Horner Under Fire From Brown Again As Cost Cap Breach Gets Brought Up
F1
McLaren Racing's CEO Zak Brown took aim at Christian Horner again as he discussed issues of transparency in Formula 1.
Zak Brown has never been afraid to openly criticize Red Bull Racing or Christian Horner. One of the most recent and repeated problems he had with Red Bull was their 100% ownership of two F1 teams.
That started in 2023 and continued until this season. At the start of this (2024) season, Brown felt that Red Bull and Horner weren't transparent enough about the investigation they were conducting (against the team principal himself), so he called for more transparency from the FIA and F1.
Another instance was when Adrian Newey announced he would be leaving the team from Milton Keynes. The CEO of McLaren poked at them, saying there have been many CVs flying around and that Newey would be only "the first domino to fall."
Staying on the same note, Brown suggested in another interview the toxic environment inside the Austrian team would push many employees away.
After the collision at the Austrian Grand Prix, the 52-year-old hit at the Red Bull team principal again, saying he was "disappointed" by his comments on the team radio after the collision between Max Verstappen and Lando Norris.
In his latest interview with BBC, the CEO of McLaren discussed the issues associated with the lack of transparency from Horner and Red Bull:
"I've known Christian for about 25, 30 years. We used to race against each other. I would say we used to get on."
"I believe in transparency. I believe in putting your hand up when you get something wrong. The cost cap, the excuses behind that, I never really heard a 'we just got it wrong'. I heard excuses and not taking ownership."
Since the 2021 season, there has been a ceiling for every single F1 team in terms of how much money they can spend per season on development, staff, etc.
Overspending this limit (called "cost cap") could potentially give any F1 team an unfair advantage, and Red Bull breached it in 2021 when they won the Drivers' Championship over Mercedes by the tiniest of margins. Brown continued:
"When someone breaches the cost cap, and doesn't seem to kind of take it seriously, that's kind of hitting the integrity and core of the sport. To me, it's not personal. It's protecting our sport."
"And when I see things not consistent with our values, I'm going to speak up about it because it's important people understand where we're coming from."
"I realise that's not necessarily always going to be popular, or make friends with everyone in the pit lane, but as long as I'm friends with McLaren, our fans, our partners, that's what's most important to me."
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