I really hope they get in. F1 needs a good injection of unpredictability. However, it would be hilarious for them to have built a complete car and F1 says no.
Pretty sure Formula 1 would be a defendant in an anti-trust if they said no. I'm not an attorney, but I remember reading an article about Formula 1 setting themselves up to be sued.
I guess this could be a pricey gamble if they don’t get the go ahead. But, if they do, it means they will have been working on this car for way longer than any of the other teams! It probably has a decent chance to be competitive.
I suspect it's like boxers and mma fighters that they are not bound to any rules or doping testing when they are "retired". They get juiced up wait a few months until they test clean and unretire.
Once they are an F1 team is when they start being bound to F1 rules.
Never say never, but there's virtually no chance of that happening.
I mean, who are the likely suspects? All the teams now have large corporate backing. Haas and Alpine are the only two even remotely close to being in the realm of possibility (IMO). And I very much doubt either would leave at this point.
Racing Bulls could be forced to exit, apparently. I'm not sure why now, but there's been a lot of controversy surrounding Red Bull's ownership of a second team.
Curiously, the picture that Andretti have provided of that model in the wind tunnel.. looks very close to how the RB car looked at the end of last season.