McLaren CEO Zak Brown has called for an end to B-team bias within F1 rules, which he says is damaging to “the fabric of the sport”.
While no organization in F1 would dare call themselves a B-Team, Brown clearly believes there are those who effectively fulfill such a role.
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Haas and AlphaTauri have longstanding extremely strong ties with Ferrari and Red Bull respectively, while Williams and Aston Martin have strong customer partnerships with Mercedes.
Brown believes such connections could one day eventually lead to the formation of full-fledged B-Teams, which have been debated for the past few years but never materialized.
However, such a “threat” has “not gone away”, according to Brown, who has called it “vital” that the sport’s leadership be strengthened to prevent it.
In a column on the McLaren website, Brown added: “The regulations as they stand today are heavily geared towards B teams/customer teams, which is not in line with the F1 principle of a group of genuine constructors competing on equal terms.
“It diminishes what it means to be an F1 team and the structure of the sport.
“F1 needs to be 10 true constructors where each team – apart from sharing the PU and possibly the internals of the gearbox – has to design and produce all the parts relevant to performance.
“Right now there are too many differences in business models between the teams.
“Trying to apply the same complex regulations to everyone and then effectively policing them is unnecessarily complicated and compromised.”
Brown believes that in an era of cost caps where all teams operate on an equal footing, no team should be beholden to another, especially as this has a knock-on effect when it comes to voting on certain aspects of Formula 1.
“This cost-constrained environment should allow teams to become more recognizable, self-contained entities within a realistic budget, without worrying about significant differences in performance based on how much each team is able to spend,” added Brown.
“In short, the current situation allows B-Teams to be over-competitive compared to constructors, and A-Teams can be over-competitive by having the advantage of a B-Team.
“Uncorrected, the current situation means that any team with championship aspirations must have a B-Team and that’s just not Formula 1.
“Furthermore, the voting pressure that A-Teams place on their B-Teams is inconsistent with the promotion of fair sport based on individual team performance.
“As I’ve said before – and these teams won’t admit it – there are times when some smaller teams will vote against their own interests to satisfy their senior team’s agenda.”
