Doornbos: '$800m bid for Alphatauri rejected'
- Cas van de Kleut
While Alphatauri team boss Franz Tost previously denied that AlphaTauri is up for sale, rumours of a takeover of the Italian racing stable are growing. The departure of the current team boss Nyck de Vries and Yuki Tsunoda and the recruitment of Ferrari racing director Laurent Mekies have rekindled these rumours. In the Ziggo Sport race café, the topic was discussed at length.
According to former Formula One driver Robert Doornbos, bids are currently being made for Red Bull Racing's Italian sister team: "A bid was recently rejected for $800 million. That is serious money. The teams' prices have only gone up because the entry fee is mega, because then you start sharing in the prize pool. I think it has been Andretti, with General Motors behind it."
Andretti takeover?
There has been a lot of speculation in recent years about an addition of Andretti to the Formula 1 grid. However, many Formula 1 teams are not waiting for an additional team, as they would most likely start losing money in the prize pool.
However, Ziggo Sport commentator Rick Winkelman knows that Andretti is in the process of building a new workshop, as the organization announced past August. "It will come next to the Indianopolis airport on a very large site. They clearly want to get into Formula 1, and as a new team this is not going to work anyway. Then they would be better off making AlphaTauri an American team."