McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown has formally requested the FIA eliminate multi-team ownership structures in Formula 1, filing a letter with federation president Mohammed Ben Sulayem that would preemptively close loopholes allowing common control across entries. The move arrives as franchise values breach $1.5 billion and consolidation pressure mounts from private equity and sovereign wealth allocators sizing the ten-team grid.
Brown's letter does not name specific ownership arrangements but arrives eighteen months after Liberty Media floated trial balloons around structural flexibility for new entrants and seven months after Andretti's bid collapse exposed fault lines in expansion economics. The McLaren position: competitive balance requires ownership firewall rules written into the Concorde Agreement renewal cycle, which opens for negotiation in 2025 ahead of the 2026 engine regulation reset. No existing team operates under split ownership, but the regulatory gap remains open.
The timing carries freight. McLaren itself carries a complex capitalization table—Mumtalakat Holding (Bahrain's sovereign fund) owns a majority stake, MSP Sports Capital holds 15 percent, and Brown operates as CEO under a structure that has twice delayed reported IPO exploration. His letter effectively argues for codifying the status quo before a deeper-pocketed consortium attempts regulatory arbitrage. The subtext: protecting the $1 billion-plus valuations each team now commands under the cost cap era, where revenue share clarity has turned franchises into yield assets for institutional allocators.
Sponsor executives and team investors should note three pressure points. First, the $140 million cost cap has compressed operating leverage, making multi-team portfolio plays theoretically attractive for amortizing overhead across entries—exactly what Brown wants ruled out. Second, the collapsed Andretti bid left $350 million in committed capital searching for alternative grid entry points, and creative ownership structures offered one path. Third, Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund continues paddock reconnaissance, and PIF's portfolio approach elsewhere (LIV Golf's multi-team model, Newcastle United) suggests appetite for structural experimentation that would terrify incumbents.
The FIA's response window matters. Ben Sulayem's term runs through 2025, and his relationship with Liberty Media remains workable but not warm after the 2023 Las Vegas promotion clash. If Brown's letter lands during Concorde renegotiation, it becomes leverage. If it lands after, it becomes noise. The World Motor Sport Council meets next in March 2025—the earliest plausible venue for formal rule consideration, though governance changes typically require nine-month implementation lead times under FIA constitutional procedure.
McLaren's commercial position strengthens the play. The team carries $400 million in annual sponsorship revenue, sits second in the 2024 constructors' championship, and operates Applied Technologies and Racing divisions that together generate $1.2 billion in non-F1 turnover. Brown can credibly argue he's defending competitive merit, not market position, even as the letter protects McLaren's franchise value from dilution by a hypothetical multi-team entrant willing to undercut sponsorship pricing or talent acquisition across two entries.
Watch three follow-ons. First, whether Mercedes, Ferrari, or Red Bull Racing publicly support Brown's position—silence would signal split interests among the top tier. Second, whether the FIA's legal and compliance department formally dockets the request, which would trigger sixty-day comment periods from stakeholders. Third, whether Liberty Media's Greg Maffei addresses ownership structure flexibility on the next earnings call, scheduled for February 2025. His language will clarify whether this is McLaren protecting turf or the commercial rights holder seeing the same structural risk.
Brown's letter arrives the week after Cadillac's formal 2026 entry confirmation, making clear the ask isn't about preventing new teams—it's about ensuring new teams enter alone. The regulatory architecture he's requesting would calcify the grid's current ownership fragmentation, locking in the scarcity value that has driven franchise multiples from 4x revenue in 2018 to 7x revenue today.
The FIA has not yet published acknowledgment of Brown's letter, which means it remains in the president's office rather than formal committee review. That distinction matters: Mohammed Ben Sulayem can pocket the request or advance it. His next procedural move will signal whether Brown's ask becomes 2025 regulatory agenda or dies in correspondence.
The takeaway
McLaren's CEO is weaponizing governance to protect $1.5bn franchise values before sovereign funds test ownership structure loopholes.
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