Alliances and Suspicions
The possibility – which seems increasingly concrete according to rumors – of the purchase by Mercedes of 24% of the shares of the Alpine team has seriously alarmed McLaren CEO Zak Brown. The American manager has long been a champion of the battle against multi-ownership in F1, pointing the finger at Red Bull which for two decades has managed two teams on the grid thanks to the control of Racing Bulls (formerly Toro Rosso). Now Brown’s fear is that a similar situation could arise with Mercedes and Alpine. For this reason, the CEO of the world champion team took pen and paper and wrote a letter to FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem urging the federation to ban the proliferation of alliance situations between different teams in the Circus.
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According to the site The Race, which reported having been able to view the letter sent by Brown to Ben Sulayem, in the six pages of text there are no explicit references to the Mercedes-Alpine deal, but the McLaren boss expresses a general thought, citing examples where the mixing of interests between Red Bull and Racing Bulls has been, in his opinion, evident, from Laurent Mekies’ move from Faenza to Milton Keynes without any gardening leave to the recent episode at the Miami GP, where Liam Lawson was asked to give up position to Max Verstappen.
Brown writes to the FIA
“We must eliminate any further alliance, whether ownership, strategic participation, or any other equivalent form of control or influence – wrote Brown – and we must work together quickly to start the process of dissolving those already existing, in order to ensure that the future integrity of the sport is not compromised“. A clear message that reignites the political clash in the Circus between McLaren, Red Bull, and Mercedes, not forgetting the relationship between Ferrari and Haas which is also quite clearly comparable to that of a team A with its own team B.
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“I believe the work done by the FIA and Liberty Media to create 11 healthy teams, in a context of controlled costs, has given rise to the most competitive era ever in Formula 1 – Brown concluded in the letter – we believe that, by addressing this still unresolved structural problem, Formula 1 will be set on an even more solid path, will continue to thrive and will be the best sport ever; we just need to ensure total fairness and integrity in the sport in every aspect. I am confident that together we can achieve this goal”. Now the ball is in the FIA’s court.
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