{"id":287658,"date":"2025-07-24T10:21:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-24T10:21:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/287658\/"},"modified":"2025-07-24T10:21:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-24T10:21:11","slug":"horner-sacking-raises-fia-a-b-team-debate-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/287658\/","title":{"rendered":"Horner sacking raises FIA A-B team debate again"},"content":{"rendered":"

Formula One may well be in boom times now but its not always been the case. Back in 2009 Honda, Toyota and BMW all walked from the sport leaving a huge hole in the grid and dangerously few power unit manufacturers.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Further, three new teams were introduced in 2010 to bolster the grid, but by the time Haas F1 joined the sport, they had all become defunct, leaving the lineup again with just twenty drivers.<\/p>\n

At the beginning of this tumultuous era, the owner of the Minardi team decided enough was enough. The then F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone pleaded with energy drinks magnate Didi Mateschitz to save the team, which he did and so was born Toro Rosso \u2013 the second Red Bull owned team.<\/p>\n

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Zak Brown calls for 2 team ownership ban<\/p>\n

Of course owning two teams in F1 has its advantages with one being you have double the number of votes in the F1 commission the do other teams. Yet this is not quite the advantage it first seems at face value, given throughout the ages teams have banded together and voted in blocks \u2013 often in line with whoever supplies the engines.<\/p>\n

In recent times there are those who have questioned the fact that Red Bull owns two F1 teams, with McLaren\u2019s Zak Brown leading the charge for reform. \u201cWe have some work to do around the rules,\u201d the McLaren CEO told Sky Sports News at the launch of his team\u2019s 2024 livery.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the A-B team is a real problem moving forward. I think co-ownership, you don\u2019t really have that in any other sport, and I think that provides a lot of conflict of interest.\u201d And Brown is right, none of the top sporting leagues across the world allow an owner to take charge of more than one team which is in direct competition with another in their portfolio.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo now that we have a budget cap we need to be really a sport of total fairness and I think any time you have an entity that owns two teams, or an A and B relationship, I think it really starts to compromise the integrity of sporting fairness. That\u2019s something that really needs to be tackled,\u201d concluded the McLaren CEO.<\/p>\n

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Alpine quit developing the 2025 car<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Horner\u2019s sacking leaves Red Bull defenceless<\/p>\n

At the time, Alpha Tauri were moving a umber of their operations to England to a site that is part of the Red Bull campus in Northamptonshire. Yet the F1 establishment was not prepared to take on the issue, while it was dealing with the troublesome FIA who were promoting an eleventh team on the grid.<\/p>\n

Further, with Christian Horner in charge of the Red Bull Racing empire together with being the longest serving F1 team principal, his influence and the recounting of the history of Red Bull coming to F1\u2019s rescue was enough for those who cared to kick the issue into the long grass.<\/p>\n

Now that Horner is gone and Mateschitz has died, it will become easier for the topic to once again be raised and potentially resolved. Bizarrely the very sacking of Christian Horner and the methodology of his replacement has raised eyebrows in the corridors of power at the FIA.<\/p>\n

Laurent Mekies was able to drop his duties at the Racing Bulls and pick up where Horner left off the very next day. Because the team principals of Red Bull Racing and the Racing Bulls are contracted by the parent company in Austria, no gardening leave was required for Mekies \u2013 something which appears to have caught the eye of the FIA.<\/p>\n

Dutch GP \u2018fake news\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

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FIA to clamp down on A-B teams<\/p>\n

There are rules which currently exist in F1 designs to ensure that no teams collaborate in specific areas and these are regularly monitored. Each team must produce its own intellectual property each year, but matters get complicated due to third party involvement in this process.<\/p>\n

Haas F1 do not produce their own chassis, it is subcontracted to Italian firm Dallara. However, Dallara would not be allowed to offer this service to other teams on the F1 grid, due to the possibility of intellectual property crossover.<\/p>\n

Haas F1 also buy components from Ferrari which are on the FIA\u2019s list of allowed components and the same is true of the Racing Bulls and Red Bull Racing. Whilst a full blown review into the A-B team relationship of the Red Bull owned teams is not proposed presently, the lack of gardening leave for Mekies to serve may well be the thin edge of the wedge.<\/p>\n

Now the FIA\u2019s head of day to day operations, Nikolas Tombazis tells the Race: \u201cWe are working on clarifying more how teams, let\u2019s call them A- and B-teams, operate in terms of putting in provisions that stops those that have some sort of close relationship from helping each other or collaborating.<\/p>\n

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Verstappen changes his tune\u2026 \u201cMy next move\u2026\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Mekies lack of gardening leave a trigger?<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are putting some provisions on the IT side, to make sure that IT systems are segregated, so they cannot share designs, or anything like that. And there will also be physical segregation and what details of what provisions need to be respected.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s already a lot of provisions, but it is a very complicated set of conditions that teams need to satisfy,\u201d he said. One area for review will be be the limits laid down on personnel moving without gardening leave being served and Tombazis believes more work is required here to ensure a level playing field.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re trying to formalise some of these things into some regulatory structure, so teams can\u2019t play different games. We also want to satisfy the teams that don\u2019t have any affiliation, that the key teams that do have a relationship of some sort do not gain an unfair advantage,\u201d saids the FIA officer.<\/p>\n

Tombazis adds that even \u201cif a team is more standalone, and the team has some commercial relationships, we don\u2019t want that to dictate what happens on the track.\u201d Clearly there whole topic of how teams are allowed to interact is back on the agenda and it won\u2019t be long before Zak Brown is banging his drum again about owning two F1 teams.<\/p>\n

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Red Bull\u2019s Mekies ushers in a corporate coup<\/p>\n

Red Bull \u2018rebellious\u2019 culture to change \u2013 Red Bull Racing was formed from the ashes of the latest efforts of auto giant Ford to compete at the highest level of motorsport. The Stewart F1 team was acquired by the US car manufacturer in 1999 for a reported $100m and Ford planned to build a state of the art facility in Silverstone to house both its chassis and proposed power unit operations.<\/strong><\/p>\n

As with many things Jaguar F1, this never happened and the team remained at its base in Milton Keynes. In a reflective editorial piece written in 2023, Motor Sport claimed that Jaguar was \u201cone of the most high-profile failures in F1,\u201d with \u201ca revolving door of management that made Jaguar Racing look like an employment bureau rather than a slick F1 team.\u201d<\/p>\n

Things would change quickly once the energy drink entrepreneur appointed the youngest F1 team principal in Christie Horner (31) who immediately brought back the team\u2019s previous boss Guenther Steiner to assist in rebuilding the team. Yet once the appointment of Adrian Newey was secured later in 2005, Didi Mateschitz approached the Italian to lead their NASCAR effort in the USA\u2026.. READ MORE<\/a><\/p>\n

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