McLaren’s Zak Brown takes aim at multi-team ownership in Formula One

WOKING – McLaren boss Zak Brown doubled down on his opposition to multi-team ownership and alliances in Formula One on April 22, and said that the sport needed to get away from them as fast as possible.

The American has long been a critic of a situation that has allowed Red Bull to own two of the 11 teams on the starting grid, with benefits both sporting and financial, even if they operate separately.

While champions McLaren must wait until 2028 for Max Verstappen’s Red Bull race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase to join them, due to contractual obligations and likely “gardening leave”, Red Bull can move staff across from sister team Racing Bulls without delay.

“Co-ownership... in today’s day and age, that’s prohibited in almost (all), if not all major forms of sport,” Brown told reporters at a McLaren event.

“I think it runs a real high risk of compromising the integrity of sporting fairness... I’ve been vocal about it from day one.”

He cited the example of now-retired Australian Daniel Ricciardo, when racing for the second-string team, taking a fastest lap point away from McLaren to help Red Bull in Singapore in 2024.

He also said employees had been able to move overnight, including current Red Bull team boss Laurent Mekies, who came over from Racing Bulls to replace fired principal Christian Horner in 2025, while McLaren had to wait or make financial deals that impacted them under cost cap rules.

“We’ve seen Ferrari and Haas move people back and forth,” he added.

“Can you imagine a Premier League game when you’ve got two teams owned by the same group? One’s going to get relegated if they lose, the other can afford to lose. And that’s what we run the risk of.

“I think having engine power units (manufacturers) and suppliers is as far as it should go, and then in my view, all 11 teams should be absolutely as independent as possible... because I think it has a high risk and we have seen it compromise the integrity of the sport. That will be what turns fans off quicker than anything else.”

But Brown said he was glad to see that at least the Red Bull and Racing Bulls cars looked different, and appreciated what Red Bull had done for the sport over the years.

Red Bull bought the failing Minardi team at the end of 2005, turning it into an outfit to develop rookie drivers for the main Red Bull Racing. Numerous top drivers, including four-time world champion Verstappen, started out there.

The American said his stance also applied to the possibility of Mercedes taking a small stake in Renault-owned Alpine, as has been mooted. Mercedes also supply McLaren with engines.

In a separate issue, McLaren drivers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri have said it would be a “big loss” for F1 if Verstappen were to quit the sport.

The 28-year-old Dutchman, who won four consecutive titles from 2021 to 2024 and narrowly missed out on a fifth last season, has struggled at the start of this campaign.

He has repeatedly voiced his frustration at the sport’s sweeping 2026 rules overhaul, which places greater emphasis on electric energy management in qualifying and races, as well as limiting car speeds.

“I think it would be a big loss for the sport as a whole. I think for us as drivers we want to race against the best and try and prove ourselves against the best,” said Piastri, adding that Verstappen had been the benchmark “for the last five or six years”.

Norris, the 2025 world champion, believes Verstappen’s exit would leave F1 in a poorer place.

“It would be a shame for the sport, it would be a miss for the sport if that does happen, because he probably is one of the best drivers you’ll see in Formula One ever,” he said.

In other news, British karter Harry Williams has become the youngest signing to McLaren’s driver development programme at the age of 11.

The previous youngest current member was Ella Hakkinen, daughter of two-time F1 world champion Mika, signed in 2025 aged 14. REUTERS, AFP