Zak Brown sent a written request to the FIA this week asking the governing body to close the door on multi-team ownership structures before the next Concorde Agreement negotiation window. The McLaren Racing CEO did not name specific groups, but the timing points to growing unease over financial engineering that could let a single investor control stakes in multiple entries—a scenario currently undefined in F1's commercial regulations.
The letter comes as franchise valuations have crossed $3 billion for front-running teams and private equity continues circling the paddock. CVC Capital Partners, which once owned F1 itself, sold Aspen Insurance to Apollo Global in March for $2.6 billion—a data point that reminded allocators how much liquidity sits one degree from the sport. Brown's concern is structural: if ownership rules stay vague, nothing stops a sovereign fund or family office from assembling a portfolio position across two teams, creating conflicts that make NASCAR's charter controversies look quaint.
This matters because the 2026 power unit regulations reset the grid's technical hierarchy, and the 2030 Concorde Agreement will reset the commercial one. Teams entering now—Audi, maybe Andretti if the political weather shifts—are drawing capital from institutions that do not think in terms of one asset. They think in terms of risk-adjusted exposure across a sector. If a fund can own 15 percent of three teams instead of 45 percent of one, the governance headaches multiply but the beta smooths out. Brown is asking the FIA to preempt that math.
The subtext is McLaren's own balance sheet. Brown took the team from rental-car analogies to $275 million in sponsor revenue by making it a brand platform, not a racing charity. But he did it without ceding control to a consortium, and he watches teams like Alpine and Williams flirt with private equity while Aston Martin leverages Lawrence Stroll's pharmaceutical fortune and Saudi tourism money. If the FIA allows cross-team ownership, McLaren's independent structure becomes a competitive disadvantage the moment a rival can offset one team's aero spend against another's cost-cap breathing room.
FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem has not responded publicly, but he spent April in Jeddah and Miami talking to stakeholders who do not uniformly agree. Red Bull team principal Christian Horner told Reuters he expects to stay in F1 through 2026, a comment that doubles as a signal his employment survives the current governance review. That review, triggered by off-track allegations earlier this year, included questions about how much influence any single advisor should hold over team decisions—exactly the kind of governance creep Brown wants to avoid at the ownership level.
The practical test arrives in Q3 2025, when the FIA's technical and sporting working groups finalize rule packages for 2026. If multi-team ownership stays undefined, expect the first stealth move by early 2026—a fund buying into two teams through separate SPVs, structured to pass muster under current regs but built to merge later. Brown is betting that writing the prohibition now is cheaper than litigating it in a London arbitration chamber in three years.
Watch for FIA governance committee meetings in June and October, where this will surface as an agenda item if Brown's lobbying finds allies. Also watch which teams stay quiet: silence from Haas, Williams, or Alpine would suggest they are entertaining exactly the kind of capital structures Brown wants banned.
The takeaway
Brown's preemptive strike targets ownership loopholes before institutional capital rewrites paddock control ahead of 2026 rules and 2030 Concorde talks.
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