The Billion-Dollar Rebellion: Why Zak Brown is Waging War on Formula 1’s Controversial ‘Super-Team’ Alliances
A profound and potentially highly destructive political storm is currently brewing behind the heavily guarded closed doors of the Formula 1 paddock. McLaren CEO Zak Brown has significantly escalated his relentless, ongoing crusade against the controversial practice of strategic alliances and co-ownership between rival Formula 1 teams. This is no longer merely a series of pointed remarks delivered during casual press conferences; Brown has formalised his attack with a highly detailed, direct request to FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem, fiercely demanding immediate intervention and sweeping regulatory action. The exact timing of this aggressive political manoeuvre is absolutely crucial, arriving precisely at the moment when the mighty Mercedes organisation is reportedly seriously considering purchasing a massive financial share in Alpine, one of its own engine customers.
We have successfully seen a copy of the extensive, carefully worded six-page letter that Brown confidently dispatched directly to the FIA President’s desk. While the vast majority of the specific examples Brown heavily cites throughout the document specifically refer to his long-standing old foe, Red Bull Racing, and how it controversially operates in tandem with its second team, Racing Bulls (formerly AlphaTauri), it is surely no coincidence whatsoever that he chose to officially send it just as Mercedes is aggressively in the hunt for a lucrative ownership stake in the Enstone-based Alpine squad.
Brown’s ultimate, unyielding demand is that the FIA must entirely eliminate any further corporate alliances from forming within the sport, whilst simultaneously unwinding and forcefully dismantling those that are already deeply established. This aggressive stance makes it abundantly clear exactly why he has chosen this specific moment to make his bold move. It is a highly calculated risk, one that explicitly puts him directly at odds with McLaren’s very own power unit supplier, Mercedes, given that both McLaren and Alpine currently operate as highly dependent Mercedes engine customers.
If hearing Zak Brown loudly raging against the concept of multi-team alliances gives you a strong sense of deja vu, that is entirely understandable. He has been incredibly vocal and consistently passionate on this highly divisive topic for quite a while now, firmly positioning himself at the absolute forefront of the growing calls to definitively stamp out multi-team ownership in modern Formula 1. He gave clear notice just a few weeks ago that this contentious issue was firmly back on his radar and subtly dropped a massive hint about exactly why. While being incredibly careful not to openly utter the specific words ‘Mercedes’ and ‘Alpine’, he pointedly stated during an April media session at the futuristic McLaren Technology Centre that adding yet another team alliance, similar to the deeply entwined Red Bull and Racing Bulls situation, would be a catastrophic mistake for the long-term sporting integrity of Formula 1.
Now, Brown has aggressively followed up those verbal warnings in formal writing. The core objective of this extensive letter is to urgently request direct, face-to-face discussions with President Ben Sulayem over what is often colloquially referred to in the paddock as the “A and B team system.” Furthermore, it is a strategic play to let the FIA know that McLaren has already proactively started detailed work on drafting its very own suggestions for potential, watertight rule changes, conveniently ready just in case the President wants any fully formed ideas to implement.
Fascinatingly, it genuinely does sound like Ben Sulayem might actually be a highly sympathetic audience to these concerns, even if he is perhaps not in an immediate rush to make sweeping changes. He openly stated at the recent, glamorous Miami Grand Prix that, in his own personal view, any single massive organisation completely owning two separate Formula 1 teams was absolutely not the right way forward for the sport, but he cautiously acknowledged that it was an incredibly complicated legal and commercial area to tackle effectively.
Much of Brown’s latest aggressive letter strongly reiterates the specific points he has repeatedly made in his many passionate diatribes against common ownership over recent years. One notable example was a highly charged 2024 preseason press conference in which he was deliberately seated alongside then Red Bull team principal Christian Horner and Racing Bulls boss Laurent Mekies at the absolute height of the first round of this bitter political row. The media gleefully jumped on the rare chance to make them argue it all out in a highly public forum.
Brown’s core argument is remarkably simple but undeniably powerful: with Formula 1 currently basking in such rude, unprecedented financial health, and with such incredibly close competition existing between the majority of the teams, there is absolutely no sporting or commercial need for any single organisation to own more than a single team. He passionately argues that there are simply too many murky, hidden benefits from doing so—benefits that are entirely unavailable to fiercely independent teams that do not possess such helpful alliances.
Red Bull’s standard, highly rehearsed retort is equally compelling from a historical perspective. They quickly point out that Formula 1 would have entirely lost the beloved Minardi team if Red Bull had not swooped in with immense capital to rescue it, creating what originally started life as Toro Rosso two decades ago. They argue that they then heavily propped up two entire racing teams through a devastating global financial crisis when massive manufacturers were rapidly deserting Formula 1, and later, they sustained them through the immense financial pressures of the recent global pandemic. Therefore, Red Bull fiercely asks, why should it now be aggressively forced to get rid of its second team when, as far as they are concerned, it has made a massive, unparalleled financial contribution to the survival of Formula 1 by heavily subsidizing two entire teams for twenty long years? They remain absolutely adamant that they are operating strictly within the letter of the current regulations.
However, it is entirely possible to simultaneously agree that while it would perhaps be slightly historically unfair to legally compel Red Bull to suddenly offload Racing Bulls, it remains fundamentally unfair for any single entity to own two competing teams in the modern era. This is especially true given the sheer amount of potential, highly controversial grey areas that such ownership opens up in an era strictly governed by a complex, heavily policed financial cost cap. Appreciating absolutely everything that Red Bull has undoubtedly done for Formula 1 historically does not make the massive underlying issue simply disappear.
Brown’s new, highly detailed letter specifically cites a few glaring examples of Red Bull allegedly gaining an unfair on-track advantage by strategically deploying the Racing Bulls cars. He points to young driver Liam Lawson being very promptly instructed via team radio to let Max Verstappen back past him into eighth position following their early run-in at the recent Miami Grand Prix. He also heavily highlights the highly controversial moment when Daniel Ricciardo was abruptly yanked into the pits for fresh soft tyres at the very end of the 2024 Singapore Grand Prix. The sole strategic purpose of this stop was so Ricciardo could deprive McLaren’s Lando Norris of the fastest race lap, a lap that was worth a crucial bonus point while Norris was desperately trying to chase Verstappen down for the world championship.
While those specific on-track incidents might be considered relatively small fry, the vastly more serious points Brown raises concern the immense potential gains derived from shared physical resources. He highlights the terrifying implications of sharing advanced wind tunnels, complex simulation software, and highly sensitive engineering data, all of which strongly imply finding clever ways around the strict F1 cost cap and the stringent aerodynamic development restrictions. These are significantly bigger deals, but they also represent well-trodden ground that he has aggressively been over plenty of times before.
Brown aggressively questions the fairness of the complex staff transfer system. He asks exactly why McLaren was forced to wait an agonizing nine months and pay massive financial compensation simply to bring highly respected engineer Rob Marshall in from Red Bull in 2024, while Laurent Mekies was miraculously able to smoothly switch from being the team boss at Racing Bulls to effectively helping run Red Bull Racing in a mere matter of days. Furthermore, right now, McLaren finds itself trapped in a highly frustrating holding pattern with Red Bull over its highly coveted Head of Racing, Gianpiero Lambiase (who is famously Max Verstappen’s long-time race engineer). McLaren has triumphantly signed Lambiase as its new Chief Racing Officer, but due to complex contractual situations, might not actually get him in the building until the 2028 season.
Brown also fiercely points out that Andrea Landi’s incredibly rapid move from being the Deputy Technical Director at Racing Bulls to becoming Red Bull’s brand new Head of Performance—a move that will officially take place on July 1st this year having only been announced on April 17th—heavily reinforces the widespread paddock perception that internal corporate firewalls are absolutely not operating in a way that would ever be deemed acceptable between genuinely independent competitors.
While absolutely all the specific examples detailed in the new letter deliberately relate to Red Bull and Racing Bulls, Brown did intentionally cast the net significantly wider when he got onto the broader topic of ‘A and B teams’ at McLaren’s factory last month. He willingly delved all the way back into the massive 2020 ‘Pink Mercedes’ controversy over the startling car design similarities between the factory Mercedes team and its then-customer, Racing Point. He also aggressively rehashed the long-standing, complex arguments regarding the incredibly close technical and operational ties existing between Ferrari and the Haas F1 team.
Those two specific historical sagas do not actually involve direct, formal common ownership. However, the next massive deal absolutely might. That is exactly what Zak Brown has got a highly wary, deeply concerned eye on, and it is a situation that might have very direct, devastating repercussions for the long-term future of McLaren.
Alpine’s current minority shareholder, Otro Capital, boasting its highly influential celebrity backers including Hollywood actors Ryan Reynolds and Michael B. Jordan, genuinely feels that the time is absolutely right to highly profitably offload its 24% financial stake. This is largely because current sky-high valuations firmly place established Formula 1 teams as being worth well upwards of a staggering one billion dollars. Ironically, Christian Horner himself is currently deeply in the mix here, heavily positioned as the absolute highest-profile name initially linked to leading a massive buyout deal. But it shockingly emerged right at the start of the 2026 season that the mighty Mercedes-Benz Formula 1 team itself is a highly interested party too.
Publicly, at least, Mercedes management smoothly insists that this massive financial interest is absolutely not a deliberate means to create its very own corporate equivalent of a Racing Bulls-style junior sister team or a subservient ‘B team’, whatever specific terminology you prefer to use. They claim the attraction is purely financial. However, as the paddock broadly understands things, this massive shareholding would also inevitably come with the highly lucrative opportunity to have a major, deciding say in exactly who runs the Alpine team and precisely which drivers are permitted to race for it.
Formula 1’s incredibly tight current regulations over the maximum cost of power unit supplies mean that the actual profit margin for securing customer engine deals is now basically entirely non-existent for the major manufacturers. Having a massive financial stake and significant operational influence in one of the very teams that it actively sells complex engines to would instantly make that entire arrangement vastly more commercially attractive for the Mercedes board in Stuttgart.
Currently, Mercedes highly successfully builds power units for its own factory team, alongside Alpine, McLaren, and Williams. Those massive, complex deals are firmly locked in place until the current set of engine regulations finally ends in 2030 or 2031, when Formula 1 looks highly likely to dramatically move back towards screaming V8 engines. But Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff highly pointedly stated last year that the absolute optimum number of teams for any manufacturer to comfortably supply would be between two and three. That stark mathematical reality means that at least one of its three current customers is heavily slated for being unceremoniously jettisoned.
If Mercedes ultimately co-owns the Alpine team, it is absolutely not going to be Alpine that suddenly gets left stranded and engineless. That terrifying scenario leaves McLaren fiercely battling versus Williams for the final remaining Mercedes engine supply, or potentially, even both teams being ruthlessly dropped given Wolff previously alluded to Mercedes ideally having just two teams in total. McLaren had already started the 2026 season frowning a little at exactly what the factory Mercedes team was doing with its complex electrical engine deployment—strategies that McLaren initially could not get its highly advanced engineering head around. The factory team potentially having vastly tighter, shared ties with a direct rival Mercedes customer simply would not go down well at all. There would undoubtedly be some incredibly raised eyebrows at the McLaren Technology Centre if the Alpine team suddenly had a vastly better handle on complex Mercedes deployment strategies than McLaren themselves did.
And if Mercedes successfully co-owns Alpine, while Red Bull completely owns Racing Bulls, and Ferrari maintains its incredibly tight, unbreakable ties with Haas, suddenly the mighty McLaren looks very conspicuously, dangerously isolated among Formula 1’s historic ‘big four’ in completely lacking a sibling team to heavily lean on in whatever technical or political way. So while this fresh, aggressive move might casually feel like part 689 of Zak Brown loudly raging about A and B team arrangements, it is incredibly easy to understand exactly why the looming Mercedes-Alpine manoeuvres have suddenly made McLaren desperately want to urgently get this critical matter high up on the FIA’s immediate agenda.
Talk of Red Bull being strongly, privately encouraged by Formula 1 management to find a way to quietly offload Racing Bulls has recently gone totally quiet. Furthermore, aggressive moves made last summer to permanently enshrine vastly tighter, bulletproof safeguards over inter-team collaborations directly into the highly anticipated 2026 regulations have not yet successfully made it into the actual published rule book, as it is apparently still being endlessly refined and debated. So, there is absolutely no concrete guarantee that Zak Brown’s latest, desperate pleas will actually be heeded by the governing body, even if the FIA President publicly sounds like he broadly agrees that something drastic urgently needs to be done. The future of fair competition in Formula 1 is currently hanging by a very thin thread.
