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Andretti Global's F1 bid has reintroduced another name in the mix. This time, it's the Panthera Team Asia F1 project that's renewing its bid to enter the sport.
In an exclusive with PlanetF1.com, team principal and co-founder of the project, Benjamin Durand talked about the work going in the background. The team had made a bid to enter the sport, but for multiple reasons, things didn't happen.
According to Durand, work has been going on in the background, and the team feels Asia is the next untapped market for the sport. He said:
“It’s been a rollercoaster. We could have given up a long time ago on this project, but we believe in it. We still think that the Asian market and Chinese market are the next markets to be developed. They are all looking west; nobody’s looking east."
He added:
"Now Formula 1 is focusing a lot on the US, which is normal, because it’s growing, but once that market is there, Asia and Africa are the next big market for F1, especially now that Zhou (Guanyu) is in the Championship.”
Detailing what went wrong in the team's bid to enter the sport earlier, Durand said that multiple factors worked against them. It all started with the FIA still working on the Concorde agreements when it was first approached. He said:
“The particular issue you have when you want to try to create a Formula 1 team is to have all the planets align. So when we had the money, the FIA and F1 were not ready because at the time they were renegotiating the Concorde Agreement. So they were not ready to have new teams arriving until they signed the existing teams."
Durand added that a potential partnership with Renault too was on the table, but the team's unstable top management impacted the project. He said:
"We also talked with Renault to be partners on the technical side. They went through a lot of management changes during the last five years, and it impacted our project directly. Things were back again for the possibility for us to enterl then the pandemic arrived, and we lost funding. So we had to work again on the financial side. It’s an ongoing rollercoaster.”
Durand on why Panthera's F1 bid derailed last time
Durand reflected on why Panthera's bid went wrong last time, saying that it was more to do with the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic struck at the wrong time. Because of that, the work stopped, but now the team is ready to resume and wants to make a bid for an entry in the 2026 season. He said:
“COVID stopped things for us. We started to develop the car on the aerodynamic side; we worked on the new regulation at the time; we did some CFD developments; we have some IP concerning the car, but we stopped it. We are ready to resume. We have several people that are ready to jump on board that are not, for most of them, committed yet in Formula 1, so they don’t have the garden leave etc."
Durand added:
“We’re working with a high profile recruitment company in London that is specialised in Formula 1 and in motorsport. So, we are confident that we can restart the HR department and technical department in time.”
With the Andretti-Cadillac partnership already lurking, it will be interesting to see how teams like Mercedes, Red Bull, and co react to the diluting of the pie that's inevitable with the introduction of new teams.
