{"id":38730,"date":"2025-08-01T18:46:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-01T18:46:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/38730\/"},"modified":"2025-08-01T18:46:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-01T18:46:11","slug":"why-formula-1s-era-of-the-autocrat-is-over","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/38730\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Formula 1\u2019s era of the autocrat is over"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Formula 1 the optimal way to go racing is \u2014 and always will be \u2014 the one that wins. This season it is McLaren\u2019s approach that is yielding results: with two leading drivers battling for the individual title, and a constructors\u2019 crown that may as well already be in transit to Woking to sit alongside last year\u2019s.<\/p>\n

But it is not only their driver line-up that contributes to a winning formula; their secret is the relationship between the chief executive, Zak Brown, and the team principal, Andrea Stella. It is the model that many other teams down the grid are now adopting, devolving power away from one all-encompassing figure.<\/p>\n

There are very few of those left, in the traditional sense at least. Toto Wolff is the team principal, chief executive and co-owner of Mercedes. He is ultimately in control of all elements of the business, but delegates to those who can manage them day to day.<\/p>\n

\"Formula<\/p>\n

F1 chiefs with the scope Wolff has at Mercedes are a dying breed<\/p>\n

GETTY<\/p>\n

Teams have grown from about 300 staff members two decades ago to approximately 1,000 in the modern era. Each team has a slightly different model, but McLaren leave Stella, who was a performance engineer for Michael Schumacher during his time at Ferrari, to manage the F1 team, while Brown has overall responsibility for the McLaren business \u2014 including other race categories, strategic direction, operational performance, marketing and commercial development.<\/p>\n

As Brown recently explained in The Sunday Times<\/a>, he does not understand the finer technical details of the engineering that can shave 1\/100th of a second off a lap time but he likes to ask: \u201cDo you need more equipment? How\u2019s your headcount? Everything good?\u201d<\/p>\n

Christian Horner was sacked<\/a> as Red Bull\u2019s team principal and chief executive in July, partly because of poor performance but also \u201cother things\u201d, as Helmut Marko, the Red Bull special adviser, described it.<\/p>\n

One of those is understood to be the amount of control Horner had over an array of Red Bull entities, far beyond the race team. Essentially he filled the roles of both Stella and Brown, while Pierre Wach\u00e9, the technical director, provided the engineering expertise.<\/p>\n

In an interview with ORF in Belgium last week, Marko said: \u201cThe scope of Horner\u2019s responsibilities . . . he controlled everything and was involved in every detail. Naturally, that created areas where performance suffered. That\u2019s why the focus now is on having a trained engineer in this position, with a strong emphasis on the race team.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"F1<\/p>\n

Mekies, Horner\u2019s successor, has been vague about his specific responsibilities at Red Bull<\/p>\n

MARK THOMPSON\/GETTY<\/p>\n

Marko said the long-term plan is to divide Horner\u2019s former duties among several people. Laurent Mekies, his replacement as chief executive and team principal, has avoided outlining his responsibilities, saying it is \u201ca bit early to talk about structure\u201d when asked last week. It is likely to become clearer in the coming months, when the dust has settled.<\/p>\n

Fundamentally, F1 remains a people business and utilising them is more important than ever now that the sheer scale of teams has increased.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe call it the \u2018hidden lap time\u2019,\u2019\u2019 Mekies said. \u201cIt\u2019s not a lap time that will appear on your wind-tunnel tracker or engine-power tracker, but it\u2019s how much your people are engaged, how much they are motivated, how much they trust each other, how much they help each other.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s where you can and have to make a difference. The difference between having everyone at 100 per cent or not sometimes outweighs one innovation or another.\u201d<\/p>\n

Teams are increasingly using a split method to achieve this. Sauber have Jonathan Wheatley as team principal, and he is predominantly track focused while Mattia Binotto, who is head of the Audi F1 (who have taken over Sauber) project, is more factory based. Fred Vasseur is the Ferrari team principal, operating under Benedetto Vigna, the chief executive.<\/p>\n

Who\u2019s who of team bossesMcLaren Zak Brown (CEO) & Andrea Stella (team principal) Ferrari Benedetto Vigna (CEO), Fred Vasseur (team principal) Mercedes Toto Wolff (CEO, team principal and co-owner) Red Bull Laurent Mekies (CEO & team principal)Williams James Vowles (team principal) & boardKick Sauber Mattia Binotto (head of the Audi F1 team project, chief operating and chief technical officer) & Jonathan Wheatley (team principal) Racing Bulls Peter Bayer (CEO) & Alan Permane (team principal) Aston Martin Andy Cowell (CEO & team principal) Haas Ayao Komatsu (team principal) Gene Haas (founder & owner)Alpine Flavio Briatore (executive adviser) & Steve Nielsen (managing director from September 1)<\/p>\n

Aston Martin are, in some ways, going against the grain. While Andy Cowell has an engineering background, specialising in power units as managing director of the dominant Mercedes engine department from 2013, he has taken on both the team principal and chief executive roles at Aston Martin.<\/p>\n

Their model previously involved a team principal, Mike Krack, and a chief executive, Martin Whitmarsh. Lawrence Stroll, the part-owner and executive chairman, thought that created too much crossover. Ultimately, one man needed to be responsible for the crucial decisions and Cowell was appointed.<\/p>\n

Stroll does weekly factory visits so, in comparison with other teams, the reporting structure is fairly straightforward, something Adrian Newey remarked upon when joining as managing technical partner last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you go back 20 years, what we now call team principals are actually the owners of the teams \u2014 Frank Williams, Ron Dennis, Eddie Jordan,\u201d he said. \u201cIn this modern era Lawrence is actually unique, being the only properly active team owner, and that does bring a different feeling. It\u2019s back to the old-school model.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"NINTCHDBPICT000696714372\"<\/p>\n

The days of active and omnipotent team owners like Frank Williams have largely passed<\/p>\n

TIMES NEWSPAPERS<\/p>\n

Cowell has compared the running of a modern F1 team to a large-scale relay race: \u201cIt is like watching 100 people all run 100m in sub-ten seconds, with perfect baton passes.\u201d<\/p>\n

That is where Haas have found that the appointment of Ayao Komatsu has paid off. As one source explained, Komatsu had a bank of experience from his spell managing the engineering department. When he then stepped up to team principal from Guenther Steiner, he was able to use that knowledge to make changes to the communication and efficiency of the organisation. He made Haas a better-organised team, which directly translated to on-track lap times.<\/p>\n

So this is the so-called era of the engineer team principal. In the short-term that perhaps means less of the big characters that fill Netflix screens and were a hallmark of the sport of the past.<\/p>\n

McLaren have the perfect balance: Stella as the astute and savvy team principal, unshackled by the demands of commercial and wider business commitments that Brown is able to manage deftly. He even has the time to occasionally prod his rivals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Formula 1 the optimal way to go racing is \u2014 and always will be \u2014 the one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38731,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[1687,372,6537,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-38730","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-f1","8":"tag-f1","9":"tag-formula-1","10":"tag-formula1","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38730\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}