Zak Brown sent a letter to FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem requesting rule changes that would permanently prohibit single entities from controlling multiple Formula 1 teams. The McLaren Racing CEO's timing is deliberate: Audi's €630 million acquisition of Sauber closed in November, and the paddock has spent the winter asking which constructor comes next.
Brown's letter does not name Audi or Sauber. It does not need to. The Volkswagen Group already owns Lamborghini, which supplies technical partnerships to multiple teams, and Porsche, which walked away from a Red Bull tie-up in 2022 after diligence revealed governance friction. The structural question is now live: can a manufacturer own two garages, field two driver pairs, split budget cap allocations, and present it as competition? Brown's position is no. His letter asks the FIA to codify that answer before a private equity roll-up or OEM constellation tries.
The governance concern is not hypothetical. Liberty Media controls F1's commercial rights. teams receive approximately $1.1 billion in combined prize money annually, distributed on a sliding scale that rewards podium finishes and legacy payments. If a single parent company operates two teams, it can theoretically optimize across both entries—technical staff rotations, supplier rebates, wind tunnel time arbitrage—while collecting checks for two separate finishing positions. The competitive damage is downstream: sponsors pay for exclusivity within a team, not a holding company. A beer brand pays $40 million to McLaren for sidepod placement; if McLaren's parent later acquires Haas, does the deal now cover two cars? The contract language was never written for that scenario.
Brown has form on governance advocacy. He spent 2023 pushing the FIA to tighten cost cap enforcement after Red Bull's $2.2 million 2021 overspend drew a $7 million fine and wind tunnel restrictions. That campaign positioned McLaren as the rule-of-law team, useful when courting sponsors who want clean compliance narratives. This letter extends the same logic: lock the rules now, before capital does what capital does. Three private equity firms have taken stakes in F1 teams since 2020—MSP Sports Capital in McLaren, Otro Capital in Williams, Arctos Partners in Aston Martin. None has yet attempted a second acquisition, but the strategy is obvious once you see it. Teams are cash flow generative, attendance is up 22% since 2019, and the Las Vegas Grand Prix netted $600 million in economic impact. If you can own two teams under the cost cap, you own two revenue streams that grow with the sport's U.S. expansion.
The FIA has not yet responded publicly. The World Motor Sport Council meets next in April, where rule changes for 2026 and beyond are typically finalized. Brown's letter will circulate among team principals before then; expect Christian Horner at Red Bull and Toto Wolff at Mercedes to offer views, though neither has the same incentive to block consolidation. Red Bull operates two teams already—Red Bull Racing and RB—under a structure grandfathered in before the current governance era. That arrangement survives because the two teams do not share technical staff, wind tunnel allocation, or cost cap filings, and because Red Bull owned both before Liberty Media's 2017 acquisition of F1. Brown's letter would clarify that the grandfather clause is the end, not the template.
Watch for FIA language in the April WMSC minutes. If the council opens a consultation period, Brown has momentum. If it tables the discussion, the silence is the answer—team consolidation remains possible, and McLaren will need to decide whether to participate or litigate. Brown does not send letters that lack sponsor input. McLaren's primary backers include Google, DHL, and Cisco. All three care about brand separation. None wants to see their McLaren investment diluted by a sister team wearing different overalls but cashing the same owner's check.
The takeaway
Brown's letter forces the FIA to rule on multi-team ownership before private equity or OEMs attempt it—McLaren's compliance posture now doubles as competitive moat.
mclarenzak brownfia governanceteam ownershipaudi saubercost cap
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