An 11th Formula 1 team led by American manufacturer General Motors will have Honda as a guaranteed engine fallback for its increasingly likely 2026 entry.
A key part of F1’s justification for relenting on an entry it had previously rejected is that it is now expected to be more of a GM-led F1 team from the beginning even though GM’s planned in-house engine won’t be ready until 2028.
It is not practical for GM and Cadillac, assuming that remains the brand used, to fast-track their planned engine development even if they wanted to. The 2028 intentions were only announced a year ago and other manufacturers have been preparing for the 2026 engine overhaul for a lot longer than that.
That means the Andretti Global project will need a customer deal for its first two seasons and while the present preference is unknown, a Honda supply should be guaranteed.
What was initially planned to be an Andretti Cadillac team previously had a deal in principle with Renault, but that has long since expired and Renault is shutting down its engine programme anyway to become a Mercedes customer.
So, that is a non-starter, and tangentially the loss of Renault may even have been a factor in F1 changing its mind, as a GM works team would guarantee a replacement engine supplier for the upcoming engine era.
The options before that engine is ready are to try to strike a deal with one of the five manufacturers already registered for 2026 – or rely on the regulations that exist to force a manufacturer to agree to a supply deal, in the event one cannot be agreed, to prevent any competitor ever being without an engine.
Mercedes already has four teams to supply for 2026 with the works team, McLaren and Williams joined by Renault’s Alpine team, which replaces Aston Martin as it is going to have a works Honda supply.
Ferrari has two teams, the works entry plus one customer, Haas. Red Bull will build its own engines for 2026 and supply two teams as well: Red Bull Racing and the smaller, sister outfit.
Finally, Audi is taking control of Sauber and building its own F1 engine for the first time.
A GM team may find a supplier willing to strike a deal late in the day. Ferrari should definitely have capacity to supply a third team, and Red Bull Powertrains might be interested in principle but find it an unnecessary additional challenge for the start of its life as an engine manufacturer – plus it has Ford as an engine partner, which is presumably incompatible with GM given they are US competitors.
Honda is the most likely candidate, beyond the fact it is already favourable given Honda’s track record with Red Bull in the most recent years of the turbo-hybrid era.
There is potentially a good foundation to come to an agreement naturally, as GM and Honda have recent history working together in the US, on projects such as the development of the hybrid system for the latest IndyCar engine.
Honda will also have a new UK site to support its F1 programme, so geographically it is a more logical choice for a GM team than, say, Ferrari in Italy.
If the situation becomes ‘forced’, Honda would be the manufacturer obligated to step in. Because the supply will automatically be allocated to the manufacturer already supplying the fewest number of existing teams.
This would have to be Honda. It and Audi are the only teams due to supply one team apiece for 2026. But as a new manufacturer, Audi is exempt. Honda is not, so would have to comply.
The possibility of a Honda engine supply has also been noted with some concern within Aston Martin. Its new factory outside Silverstone is based just over the road from Andretti Global’s UK satellite base.
And as there has not been an entry binding Andretti to the same restrictions all the other teams have to operate under ahead of 2026, it could have gained a massive development advantage in the last couple of months.
Nonetheless, potentially having to take advantage of the regulations that guarantee a team an engine supply reflects how complicated this new entry process has been.
It leaves this entry, in practical terms, in the same position Andretti Cadillac was in 11 months ago, just with a lot less time to resolve the matter before 2026 and facing a different landscape with Renault definitely not an option anymore.
A forced engine supply was one of the factors that F1 was wary of with Andretti-Cadillac in the first place, on the grounds that this new entry may not be able to get a deal negotiated willingly.
Supposedly the concern was that any deal done under duress would be completed late, and therefore not be optimised like other customer arrangements are. This would compromise a new team compared to existing customer teams and therefore limit its competitive prospects.
That F1 is now more likely to green-light a new entry still requiring a short-term customer engine supply, though, suggests that is either less of a concern now for some reason or confirms it was never a big worry to begin with.
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