McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown has had enough of losing to what he perceives to be multiple-team efforts in Formula 1.
Brown, without naming names, said in an open letter on the McLaren Racing web page that it’s time for F1 to crack down on strategic alliances in the sport. And it’s not difficult to surmise that he’s talking about the alliance between AlphaTauri and Red Bull that Brown believes is playing a role in the current dominance of Red Bull in the sport.
Brown is not the only one who noticed that AlphaTauri brought several updates to the track during the season. Sharing data and personnel on those projects makes it at least look like AlphaTauri became an added test tube for a Red Bull team that obviously has found the winning formula in the sport.
From Brown’s post:
The sport is not perfect, and as we look ahead to negotiating the next Concorde Agreement to unite the governing body with the teams and commercial rights holders, we should prioritise some of those rules that currently impact the impartiality between competitors.
example, most other major sports prohibit the ownership of two teams within the same league because of the obvious potential damage that it does to competition. It’s an unhealthy situation because it impacts decisions made both on and off the track. Whether it’s a case of having access to more data, sharing components/personnel, or even having influence over a strategic vote, it’s not in the spirit of the regulations.
It’s important to stand up for independence, competition and fairness, and I’d like to see changes in the regulations to ensure that in future, they stop influence spreading from one team to another through strategic alliances and especially through ownership. Formula 1 should be true to its brand, and every team – except Power Units – should be totally independent of each other.
I believe Formula 1 fans universally believe in fairness in competition and a level playing field, and would reject any actions that compromise the true spirit of competition within Formula 1. Part sharing of information, shared ownership models, and strategic alliances within the sporting fabric of Formula 1 will only serve to undermine the fans’ belief in fair and fierce competition.
AlphaTauri was in the F1 Constructors’ Standings at midseason, before a series of updates helped make the team competitive and it nearly beat Williams to seventh place. Brown believes Red Bull was able to gain knowledge from those updates, as well.
Brown just wants to make sure that if he’s going to get beat, he wants to get beat fair and square—by the efforts of one team and not the combined efforts of multiple teams on the grid.
Mike Pryson covered auto racing for the Jackson (Mich.) Citizen Patriot and MLive Media Group from 1991 until joining Autoweek in 2011. He won several Michigan Associated Press and national Associated Press Sports Editors awards for auto racing coverage and was named the 2000 Michigan Auto Racing Fan Club’s Michigan Motorsports Writer of the Year. A Michigan native, Mike spent three years after college working in southwest Florida before realizing that the land of Disney and endless summer was no match for the challenge of freezing rain, potholes and long, cold winters in the Motor City.
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