McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown has called for stronger leadership of Formula 1 following a series of episodes which he says have made it feel “like a pantomime audition rather than the pinnacle of a global sport.”
Following the election of Mohammed Ben Sulayem as president of the FIA last month, Brown called on the sport’s governing body to take a tougher line against teams’ efforts to obtain benefits by influencing rules changes.
Some teams are “effectively holding the sport hostage from what’s best for the fans and therefore the sport at large”, claimed Brown in an article published on McLaren’s website. “These teams seem unable to accept that a budget cap is in the best interests of the sport and cannot kick their habit of spending their way to the front.”
He accused unnamed rivals of pushing for an increase in the budget cap, which falls from $145 million to $140m this year, due to the planned rise in the number of sprint qualifying events planned for the 2022 F1…