129 points over the next six race weekends is enough for Verstappen, and that equates to approximately five grand prix victories plus a handful of points in the sprints. But that’s still not too realistic given he hasn’t won for eight rounds and only finished on the podium three times during that run.

At this stage, it’s more of a percentage game for Verstappen to ensure he doesn’t finish too far behind Norris as the MCL38 is far superior. That target of 129 is also only considering the possibility of Norris scoring maximum points for the rest of the season, so it will of course continue to decrease as the season approaches its end. 

Should Verstappen also finish above Norris in a grand prix, that will go a long way towards the Red Bull driver becoming champion. He may also take the title after the Qatar sprint should the current points gap stay as it is. 

But that’s not the earliest Verstappen can become a four-time world champion. If the highly unlikely scenario happens in that he takes a maximum score for each of the remaining six weekends and Norris fails to earn another point, Verstappen will claim the crown after the sprint race in Brazil on the fourth to last weekend of the season. 

Following several successful cameos in recent months, Formula 1 is set to reverse a trend by welcoming an influx of rookie drivers in 2025.

For the first time in history, the 2024 Formula 1 grid featured an unchanged driver line-up compared to the one that saw out the previous season, with zero newcomers lining up in Bahrain. The contrast with 2025 could hardly be much bigger, with four expected rookies — and possibly a fifth — on the grid in Melbourne amid a flurry of drivers changes.

Following the Singapore Grand Prix, Red Bull confirmed Liam Lawson would replace Daniel Ricciardo at its RB team for the remainder of the season and while no mention was made of 2025, the New Zealander will likely line up in a Red Bull-backed car next year for his first full-time campaign. He will join fellow rookies Andrea Kimi Antonelli at Mercedes, Alpine’s Jack Doohan and Oliver Bearman at Haas. There is also potential for a fifth debutant at Sauber, with incumbent Valtteri Bottas being weighed up against Williams’ surprise star Franco Colapinto and McLaren protege Gabriel Bortoleto.

There are several reasons for why 2025 could be billed as the ‘Year of the Rookie’, and naturally, coincidence is one of them. Teams are limited to the talent pool that is available and ready for the jump at the right time and a generational talent like Antonelli, that Mercedes decided to promote earlier than planned, doesn’t come around every year.

But if one aspect connects the drivers mentioned above, it is their astonishing level of preparation, dovetailing a career scaling the FIA’s junior ladder with untold hours of simulator running and private testing duties. It helped explain why McLaren’s Oscar Piastri was so quick to adapt to F1 last year, and it has also paid dividends for Bearman’s Ferrari cameo in Saudi Arabia or Colapinto’s performances aboard the Williams recently.

«I think it is a testament to all of the academies,’ Jock Clear, who heads Ferrari’s Driver Academy and coaches Charles Leclerc, told the F1 Nation podcast. «How on earth is it possible that Bearman can get in a car that he virtually hasn’t driven and qualify P11 and race to P7 in his very first event, having never tested that car? I think the simulators now are very good, and that is a natural progression of the technology.

«As soon as you say to an F1 team: ‘You can no longer go testing’, then F1 teams will be quite aggressively developing some other way to do exactly the same job. Nobody in F1 ever accepts if you can’t go testing, we’ll probably just be less prepared than we used to be. No, everyone in F1 says: ‘Right, how do we make sure we are just as well prepared as we used to be?’

«The fidelity of simulators is at such a good level now that what we see with Colapinto and with Ollie is the result of that. Actually, when they get here, it’s not all alien to them. They know what to do with the tyres. They know what to expect. The virtual circuit that they drive on in the simulator is so good.

Franco Colapinto, Williams FW46

Photo by: Lionel Ng / Motorsport Images

«A lot of what we do here with our young drivers is in the classroom. We give them lessons and we talk about how the car works, what the brake balance is doing and what you need to do with the tyres and I hope that what you’re seeing in Ollie and Franco is a result of that education.»

But, as veteran Fernando Alonso points out, no simulator or old car test can replicate the competitive stress of a grand prix weekend, and he has praised the likes of Colapinto and Bearman for getting up to speed so quickly in F1’s daunting paddock.

«I think they did an incredible job and credit to them,» Alonso said after mature performances from Colapinto and Bearman around the challenging streets of Singapore.

«They are more prepared, they do more simulator, they do some TPC and some of the testing, but it’s not the same as racing and they had the pressure of the racing and the street circuits and things like that, and they did an incredible job.

«The championship is also 24 races and they need to perform at this top level for 10 months and that’s probably another challenge, but so far they’ve been incredibly good and this is good for the sport and the future.»

To get a better read on how a young driver performs under pressure, there is always the pipeline of F3 and F2, although F1’s traditional feeder series haven’t proved to be the most reliable way to pick out the stars of tomorrow in recent years. Following generational talent Piastri, the next few F2 champions Felipe Drugovich and Theo Pourchaire failed to break down the door to F1.

One look at this year’s championship shows Mercedes and Ferrari have put more emphasis on their own F1-related work with Antonelli and Bearman respectively than on their F2 results with Prema. Meanwhile, none of the actual title contenders will be on the 2025 grid unless Bortoleto finds a way into the Sauber seat.

Oliver Bearman, Reserve Driver, Ferrari and Haas F1 Team

Photo by: Lionel Ng / Motorsport Images

But Clear believes Bearman’s head-turning performances in Jeddah have acted as a catalyst for the increasing confidence across the grid to start trusting youth over experience, which was initially deemed so crucial to help get the most out of the complicated ground-effect generation of cars. He also thinks it has raised the profile of the F2 grid as a whole.

«The great thing about the Ollie experience in Saudi is it effectively vindicated and valued the whole F2 grid,» he explained. «We’ve had a history of believing that if you win F2, it’s only fair that you get an opportunity to move to F1. Well, I think the mindset needs to change to the whole of F2 needs looking at. You’re never going to win the F2 championship and not be a good driver, but there will be people out there who haven’t won the F2 championship and you don’t want them to be missing out just because it didn’t go their way on a couple of occasions.

«Lando [Norris] was runner-up in the year that George [Russell] won it and Lando is just as meriting of a place in F1 as George is. The point with Ollie is he had only done one F2 race this year when Fred [Vasseur] said to me: ‘Carlos [Sainz] isn’t very well — we’re going to have to put Ollie in the car. I hope he’s ready’. And I said to Fred I have no doubt he’s ready.

«We didn’t need to see what he was doing in F2 to already know he was a guy who was going to be able to cut it in F1. I think that’s healthy, because if you just wait until they’re 18-19 years old and then decide whether you want them in F1, you’re not looking deeply enough into what you need in an F1 car.»

Speaking to Autosport, Colapinto’s F2 team principal Sander Dorsman welcomed the fact that F1 teams are taking a punt of youth. «Of course, I understand people in F1 are holding onto good drivers who have proven themselves, the established names,» the MP Motorsport boss said. «But at some point, it’s time for a change. I think this all shows that F2 is a fantastic education for F1 and that once in a while it’s worth taking a risk, and it pays off immediately.»

That also raises some interesting questions for Red Bull, whose protege Isack Hadjar is currently fighting Bortoleto for the championship. «I find it so hard to read form in Formula 2 these days,» Red Bull chief Christian Horner said. «When you look at the job that Bearman’s done, when he jumped in both at Ferrari and one of the toughest tracks on the calendar in Saudi he looked like a veteran. And then again against a tough team-mate with Nico Hulkenberg more recently.

«And then Colapinto has been a complete surprise, because he was largely unnoticed in F2. Nobody was even talking about him, and then he jumped in that Williams and in the couple of races that he’s done, he’s been exceptional. He’s been really, really impressive.

«It’s so, so difficult to tell. Does that mean that Hadjar beating all of them is another step up? Until we give these guys a chance, we won’t know.»

With teams gravitating towards keeping a stable driver line-up between 2025 and 2026’s new regulations, perhaps next year was always going to be the best opportunity to blood in a youngster.

But with enduring question marks over Red Bull’s long-term driver line-up, don’t be too surprised if someone like Hadjar soon follows in the footsteps of the ‘Class of 2025’. And if Bortoleto and Colapinto miss out in 2025, perhaps F1 fans won’t have to wait longer than 2026 to see the next batch of youngsters claim their place on the grid.