Joining the elite world of the FIA’s Formula One World Championship requires, first of all, wheelbarrows filled with money, investors who realize a lot of that money will never be seen again, a willingness to work with people who really don’t want to work with you at all and, yes, passion for motorsports in general and F1 in particular.
There haven’t been many new teams in F1 of late; mostly it’s been the change of name, rearranging and rebranding of assets that has caused teams to stay in their lanes and protest the addition of new teams. Right now there are 10 teams participating in Formula One. They’ll all be in Miami this week for the first of three American F1 races. The others are at Circuit Of The Americas (COTA) and a new street race in Las Vegas.
Michael Andretti has proposed joining what the late Tyler Alexander always referred to as “a bunch of overbred Cocker Spaniels.” Andretti, despite his enviable race wins and championships on this side of the Atlantic Ocean, has never received the kind of respect he merits for his teams’ successes in American open wheel and sports car endeavors. Andretti is also part of FIA’s FormulaE and, in fact, has nine teams that will be in action during this month of May.
But there’s another group attempting to join the apex of motorsport. LKY SUNZ, a new entertainment and youth culture-focused motorsports team, is moving forward with the intent of joining the FIA Formula One World Championship no later than the 2025/2026 season. That would be a good time to join, as rules changes should make the field a wee bit more conciliatory and accessible to outsiders, even as the insiders snarl and hiss and boo at those that would attempt to join their closed club.
With what it terms “significant investment” from Legends Advocates Sports Group, a US-based sports fund, together with investment from Asian private individuals and corporates, LKY SUNZ intends to submit its application before the FIA’s May deadline and aims to be on the grid as intended. This group also expects to become wholly operational outside Europe, with its base in Southeast Asia, while it forges close links to inner city communities across the Americas, Asia and Africa. The intent is a commitment to providing underrepresented communities new opportunities in motorsports.
LKY SUNZ has three primary founding members who are all experienced in the motorsports trade, having built businesses in sports, including racing and F1: Benjamin Durand is a motorsports veteran who will be the team’s CEO; Paul Fleming, with more than two decades of business experience across professional motorsport, real estate and financial services is chairman of this group, while Andrew Pyrah is the chief commercial officer, using his expertise across sports, events and entertainment to help build this team.
“We are excited to see our investors share our vision of fusing youth culture and racing to create a team that will disrupt Formula One,” noted Durand. “The sport’s popularity has grown exponentially and every current stakeholder in the sport has been responsible for that,” he said, “but our guiding principle is to bring something different into the sport to appeal to new audiences. By being the only team operating outside the traditional F1 corridors and developing bespoke programs to attract talent from underrepresented communities, we can bring a diversity of thought yet to be seen in Formula One.
“We,. of course,. aim to be competitive on the track, but we also commit to entertaining fans off the track. To support our plans, we have already onboarded an impressive team of motorsport executives, music and entertainment industry experts and creatives who will help bring this vision to life,” Durand concluded.
LKY SUNZ intends to build a state-o-the-art net-zero green energy-powered factory complex in the Southeast Asia region by 2025/2026. In order to meet its goal of competing by that time. the team intends to build and assemble its race cars at a European base.
Another way LKY SUNZ is showing its intent to amplify its desire to build inclusion is its hiring of Chris Miles, founder of US-based Starting Grid, Inc. and global motorsports marketing advisor to the African Renaissance and Diaspora Network (ARDN). ARDN is an advocacy mechanism that amplifies the United Nationals Sustainable Development goals and will assist LKY SUNZ in its goal to forge pathways for underrepresented communities, within the many facets of the racing industry, through the use of academies and educational programs in these nations.
Whether LKY SUNZ will be successful in getting into this very exclusive club remains to be seen, but Formula One’s piranha club will likely do everything they can to keep the doors closed to other interested parties. After all, if they are adamant about denying entry to the 1978 champion’s son, Michael Andretti, a racer who drove in the series alongside the great Ayrton Senna, what makes anyone think they’ll welcome this group?
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