{"id":44495,"date":"2025-08-05T04:50:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-05T04:50:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/44495\/"},"modified":"2025-08-05T04:50:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-05T04:50:11","slug":"f1-news-brown-says-f1-in-a-healthier-place-following-horners-exit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/44495\/","title":{"rendered":"F1 news: Brown says F1 in a \u2018healthier\u2019 place following Horner\u2019s exit"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Brown
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tZak Brown says F1 is ‘healthier’ without Christian Horner. Image: XPB Images<\/p>\n

Horner was dismissed last month<\/a> after more than 20 years at the helm, with Racing Bulls team principal Laurent Mekies promoted to replace him.<\/p>\n

Brown revealed he held a private meeting with Mekies ahead of the Hungarian Grand Prix, highlighting a notable thaw in relations between the two organisations after tensions escalated over the past 18 months, and added that, overall, F1 would benefit from Horner\u2019s exit.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m happy he\u2019s in the role he\u2019s in,\u201d Brown said of Mekies. \u201cI like Laurent, and I think that\u2019ll be healthy, and maybe we can get back to focusing on competition on the track.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile there\u2019s always going to be some political aspects to the sport, I think it\u2019s going to be healthier with Laurent.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a fan of Laurent. I\u2019ve known him for a long time, and I think it\u2019ll be good to go racing against Laurent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brown acknowledged that in recent years, tensions between McLaren and Red Bull had escalated, with the two teams frequently clashing over technical matters \u2014 including accusations of tyre tampering at the 2024 Brazilian Grand Prix.<\/p>\n

Reflecting on that period, he said the rivalry under Horner had crossed a line.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that it went too far. There\u2019s always going to be politicking, and let\u2019s try and shut down their flexi wings and that stuff,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut when you start getting into frivolous allegations, I think that\u2019s just going too far.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I look up and down pitlane now, I see us fighting each other hard politically, but there being a line that\u2019s not crossed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that line got crossed before, and I think it was unhealthy. So I think that we\u2019ll see a little bit of a change for the better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brown said he wants the Red Bull\u2013McLaren rivalry to resemble the more respectful competition he shares with Ferrari and Mercedes.<\/p>\n

He pointed to Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur joining McLaren\u2019s celebrations after Lando Norris\u2019 maiden victory in Miami last season<\/a> as an example of how fierce rivals can still maintain camaraderie.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love the way we raced Ferrari,\u201d Brown said. \u201cFred [Vasseur] kind of started it by celebrating our Miami win.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve known Fred a long time. He\u2019s a proper racer, and the way we went racing \u2013 make no mistake about it, we want to beat each other \u2013 but I enjoyed that.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought that was really good for the sport.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added that type of rivalry was better suited to fans of modern F1.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom a fan\u2019s point of view, the drama of the villain stuff, I think works. But I also think the celebratory \u2018fight it out on track, but then kind of photobomb each other\u2019, which that all kind of just happened, that\u2019s really good,\u201d Brown added.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a more fun way to go racing, and can be just as entertaining as the good cop, bad cop thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brown also said that improved trust and communication between teams would benefit not just McLaren but the entire sport.<\/p>\n

\u201cI also think it\u2019s important for the benefit of the sport, that we all can work together, and there\u2019s a higher level of trust,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat if we sit down and have a conversation on a topic, that we think that there can be some confidentiality to that, and it\u2019s just not an automatic: \u2018Well, I\u2019m going to use that as a political weapon.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we\u2019re going to be in a better place to be a little bit more unified and a little bit more trusting that, while we\u2019re fighting it out on the track, we can have a conversation about what\u2019s good for the sport \u2013 and that won\u2019t get manipulated in a way for political reasons and taken out of context.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Zak Brown says F1 is ‘healthier’ without Christian Horner. Image: XPB Images Horner was dismissed last month after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44496,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,1199,817,813,816,913,6490,85,9657],"class_list":["post-44495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-christian-horner","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-mclaren","tag-slot3","tag-sports","tag-zak-brown"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44495\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}