McLaren chief Zak Brown has doubled down on his complaint over the dual-ownership situation between Red Bull and the newly rebranded VCARB team. Brown had already insisted that having two teams under one company umbrella does not align with the idea of a ‘level playing field’ in F1.
And he reiterated his stance on the matter and once again called on the FIA to take action by changing the rules.
Speaking to Sky Sports News about his concern with Red Bull’s two-team ownership structure, Brown said: “Actually I’m speaking in the wider interest of the sport. If you look at every other major sport, you’re not allowed to own two teams.
“And I’d even go further, you know there’s A-B team relationships. And when they started 15 years ago it was because there was a huge gap between the top teams and the bottom teams. Now that there is this great budget cap in place, all ten teams are pretty much running to the cap, so we all kind of… it’s an equal playing field.
“So to have two ownerships, I can tell you from sitting in the FIA… F1 Commission meetings, the voting is always the same even when, in theory, it shouldn’t be in one of the teams’ best interests. We’ve seen it on track, some collaborations going on.
“And then technically, they’ve been very forthright in ‘we’re going to take the suspension’, etcetera and a definition of a constructor is a team who develops their own IP.
“I just think the sport has now moved on to an equal playing field, so to have A-B relationships, to have co-ownership of two teams I think isn’t a level playing field. It’s not what the fans expect and so the FIA really needs to do something about it.”