F1 is currently attracting interest from American racing marque Andretti Autosport as a potential 11th entry in the near future.
But Andretti’s plans have been met with a lukewarm reaction from most of the F1 paddock amid concern about the financial impact caused by adding another team to the field.
Under the terms of the Concorde Agreement agreed by teams in 2020, any new entry must pay a $200m fee that gets split evenly between the existing outfits. This dilution fund is intended to offset the loss in revenue caused by splitting the prize money between 11 teams instead of 10.
Haas F1 boss Steiner has been clear in his view that F1 should stick with the current 10-team grid due to the stability and health of all the operations.
“You've got 10 very good teams or good teams, they're all stable,” Steiner said in Canada last week. “Why should we change something if it works like this? At the moment, we are in a good place.”
Asked by Motorsport.com if he thought the dilution fund proposal worked, Steiner felt it needed to be adjusted in the future to reflect the commercial boom F1 has enjoyed since the $200m figure was agreed.
“The dilution fund was set a few years ago, when the value of Formula 1 was different,” Steiner said.
“I think one of the things will be, should we readjust it to current market rate, which is a lot more than that one? But I think that's a very difficult process to do.
“But if you're really honest, and you look at when we signed the contract in 2020, teams were going for a lot less money than these days.
“The sport has made a big progression in value. So at some stage it will be adjusted, but I don't think that is the biggest issue.”
Andretti came close to securing involvement in F1 last year through a majority takeover of the Sauber Group, which runs Alfa Romeo’s team, only for the deal to fall through.
With none of the remaining teams looking to sell and their valuations predicted to near $1 billion in the coming years, there has been an emphasis from many on protecting the value of the current grid and rewarding their investment.
In Monaco, F1 CEO and president Stefano Domenicali said that any new entry would have to be “really significant” and that he thought 10 teams was the right number of the series.
“Today, it’s not a problem of having more teams, because we have a list,” Domenicali said.
“Some of them are more vocal than the others, but we have a lot of people or a lot of investors who would like to be in Formula 1. But we need to protect the teams. This is really another sign of a very healthy system.”
