McLaren CEO Zak Brown said he would welcome old foe Christian Horner back into Formula 1 with open arms.<\/p>\n
Former Red Bull team boss Horner is part of a consortium looking to buy private investment firm Otro Capital\u2019s 24% share in Alpine\u2019s F1 team.<\/p>\n
Horner, sacked by Red Bull last July, has said he has \u201cunfinished business\u201d in Formula 1 and as per his settlement with his former team can return to the sport in June.<\/p>\n
The Englishman was a controversial figure during his time in the sport and was known to share a mutual disdain for Brown. After Horner\u2019s sacking, Brown said Red Bull and F1 were in a \u201chealthier\u201d place without him around.<\/p>\n
However, their relationship appears to have been cooled in recent times, and Brown now believes the sport would be better off with Horner back in.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think Christian was a great personality for the sport,\u201d Brown said at a media session hosted by McLaren this week. \u201cSport always has great personalities. They come and go. I think it\u2019d be great to have Christian back in the sport.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a great operator. His track record speaks for itself. I\u2019d rather have 10 weak team principals, but that\u2019s not going to happen anytime soon.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd there\u2019s huge talent that\u2019s coming up, you know, all the time. There\u2019s been a lot of team principal moves here in the last two to three years, but I think it\u2019d be great to have him back in the sport. And I\u2019m sure given his passion for the sport and his age, I\u2019d be shocked if he wasn\u2019t back in the sport, whether it was with Alpine or someone else.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brown is not the only person to have clashed with Horner in the past.<\/p>\n
Mercedes boss Toto Wolff was an even bigger adversary and as recently as last month said he was in two minds about him returning, noting that Horner had left \u201ca lot of broken glass\u201d in the sport during his two decades in charge of Red Bull.<\/p>\n
Horner\u2019s return might well face a roadblock from Wolff\u2019s Mercedes, who have also been revealed to be exploring its own purchase of the Otro shares.<\/p>\n
While it\u2019s common for manufacturers to supply other teams with engines, that would be a rare deal in Formula 1.<\/p>\n
Red Bull owns two teams outright, the senior team and its junior team, Racing Bulls, as has been the case since 2006, but there is no other case of an F1 team owning a minority share in another team.<\/p>\n
Even Ferrari\u2019s close technical partnership with Haas was controversial when that was implemented in 2016.<\/p>\n
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Brown has been the most outspoken opponent to the idea of what is known as A\/B team set-ups.<\/p>\n
He insisted F1 cannot allow Mercedes to create a similar set-up with Alpine when it comes to the ongoing talks around the Otro stake.<\/p>\n
Asked on his view on A\/B teams this week, Brown said: \u201cIt hasn\u2019t changed at all. I think I\u2019ve been consistent.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is now my ninth season or so. I think A\/B teams… we need to get away from as much as possible, as quickly as possible. I think co-ownership, which we have one group now [Red Bull], and I understand how that came about, why it came about, but in today\u2019s day and age, that\u2019s not permitted in almost, if not all, major forms of sport.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it runs a real high risk of compromising the integrity of sporting fairness, which is coming back to the earlier question, what would turn fans off as if they don\u2019t feel like there\u2019s 11 independent racing teams?<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been vocal about it from day one. We\u2019ve seen it play out on track in a sporting way. Daniel Ricciardo taking the fastest lap point away from us to help the other team [at the 2024 Singapore Grand Prix for Racing Bulls].<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve seen IP [Intellectual Property] violations on the Aston Martin\/Racing Point on brake ducts. We\u2019ve seen employees move [teams] overnight, whereas we either have to wait and sometimes make financial deals, which then impacts us on the cost cap.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo when you see other teams that move from one to the other, and then also without financial compensation, that\u2019s an unfair financial advantage. That\u2019s an unfair sporting advantage. We\u2019ve seen Ferrari and Haas move people back and forth. We know IP is a lot in your head.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo when you put that all together, can you imagine a Premier League game where you\u2019ve got two teams owned by the same group? One\u2019s going to get relegated if they lose. The other can afford to lose. And that\u2019s what we run the risk of.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I think having engine power units as suppliers is as far as it should go. And then in my view, all 11 teams should be absolutely as independent as possible, because I think it has a high risk and we have seen it compromise the integrity of the sport. And that will be what turns fans off quicker than anything else.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"McLaren CEO Zak Brown said he would welcome old foe Christian Horner back into Formula 1 with open…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":623333,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-623332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=623332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623332\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/623333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=623332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=623332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=623332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}