Zak on the attack
It was a decidedly attacking Zak Brown who spoke on Wednesday in a press conference organized by McLaren with the media outlets that usually follow F1, and which FormulaPassion.it also attended. The CEO of the Constructors’ world champion team touched on various topics, but what seemed to ‘heat him up’ the most was the thorny issue of A-B teams on the grid and multi-ownership, i.e., those teams that are theoretically competitors but in practice share the same owner or that – even with different managements – carry out a massive exchange of information and personnel between them, trying to help each other.
The American manager’s main opponent from this point of view is obviously Red Bull, which, in addition to its own team, has also managed the Racing Bulls team for 20 years now: “I believe we should abandon the A and B team system as quickly as possible – Brown thundered – as for multi-ownership – currently there is only one group that has it [Red Bull, ed.] – I understand how and why this situation came about. But nowadays it is a practice that is not allowed in almost all, if not all, major sports disciplines. I think it carries a very high risk of compromising the integrity of sporting fairness“.
Red Bull in the crosshairs, but not only
“It was a much-debated topic in the last Concorde Agreement – the McLaren CEO added – last year I wrote to the FIA and Formula 1 precisely on this issue, because we constantly see such things and report them. I believe there is now greater awareness and greater control by the FIA. Frankly, I’m glad to see that Racing Bulls and Red Bull no longer look like the same car. I think I talked about it with Laurent. I don’t have anything against him in particular, but he’s the only one who has two teams and he’s been very open and transparent in saying: ‘Hey, if you see something you don’t like, let’s talk about it’. So I think they are aware of it and don’t want to push the limits. In the Concorde Agreement, there was discussion about the possibility that, over time, one of the teams would be sold, but there is also enormous appreciation for what they have done for this sport and how they did it so long ago. Therefore, I believe that, while managing and monitoring the situation, a further expansion of these multi-ownerships would be a mistake for the sport“. A clear message, the latter, to the negotiations for a possible entry of Mercedes among the shareholders of the Alpine team, which Brown certainly would not look favorably upon.
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Criticism of the Ferrari-Haas relationship
But Brown’s criticism is also directed at ‘alliances’ between teams with different ownerships, and in this sense, Ferrari also ends up in the crosshairs, targeted by the Californian manager for its extremely close collaboration with the Haas team: “We have seen situations occur on track that have a clear impact on the sporting result. Daniel Ricciardo [when he raced for Racing Bulls] took a point from us for the fastest lap to help the other team [Red Bull]; we have seen intellectual property violations with Aston Martin/Racing Point regarding brake ducts; we have seen employees move from one team to another overnight, while we are forced to wait before finalizing a hire and sometimes to conclude financial agreements that then impact our budget cap. So, when you see people moving from one team to another without any financial compensation, that’s an unfair advantage. We have seen Ferrari and Haas exchange personnel and there is the issue of intellectual property which is very important. Can you imagine a Premier League match where there are two teams owned by the same group and one of them will be relegated if they lose, while the other doesn’t need to win that match? There you go”.
