Brown on the attack on timeshares: letter to the FIA, Red Bull and the Mercedes-Alpine negotiation in the crosshairs

Alliances and suspicions The possibility – which seems increasingly concrete according to rumors – of Mercedes’ purchase of 24% of the Alpine team’s shares has seriously alarmed McLaren CEO Zak Brown. The American manager has long been a champion of the battle against timeshares in F1, pointing the finger at Red Bull which has managed two teams on the grid for two decades now thanks to its control of Racing Bulls (formerly Toro Rosso). Now Brown’s fear is that a similar situation could arise with Mercedes and Alpine. For this reason, the CEO of the world champion team took pen and paper and wrote a letter to FIA president Mohammed Ben Sualyem inviting the federation to prohibit the proliferation of alliance situations between different teams in the Circus. According to what was reported by the website The Race, which reported having been able to view the letter sent by Brown to Ben Sulayem, in the six pages of text there are no explicit references to the Mercedes-Alpine negotiation, but the McLaren boss expresses a general thought, citing examples in which the mix of interests between Red Bull and Racing Bulls was evident in his opinion, from the passage of Laurent Mekies from Faenza to Milton Keynes without any gardening leave to the last recent episode of the Miami GP, in which Liam Lawson was asked to vacate the position to Max Verstappen. Brown writes to the FIA ​​“We must eliminate any further alliances, be they ownership, strategic ownership or any other equivalent form of control or influence – Brown wrote – and we must work together quickly to begin the process of dissolving those that already exist, in order to ensure that the future integrity of the sport is not compromised.” A clear message that once again ignites the political clash in the Circus between McLaren, Red Bull and Mercedes, without forgetting the relationship between Ferrari and Haas which is also in this case quite clearly comparable to that of an A team with its own B team. “I believe that the work carried out by the FIA and Liberty Media to create 11 healthy teams, in a context of controlled costs, has given rise to the most competitive era of Formula 1 ever – concluded Brown in the letter – we believe that, by addressing this still unresolved structural problem, Formula 1 will be set on an even stronger path, will continue to thrive and will be the best sport ever; we just need to make sure we bring total equality and integrity to the sport in every aspect. Now the ball is in the FIA’s court.

Automobile Magazine – F1 English News , 2026-05-15 18:02:17