“Embarrassing” team principals’ meetings prevent F1 fixing rules

Efforts to improve Formula 1’s rules have been frustrated by the “embarrassing” outcomes of some team principals’ meetings, says McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown.

He believes F1’s governance structure gives teams too much power to block rules changes. Brown accused other team principals of changing their stance on some issues between meetings depending on whether they stood to benefit from them.

According to Brown, former Alpine team principal Otmar Szafnauer opposed reforming the penalty points system when Lando Norris came within two points of an automatic suspension, but softened his stance later when his driver Pierre Gasly came even closer to being banned.

“It can be pretty embarrassing in times in the team principal meetings,” said Brown. “An example being when Lando was up on penalty points two years ago, and we made our case that, actually, the majority of those penalty points weren’t ‘dangerous’ and Otmar was totally against it, because obviously everyone wanted to give Lando a ban.

“Fast-forward 12 months, Gasly’s up against it, Otmar brings forward the same exact case that we brought forward and we were like ‘dude, you voted against that?’ He didn’t even know where he voted. And that’s not healthy, because it shows that one year it might work for you, the following year it might not work for you.”

Brown believes reducing the majority needed for votes to carry would make it harder for teams to block changes out of self-interest.

“To take this kind of ‘what’s good for me today’ vote out of the system, I think you’ve just got to stand back and let the FIA and Formula 1 regulate for the fairness of the sport. Which means you’re going to win some, lose some. There could be some times that we lose in the short-term, because we would have liked to block something.

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“I believe McLaren want to race in a fair and sporting and equitable way, which means sometimes it might go for you, sometimes it might go against you. But over the long haul, if we’re all in a sport that is about total fairness, and things are equal for everyone, I think that’s just a better sport. We all win.”

The F1 Commission can only approve changes proposed after April for the following year’s championship if a majority of 28 out of 30 votes are in favour. The FIA and FOM each have 10 votes and the teams hold one each, meaning a proposal can be blocked if just three teams…