McLaren CEO Zak Brown is advocating for a reduction in the power wielded by team bosses within Formula 1. According to Brown, team bosses often attempt to block rule changes to provide an advantage to their own drivers. He hopes to see a shift in this dynamic.
Alongside the governing body FIA, team bosses have significant influence over F1 rules, as explained by McLaren CEO Zak Brown. Efforts by teams to modify the rules sometimes face opposition from other teams during team leader meetings. Brown believes that teams are given too much power to prevent changes in the rules.
McLaren’s Brown Cites Example of Inconsistent Rule Enforcement
Zak Brown, McLaren’s CEO, uses an example involving former Alpine team boss Otmar Szafnauer to illustrate the inconsistency in rule enforcement in Formula 1. Brown recalls how Szafnauer opposed a proposal from McLaren two years ago when Lando Norris was penalized. “When Lando received penalty points two years ago, we argued that most of those penalty points were not actually ‘dangerous’. Otmar was vehemently against it. Everyone, of course, wanted to impose a race ban on Lando. Twelve months later, and Alpine’s Gasly is almost facing a race ban. Otmar then presented exactly the same case,” Brown explains. According to Brown, Szafnauer conveniently forgot that he had voted against the same argument a year earlier. “That’s not healthy, because it shows that something might work for you one year and not the next,” he adds.
Greater Authority for FIA
Brown advocates for the FIA and Formula 1 to have more power than the team bosses to prevent such rule changes driven by self-interest. “McLaren wants to race in a fair, sporting, and just manner, which means that the rules sometimes work for you and sometimes against you. But in the long run, I think that’s better for the sport. Then we all win,” he asserts.
However, Brown doesn’t believe that the teams should lose all their say. “We should still have an equal voice. However, I would like to see us move away from majority votes and towards a simple ‘fifty percent agree, something gets through’ approach,” he suggests.
