McLaren Racing CEO Calls Out Mercedes’ Potential Alpine Stake: ‘A/B Teams Could Break F1’ He Says

Zak Brown has been fighting the same fight for years. The McLaren CEO wants eleven independent teams on the Formula 1 grid, full stop, and he has never been subtle about the fact that the Red Bull and Racing Bulls arrangement offends him on principle. Now Mercedes is circling a minority stake in Alpine, and Brown has picked his moment to make the point again.

Mercedes, which already supplies Alpine with engines and gearboxes for the 2026 season, is in discussions to buy the 24 percent of the Enstone team currently owned by American investment consortium Otro Capital.

Otro bought in for around €200 million in 2023. Three years on, the stake is reportedly worth north of €500 million, putting Alpine’s total valuation somewhere between €1.7 and €2 billion. Christian Horner and a separate investor group are believed to be circling the same shares.

Brown hasn’t hidden his thoughts on this. Any move that deepens the technical or ownership link between two teams is bad for the sport.

Why Brown Says It’s a Competitive Problem, Not a Paranoid One

Brown’s case rests on examples.

He points to Daniel Ricciardo’s fastest lap in Singapore in 2024, when the Australian, then driving for Racing Bulls, took the bonus point off McLaren and handed it to Max Verstappen in the middle of a title fight. He cites the Ferrari and Haas staff swaps, where engineers move between the two outfits without the financial friction an independent team would face to poach the same people. He brings up the 2020 “pink Mercedes” controversy, when Racing Point arrived at Silverstone with a car that looked suspiciously like the previous year’s championship-winning Mercedes.

SUZUKA, JAPAN – MARCH 29: Arvid Lindblad of Great Britain driving the (41) Visa Cash App Racing Bulls VCARB 03 RB Ford leads Isack Hadjar of France driving the (6) Oracle Red Bull Racing RB22 Red Bull Ford on track during the F1 Grand Prix of Japan at Suzuka Circuit on March 29, 2026 in Suzuka, Japan. (Photo by Rudy Carezzevoli/Getty Images) // Getty Images / Red Bull Content Pool // SI202603290534 // Usage for editorial use only //

And he reaches for a football analogy that cuts closer than the F1 version: imagine two Premier League clubs owned by the same group, playing each other on the final day, with one facing relegation if it loses. Everyone watching knows how that match ends.

“We’ve seen employees move overnight between affiliated teams, creating unfair advantages,” Brown argues, per reporting this week. “We often have to wait a long time or make financial deals, which in turn affects our budget. That is not fair and gives others a financial and sporting advantage.”