{"id":651032,"date":"2026-05-06T06:56:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T06:56:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/651032\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T06:56:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T06:56:16","slug":"mercedes-braced-for-fia-scrutiny-on-alpine-f1-bid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/651032\/","title":{"rendered":"Mercedes braced for FIA scrutiny on Alpine F1 bid"},"content":{"rendered":"

FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem has hinted at a potential intervention by the governing body to halt Mercedes<\/a>\u2018 negotiations to acquire Alpine\u2019s Formula 1<\/a> project.<\/p>\n

The Renault-backed Alpine F1 team is reportedly up for sale, with minority stakeholders Otro Capital in negotiations with various parties. <\/p>\n

Up until very recently, former Red Bull Team Principal and CEO Christian Horner was the leading candidate to purchase the 24% stake in the team. <\/p>\n

However, with the Anglo-French marque<\/a>\u2018s technical partnership with the Silver Arrows off to a strong start, the eight-time Constructors\u2019 Champions seem to have overtaken Horner\u2019s bid. <\/p>\n

Many saw this as Toto Wolff\u2019s ploy to block the Briton\u2019s return to the paddock after his ousting in July, last year. <\/p>\n

Team Principal Flavio Briatore, however, has confirmed that potential negotiations have been undertaken with Mercedes as an entity and not Wolff, as an individual.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery day is a new situation,\u201d he said. \u201cBut what I want to say, I know it\u2019s the negotiation from Mercedes \u2013 not with Toto, with Mercedes \u2013 and we\u2019ll see.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn this moment, we have three or four potential buyers \u2013 don\u2019t forget, we\u2019re talking about the Otro share, nothing to do with Alpine. There are a few candidates ready to do the deal.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"MohammedFIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem has questioned whether an organisation owning two F1 teams is ethical<\/p>\n

Mercedes\u2019 Alpine F1 bid \u201cnot the right way\u201d says Mohammed Ben Sulayem<\/p>\n

There has been a lot of hue and cry lately with respect to B-team ownerships in F1. <\/p>\n

Most of this has largely originated from McLaren CEO Zak Brown and targeted towards Red Bull\u2019s ownership of Racing Bulls<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Ben Sulayem built on this argument to suggest that if a B-team is going to be acquired with ulterior motives, the FIA would have no qualms in stepping in. <\/p>\n

\u201cWho is not interested [in the Otro stake?,\u201d Ben Sulayem said as per The Times.<\/p>\n

\u201cReally, everybody is there. But, I feel ownership of two teams, as long as it\u2019s for the right reason\u2026 and what is the right reason?<\/p>\n

\u201cAs long as you are not trying to take it because you don\u2019t want others to take it, or also get voting power when it comes to the regulations, then maybe it\u2019s OK.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut then I do believe that owning two [teams] is not the right way, this is my personal point of view, but we are looking into that because it\u2019s a complicated area.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe put our people [to investigate] to see, is it possible? Is it allowed? Is it the right thing?<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is something called a sporting side. If we lose, honestly, the sporting spirit, I believe that there will not be any more support in [the sport]. So to me, as I said, I\u2019m not with [support of] it 100 per cent.\u201d<\/p>\n

As things stand, even if a deal materialises, Alpine\u2019s corporate disclosures indicate that Otro Capital is barred from offloading its shares of the team at least till November this year.<\/p>\n

READ MORE \u2013 George Russell warns Mercedes of \u2018daunting\u2019 gains from F1 rivals <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem has hinted at a potential intervention by the governing body to halt Mercedes\u2018…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":651033,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[1035,49,48,578,3754,576,577,1881,82],"class_list":["post-651032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-alpine","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-fia","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-mercedes","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651032","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=651032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651032\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/651033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=651032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=651032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=651032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}