McLaren CEO Zak Brown believes the rules that allow a single brand to own two F1 teams - as in Red Bull’s case - need to be reviewed by the FIA. Speaking at the press conference in Bahrain, the Woking team chief felt that Red Bull’s partnership with sister team RB gives them an unfair advantage.
The McLaren CEO has been vocal about his perceived unfairness of such team co-ownership arrangements for the past few seasons. After Helmut Marko mentioned that the two teams would share a closer working relationship, Brown felt that it was time the FIA intervened and changed the rules that allowed such a partnership. Clarifying that his problem was not with Red Bull, he specified that he had an issue with the rule itself.
Asked by the on-site media about his recent rant about team co-ownership as is the case with Red Bull, Brown said:
“Yeah I think you know the sport continues to evolve, we now have the budget cap in place, which I think is intended and is working for the most part, to bring a level playing field to the sport, fiscally and in every other manner. No other major sport to my knowledge allows co-ownership of two teams that compete against each other. So I think the sport as we are now in the budget cap era, have moved on to where we are trying to have ten independent teams from a sporting, a political, technical point of view. So simply they are very much playing by the rules, I have an issue with the rules and believe the FIA needs to address this."
“You know as Helmut has stated, he was going to maximise the opportunity which he would do, if you own two teams and rules are what they are today. And we are going to find if the intent of the cap and in all sports is to have an equal playing field, then the way the rules are currently written, aren’t the same for everyone. You have pockets of teams, also the whole A-B team situation but that doesn’t have that level playing field. I think we now need to address it and the FIA need to address it in the rules.”
Seated at the same press conference, Christian Horner responded to Brown in a long rant explaining the history of how the second Red Bull team came into existence.
Horner had explained that the Visa Cashapp RB team’s roots date back to when the FIA president Max Mosley and F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone had asked the Austrian energy drinks company owner Dietrich Mateschitz to bail out the struggling Minardi F1 team. After the Faenza squad was recently revamped and received more financial backing, their rivals have started to make noise about the relationship between the two teams.
Laurent Mekies explained the partnership between Red Bull and RB in response to Zak Brown
Visa Cashapp RB team principal Laurent Mekies explained that the existence of the Red Bull sister team was one of the sustainable business models in F1. Replying to Zak Brown who had raised concerns about rules allowing team co-ownership, the Frenchman felt that it would be a shame if the sport would change the rules to disallow such a business model to exist.
He stated that most of the points earned by the bottom four teams of the grid did not equal the points scored by a midfielder, thus explaining the significant gap in the playing field. The newly appointed team principal felt the team was still rebuilding and was a result of the existing regulations being maximized.
Replying to Brown’s concerns about Red Bull owning two teams, Mekies said:
“I think there are few aspects there in what Zak is saying. First undoubtedly there is regulations and role is to maximise what we can do with these regulations. I think its also good to remember why we have this regulations to allow us to share some of the components. There is two major reasons to that. The first one is that as a sport, we wanted to have a closer field, lesser lap-time difference between the guy who is winning and the guy who is tenth. And it was felt that by allowing some components to be shared, you will avoid to have too much strength between the top and the bottom of the grid. Now if you look at the result of the championship last year and add up the points of the bottom four teams. We don't even make up for the points we were made in the first six positions. If you look at the face of the championship results, theres still a large spread between the guys struggling at the back to get a few points and what exactly is the heart of the midfield.”
“The second reason why these results were sort in this way, is to offer to whoever wants to take it, a more sustainable business model. Yes we are in a very good string of years now commercially and with interest of Formula 1, its fantastic. However, it is a very simple reality that most of the team’s shareholders are still pumping money into it. Before removing what is a more sustainable alternative into the business model of, we need to have a bit of a long term view on what it is going to do to the sport in the next few years.”
With Visa and Cashapp as their title partners, the Red Bull sister team has now rebranded itself from AlphaTauri to RB. Launching its car in Las Vegas, the Faenza squad has also moved its UK base from a leased facility in Bicester to one in Milton Keynes.
The team has recruited some key personnel for the top brass and is trying to become more than a Red Bull junior team. In the three days of testing, it seemed to have racked some decent mileage, with both its drivers positively looking forward to the new season.
