McLaren finds ally in Red Bull over F1 team alliances concerns

Red Bull Formula 1 team principal Laurent Mekies says the organisation would “support” further moves to address concerns around team independence.

McLaren CEO Zak Brown recently sent a letter to F1’s governing body the FIA and its president Mohammed Ben Sulayem to reiterate his long-standing concerns over team alliances in F1.

Brown has had issues with some aspects of Red Bull Austria’s dual ownership of Red Bull Racing and Racing Bulls, including Laurent Mekies’ lack of gardening leave when the Frenchman traded the latter for the top job at Red Bull to replace Christian Horner.

The issue recently came up again amid reports that Mercedes is interested in acquiring a 24% stake of the Alpine team as investment group Otro Capital is looking to offload its minority share.

Brown is not suggesting Red Bull should be selling its satellite team, but he feels there should be stronger guardrails in place on a governance, technical and sporting level to avoid one team having an influence on others that would compromise F1’s sporting integrity.

“What Zak has expressed, representing the opinion and the position of McLaren, is part of a process that we wanted to be constructive and healthy, but also very clear,” McLaren team principal Andrea Stella explained.

“I would really be curious to see if any of the stakeholders in Formula 1 disagree with the fact that this is a championship between independent constructors. We believe very strongly that this principle should be enforced totally.

“The reason why we want this point to be discussed is because we think, from a practical point of view, there’s more that we should do. We are happy with how this is being received. It’s now time for the F1 community to think about how we implement it fully, such that the fairness in the game and in the competition is fully achieved.”

Autosport understands Brown and Mekies privately held constructive talks to go over Brown’s concerns. Addressing the media at the Canadian Grand Prix, Mekies said Red Bull would be willing to support further moves to alleviate any unease.

“We all want 11 teams racing independently on track, and we have made many steps as a sport in recent weeks, months, and years, to try to ensure more and more independence from every team,” Mekies said.

“If any stakeholders, let it be another team or anyone else, would feel that more steps are needed to ensure 11 teams racing independently, we would support [it].

“We don’t think it’s a matter of core ownerships or strategic supply. We think there are very many different ways in which teams are collaborating in the pitlane – power unit supply, gearbox supply, suspension supply, partial ownerships, full ownerships.

“We are completely supportive to take any further step to ensure that regardless of our strategic partnership or regardless of our ownership structure, that we race independently on track. We feel that is the case today. We will regardless completely encourage any further steps that we feel are needed as a sport.”

Arvid Lindblad, Racing Bulls

Photo by: Guido De Bortoli / LAT Images via Getty Images

Racing Bulls team boss Alan Permane says he sees “no issues” with how Red Bull’s second team is being run and stressed the team is putting a huge focus on ensuring it complies with the regulations.

“Our relationship with Red Bull Racing is very much a customer-supplier relationship,” Permane said. “We take some suspension [parts] from them, we take the gearbox from them, and various other components that are allowed under the technical regulations, which we follow very rigorously.

“And actually, I have to say, having worked at a team where we don’t have that relationship at all and now a team where we do have it, a lot of work goes into ensuring that we are respecting those rules.

“So, a lot of effort that could be put into other areas, a lot of effort is [instead] put into ensuring that we respect those regulations. So, I don’t see any issue with the way we operate currently.”

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