McLaren CEO Zak Brown said he would welcome old foe Christian Horner back into Formula 1 with open arms.
Former Red Bull team boss Horner is part of a consortium looking to buy private investment firm Otro Capital’s 24% share in Alpine’s F1 team.
Horner, sacked by Red Bull last July, has said he has “unfinished business” in Formula 1 and as per his settlement with his former team can return to the sport in June.
The Englishman was a controversial figure during his time in the sport and was known to share a mutual disdain for Brown. After Horner’s sacking, Brown said Red Bull and F1 were in a “healthier” place without him around.
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.
“I think Christian was a great personality for the sport,” Brown said at a media session hosted by McLaren this week. “Sport always has great personalities. They come and go. I think it’d be great to have Christian back in the sport.
“He’s a great operator. His track record speaks for itself. I’d rather have 10 weak team principals, but that’s not going to happen anytime soon.
“And there’s huge talent that’s coming up, you know, all the time. There’s been a lot of team principal moves here in the last two to three years, but I think it’d be great to have him back in the sport. And I’m sure given his passion for the sport and his age, I’d be shocked if he wasn’t back in the sport, whether it was with Alpine or someone else.”
Brown is not the only person to have clashed with Horner in the past.
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 “a lot of broken glass” in the sport during his two decades in charge of Red Bull.
Horner’s return might well face a roadblock from Wolff’s Mercedes, who have also been revealed to be exploring its own purchase of the Otro shares.
While it’s common for manufacturers to supply other teams with engines, that would be a rare deal in Formula 1.
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.
Even Ferrari’s close technical partnership with Haas was controversial when that was implemented in 2016.
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Brown has been the most outspoken opponent to the idea of what is known as A/B team set-ups.
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.
Asked on his view on A/B teams this week, Brown said: “It hasn’t changed at all. I think I’ve been consistent.
“This 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’s day and age, that’s not permitted in almost, if not all, major forms of sport.
“I 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’t feel like there’s 11 independent racing teams?
“I’ve been vocal about it from day one. We’ve 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].
“We’ve seen IP [Intellectual Property] violations on the Aston Martin/Racing Point on brake ducts. We’ve seen employees move [teams] overnight, whereas we either have to wait and sometimes make financial deals, which then impacts us on the cost cap.
“So when you see other teams that move from one to the other, and then also without financial compensation, that’s an unfair financial advantage. That’s an unfair sporting advantage. We’ve seen Ferrari and Haas move people back and forth. We know IP is a lot in your head.
“So when you put that all together, can you imagine a Premier League game where you’ve got two teams owned by the same group? One’s going to get relegated if they lose. The other can afford to lose. And that’s what we run the risk of.
“So 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.”
