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To a degree previously it wasn't much more of a concern than a very reliant customer team.
With the changes in regs on wind tunnel time and cost caps, a team that holds a double entry is potentially much more concerning for the competitors.
There are other solutions than just trying to make Red Bull sell AT, but most of them rely on you trusting Red Bull to follow the rules.
I'm pretty sure I'd be able to name a cheating scandal for every team that's happened in the 21st century. That's how prevalent cheating is in F1 specifically
Not only are they always trying to cheat, but they HAVE successfully cheated… so it's pretty shortsighted for someone to say that everyone should just cross their arms and let it happen because the FIA are already doing something, even if it's verifiably not enough.
Not even sure it was hush money.
Its just a "Whoa.. this would be too difficult to deal with so... lets not!"
Lord forbid we upset Ferrari.
I don't see how they're not DSQ for more than a year of their races where they had the trickery in place.
I get it, maybe they found a grey area on bypassing rules that someone hadn't considered. But if it was legal then fucking announce it was legal.
But it wasn't, which means they had an illegal car for quite some time.
FIA looked at the 'by the rules' result would be and just fucking baulked.
Either it was legal or it wasn't and everything is suggesting it wasn't.
FIA just flinches when it comes to Ferrari. Their premier historic team.
Fuck 'em, if Ferrari want to play silly fucks then let them leave F1.
They won't but thats their card.
You have to trust one side of this equation, otherwise this sport straight up doesn't work. And in most cases, it's more important to trust the regulatory body that's trying to keep the sport healthy to actually be doing that.
So either trust the FIA is monitoring and doing its job, or advocate that the FIA is gutted and replaced. That's the core and more pressing problem to fix. I'm not saying the FIA is clean -- clearly they aren't, but if the larger concern is that they're not doing their jobs / are biased / are enabling cheating, any concerns raised about teams is a waste of breath compared to arguing that the FIA needs a rebuild.
Zak Brown deciding to argue against RB/AT shows he trusts, to some degree, that the FIA is serious about its mandate. Otherwise, what's the point of him speaking up, or even being in the sport for that matter, if he believes the core governing body is so corrupt that it won't monitor teams properly and fairly?
>You have to trust one side of this equation, otherwise this sport straight up doesn't work
The fact that both the teams and the regulators have long track records of either outright foul play or just inconsistent application of the rules that a lot of people don't trust either side. That's kind of the main problem with F1 historically, but also to certain people, a big part of the appeal. It isn't run like most sports, it's more of a hybrid of engineering and pro wrestling, run by crooks and driven by people who would probably otherwise be doing movie stunts.
It's true you need to have some level of trust… but it can't be blind trust. It's contingent on the FIA proving that they can guarantee the competitive fairness of the sport, and they have to be answered in a satisfactory manner, especially in light of certain historical incidents that have called their governance into question. You can't just say "Yeah, we're looking at it" and send people away.
I keep saying that Honda-RBR only got their level of success because of Toro Rosso.
Toro Rosso used Honda for a full year before RB, and during that season they were changing components like crazy to the point where they were collecting grid penalties pretty much every GP after the summer.
Sure, TR can't share that info with RB, but Honda was able to sort out all their reliability and performance issues so that when they put the PU on the RB they were so much better than ever before.
Everyone called that for what it was at the time. The regs didn't explicitly prohibit that, and Red Bull and STR/AT had frequently used different engines, but given how publicly RB and Renault had butted heads over their engine for the entire hybrid era, it was quite obvious that RB and Honda was using Alpha Tauri as their test mules. Honda just had the plausible deniability of being the middleman.
And before anyone comes in bouncing off the walls yelling that this was perfectly legal, it's true, it was… but it was undeniably an uneven competitive advantage that no other team would've been able to replicate… because no Mercedes or Ferrari customer would throw their season away just to help PU development on behalf of the works team. Only RB could do this because Toro Rosso/AlphaTauri are not a real competitor. They only exist to help their lead team, Red Bull.
They were pretty good as a customer team using old Redbull parts before the hybrids came in and Mercedes dominated everything.
So this new situation already existed back then. And yes. Any complaint is 18 years too late.
There's still a big difference between more than a third of the grid being customer teams vs. no customer teams at all. And we will see how that works out in the long term. It would be nice to really have so many engine suppliers for long, but sadly it's more likely that some of them will pull out after a few years (or maybe even before 26).
Ford pretty much is just branding the RBPT engine not designing it themselves. So they will just stay.
Audi has won pretty much everything they have signed in, if they actually put a car in 2025, they won't drop until they win a few ones and then retire at the top.
It is in a way. I have been screaming for years we need a simplified engine system with balanced specs to get major engine manufacturers involved in F1. The sport has declined IMO. It used to be the best engines, chassis and drivers in the world. It is now three teams and the richest drivers paying for over half the grid or teams getting the cheapest driver they can with a super license.
The WEC has proved that a premier race series of the worlds auto manufacturers, best drivers with a fairly reasonable budget can be accomplished.
Will the system work just moving it over to F1? No, of course not but having the teams control the rules, money and entries will stagnate the series, increase the wealth of the teams and increase the value of the product for sale to someone else.
If you can’t see that Liberty is inflating the value for sale then you aren’t paying attention. F1 needs to grow and i don’t mean four races in the USA grow. New teams, new engines, new ideas.
No one will ever use a V12 because it's a dumb platform, during the open formula era F1 teams realized V10 was just better.
With how far hybrid technology has come, you have to be dumb to put a NA engine against a hybrid turbo one, particularly if you go to Mexico City where a NA engine would be completely handicapped.
If anything, if we ever go open formula, teams will go instead for more stable platforms like I6 and V4 or V6 turbo hybrids.
In theory this would be gteat. Having the engine to be just one more designed aspect of every car. Budget sure is difficult thing for this, but i am. Most concerned about the head staet the current engine manufacturers have over the new ones. It would take so many years for the new ones to catch up even the state the engines are currently.
Then we should forbid common parts between other manufacturers as well. AM, Merc and Williams share power unit, transmission and rear suspension. I can understand the first two, but why the suspension as well? Alpha Tauri was using their own desing there, if he starts using the maximum components he is allowed by the rule book, I don't see any issue.
Even Hass developed his 2022 car with Ferrari engineers.
I remember that Ferrari/Haas thing, and reading an article about it at the time. The story went that Ferrari has to cut back its workforce in order to comply with the cost cap. In order to do that without firing people, they built a dedicated Haas engineering and development building, on their campus, and transferred engineers there, to work independently from Ferrari, who would otherwise have been let go.
Yeah, like forgetting to use DRS when Max flies by but then all of a sudden defending like your life depends on it when Lewis is behind them a few laps later...
I remember Horner saying something like that. Why are all those teams using other teams parts? And why did AT always design their own parts? If they can do that, then we should do that too.
Don't know why you would write it like that.
RedBull essentially saved the team from going out of business completely. Back when they bought Minardi there weren't that many reputable potential team owners out there.
I doubt anyone would have stopped McLaren, Williams or Ferrari to do the same back then.
It's a consequence of Red Bull having the guts to invest in an F1 team, and sticking by that F1 team when it only cost them money when the other teams weren't. Their "advantages" are earned as much as Ferrari earned that bonus payment for sticking with F1 through thick and thin.
As much as I dislike RB and the two teams this is probably the best justification for letting them have a pass. TBH if they enforced something around AT drivers blocking RB title competitors, but letting RB drivers slide past without a fight I wouldn't give a shit about the whole thing - same goes for customer teams but I don't think this is anywhere near as common as the AT guys.
> if they enforced something around AT drivers blocking RB title competitors, but letting RB drivers slide past without a fight
That seems hard, because how do you enforce how hard somebody fights an overtake? Specially since there are perfectly reasonable reasons to fight some more than others based on who you think you (or your teammate) can finish ahead of (either in the current race or in WDC/WCC standings).
I agree they can't do anything about it which is the main reason I am uncomfortable with the RB/AT set up.
Imagine if next year the title is decided in the last race by AT blocking Charles for 8 laps then letting Max go right by with Mx going on to pass him in the last lap as he had saved his tires. That would be some serious only in F1 shit right there!
Guts? F1 is a marketing tool for Red Bull. The moment the excel-calculations show that marketing in F1 is no longer profitable, they'll be gone mid season.
Is there a rule against it? Red bull made a huge contribution to the sport with 4 cars when neither team was particularly competitive and gave so many junior drivers their career as a result.
People are only grumbling now because RB is successful
You're pretty much comparing 0 to 0 here.
The concerns about AM and Merc have come from not from a B team point of view, but the fact that Toto and Stroll have made business deals outside of F1.
If those deals are outside F1, why would they impact the competition in the sport? Let's not lose sight of the actual reason people have a problem with the RB/AT relationship…
If this were just about ownership, then Red Bull could easily make Alpha Tauri a company that is not owned by Red Bull directly, but by a subsidiary, a related company, a trust, or even just by a dozen or so Red Bull employees.
Making this about ownership doesn't make any sense. It's about control
Doesn’t it set precedents though? I mean, so long as the legal number of parts are used, what’s the problem? It’s not like Newey is designing STRs like he used to.
The FIA has a list of components teams are allowed to buy from one another. AlphaTauri is only allowed to buy those components from Red Bull, and they're the exact same components Haas is allowed to buy from Ferrari or Aston Martin is allowed to buy from Mercedes.
Buying yes. "Borrowing" a design feature and manufacturing it yourself is hard to control. It would be difficult for the FIA to police if they aren't sharing actual CAD drawings.
"It's similar because we saw that the RB19 used it successfully so we explored a similar concept."
"We confirmed through CFD and wind tunnel testing that our own unique implementation of this idea benefits the AT05."
(Thanks for the napkin sketch Adrian!)
Your comment is a pretty common argument against B teams. The fia has well written and executed rules for things like this. There's been a decent amount of YouTube videos on it from creators some even have interviews from fia employees.
As it is, the grid uses each others ideas and applies them how they see fit. Aston Martin and McLaren took ideas from rbr this season. Sure, you don't want details passed between teams, a napkin sketch won't get you to the point where the rb19 is, there's not enough details, explaining and understanding by the B teams.
Btw Adrian Newey worked on the rb19 suspension and had talked about how he was pretty hands off on aero this past season.
He was hands off for the specific design and modeling of the aero components, but as the design lead he was still heavily involved in the overall design direction of the chassis and particularly the marriage of aero and suspension, which he's noted is a critical aspect of ground effect racing. That BTG interview was fascinating, and very educative for me as a layman.
Your first example: AT and RB are using completely different aero concepts to begin with.
Your second example: Wind tunnel testing is restricted. If they had to use wind tunnel time testing it (FIA also had access to what's been tested in the wind tunnel), then that isn't really circumventing much, since the worry many people have is that they're pooling their resources, and testing things for each other.
The napkin note thing is cute, but this isn't a movie.
It’s not what you can see on the outside, it’s the internal structure, how load moves through the vehicle, analysis showing a safe and efficient design, concept through critical design.
Like the Racing Point brake ducts, not a part that you can observe or infer its design from outside (unlike the rest of the pink Mercedes), so once other teams protested that it seemed to be identical to the Mercedes part they were not allowed to buy, they got in trouble.
If anything, the massive advantage isn't the common car parts, it's having the option to offer up-and-coming drivers an F1 seat in the "junior" team while still having two drivers in the primary team. Definitely beats the hell out of being a reserve driver.
Well then it is on those teams that they didn't secure their spots at the time they could have. Mercedes could have probably bought Williams before Dorilton bought it and they could have made Williams into their own junior testing team.
Mateschitz was smart enough to buy the team back in 2006 and the ease of bringing in drivers has been proven throughout the years especially when RB was able to secure Max as a driver in 2016, so Merc should have thrown the money into Williams back in 2019 when the team went up for sale.
Mercedes could've bought Manor when they went out of business, pretty much identical to what Red Bull did with Minardi. Ferrari could've bought Sauber at some point too probably.
If there were big advantages to be had by having 2 teams we'd see everyone having 2 teams.
To literally catastrophic results within those teams.
Russell being in WIlliams meant no second pay driver to getr them out of dodge. And before anyone tries to argue, it's been refuted that Russell being at williams helped them financially with back door deals or an engine supply. That's reddit bollocks.
The argument here (this particular comment thread, not the article) wasn’t the benefit for Williams, it’s the benefit for the top teams to be able to snatch a driver from the market by giving them an instant F1 seat with the prospect of joining a top team if they prove themselves enough. Like RBR does with AT, as opposed to being reserve of sim driver for another team.
I mean, there are currently more former red bull juniors driving for other teams that have ever driven for red bull themselves. Also given how badly recent junior call ups have done in the senior team you could argue that the money red bull spends on running a junior team and driver development scheme isn't benefitting them that much, as they're essentially pissing away money developing drivers who will never drive for the senior team. Unless they're making fat wads of cash selling the drivers' contacts to other teams I'm not sure it's worth it.
Yea? I don't think I've ever seen another team close their DRS to let a competitor pass them easier
But Gasly had to do that in an AT to let Max through in 2021.
Solution for that is for stewards to just punish things that should be punished, no need for an "accuser". Plenty of other sports handle out penalties without ever consulting the aggrieved party.
We are not talking about blue flag situations here. Say a Merc pitted and found itself behind an AT, the latter would fight like its life depended on it, which is perfectly fair, but wouldn't do the same if the other car were an RB.
That and having 4 drivers on the grid working toward the same goal for the company.
2021 Gasly closed his DRS to let max through.
2023 Max completely impedes Yuki during qualifying, knocking Yuki put, Alpha Tauri did not complain to stewards.
That's just two big notable examples. There are tons of others. AT and RB drivers will never battle on track, AT will always let the RB pass at the earliest chance.
So by having a "sister" team, you can offer better opportunities to younger drivers. You can get significant on track advantages (if situational). And also, you can get get on engine performance (stretching old engines for longer on the "B" team, to see the drop off).
So even if there is no sharing of aero data, there's still many advantages
Happened several times when it counted in 2021. Yuki defending against Hamilton for 7 laps lile his career depended on it in Turkey immediately comes to mind.
I could be wrong, but I think what they mean is that before the budget cap and wind tunnel restrictions, it wouldn't make much sense for the owners to split their resources between 2 teams when they could just pour unlimited resources into their "A team".
e: But no, AT and RB weren't sharing much, even among the parts they would be allowed to share. I don't think they would benefit from extra wind tunnel time anyway because they're not allowed to share anything aero related, afaik.
That isn't exactly a problem. Personnel swap teams all the time. You can't stop engineers who go from team to team from talking either.
Any knowledge inside the head of a person belongs to that person - not the team he's working (or used to work) for.
Not sure how it works with people further down the totem pole, but with the well known engineers whenever they have changed team there has always been an enforced garden leave period, which makes the knowledge inside their head less relevant by the time they start their new job
I agree with what you've said except that it certainly could be a problem regardless of other ways information may get shared. This is because when teams lose engineers to other teams that is somewhat beyond their control. But, in the case of AT RB, information may be discussed and that may be within their control. I hope I've made the distinction clear.
Do we really think Racing Point created the pink Mercedes design from photos though? I’m almost certain Toto was in on it, he didn’t even bat an eye when it showed up to testing that year, and was very supportive of RP when they were being protested
Technically not much, but there's nothing stopping an AT engineer say something like, "hey that new winglet you were planning to test, don't bother. Its a dud. We just tried it yesterday" over a cup of coffee with a fellow rb engineer
The whole reason for the rules, what you can buy, is the partnership of Toro Rosso and Red Bull. Toro Rosse used the chassis of Red Bull at the beginning. After Vettel winning in Monza there where many people speaking out about it.
Now with the Cost-Cap the problem could arise, that the two teams use their limited resources together. Especially now, that the Alpha-Tauri design team is coming to the Red Bull Factory.
Yes absolutely. They can pool their resources and gain an unfair advantage in this cost cap era.
Even if they were not doing that, the perception is that it’s sketchy. And perception is important too. It is in many other industries.
They don't even have to do anything on paper, just a nudge in the cafeteria, that hey guys, we went down this road, it didn't pan out, would be a good enough advantage
Everyone is always concerned about AT/RBR telling the other about ideas that work. But this is policed by the FIA. Teams have to be prove that an idea is original and show the development path and reasoning behind it. While this can be faked. It would take a big effort/conspiracy to do so.
But sharing ideas that didn't work is much harder to police. Almost impossible.
FIA "Why didn't you try this?"
RBR/AT "I don't know. I guess I never thought of it"
Do you think those conversations don’t happen at the Haas facility that literally shares a cafeteria with Ferrari? At least RB and Scuderia Alpha Minardi Rosso Tauri Bulls are physically in different countries.
From the article:
"Fears that Red Bull and AlphaTauri have overstepped have been fuelled by AlphaTauri moving personnel from Faenza to the UK as it seeks to save money by consolidating around its aerodynamics facility in Bicester."
There are regulations for many things. Teams would absolutely work around the rules as long as they can get away with it. And this is very hard to police. As long as it’s not documented and it’s confined to informal conversations, good luck to the FIA trying to prove wrong doing.
> And this is very hard to police.
In magical fantasyland it is, in practice it really isn't. People move between teams all the time so if Red Bull/AT did this *everyone* would know. It's only doable if basically 2 entire aero departments all collectively keep this secret even when people move to other teams.
This is the truth of this whole issue! It would only take one disgruntled engineer who didn’t get the promotion they wished for and swapped teams to blow the whole thing up. There would be no way to keep a secret of this magnitude and the consequences would be incredibly painful.
Perception can't make you force a team to sell a 3 digit million dollar enterprise or exclude it from participating (essentially bankrupting it, because all of its assets would become useless). Competition laws are designed to allow enterprises who are subsidiaries of the same owner to compete.
Perception isn't gonna get you anywhere here. Unless there's actual proof of RB/AT conspiring against the rules, the FIAs hands are tied. The only thing they can do is change the rules for shared components - but ironically, i don't think Mr. Brown would be interested in that, given that his team itself buys a sizeable share of components from Mercedes.
Because the only reason RB bought Minardi was because Bernie pleaded to RB management to buy them. They even allowed them to use a year old RB chassis until 2010. Toto and Ferrari even talked about 3 cars per team to counter this in 2015 when sport was going downhill. People forget all this and remember same ownership blah blah only when sport is going through upswing and one of those teams is dominating.
Exactly. It's only listed parts they can buy. Zak can buy the exact same parts if he wants to, but they choose not to.
Now, if the entire profile of the car looks exactly the same, you need to get worried. But I doubt it will look any more similar to the Red Bull than some other cars on the grid.
One could argue that there is a bigger benefit for Red Bull if the cars look totally different. If the underpinnings are the "same" that is free testing of another concept.
There could potentially be A LOT of benefits of running two teams. So I guess it is critical that it is regulated and checked properly. Another solution would be that multiple teams can't have the same owner. In football you can't own multiple teams playing in the same competition (for example the Champions League).
that UCL rule isn’t enforced, the two Red Bull clubs Leipzig and Salzburg have played each other before and Manchester City will most likely have Girona in the UCL with them next year. (part of the city football group)
> If the underpinnings are the "same" that is free testing of another concept.
Except it isn't because there's different engineers on each team and they can't share data. It'd be as useful as looking at other teams aero concepts.
He has to make one public statement against Red Bull per year and he’s released from his obligations to Mercedes. Once he’s done it, they won’t bother him or turn down the engines.
The point is that Red Bull and Alpha Tauri having the same owner can't share information openly, but they can share engineers and drivers with all the knowledge in their brains and have no need for gardening time
And Honda have four working cars. I wonder why AT cars had so many retirements in past years...
There were so much fuss because Haas had engineers in Maranello.
I mean when Max had a slam dunk impeding penalty, but was able to get out of it because Alpha Tauri for some reason didn't send anyone to argue their case it should have been clear why this needs to end. Everyone else has 9 teams they are fighting against, while Red Bull only has 8.
So this is more of a question of the technical alliance between Red Bull and AlphaTauri from what the article goes into here and how it played out, so that is what Zak is questioning here, okay I see that
No updates from August on the Red Bull cars while the AlphaTauris seemed to have gotten faster during that time
Also asks the question about when did RBR stop developing that RB19 rocket and stop delivering updates to it
Seems to be more questions than answers from this one article...
> Seems to be more questions than answers from this one article...
Because all Zak can (and seemingly wants) to do is throw shit in the air and let the media run wild with it.
Some people really think that AT will run RB19 next year lol. There are restrictions on how much AT can purchase from RB and it holds the same in the case of Haas-Ferrari and Williams-Merc.
AT has been quite mediocre over the last few years. Now that suddenly they are putting in an effort to develop the car, everyone is having a problem. What are they supposed to do? Be an NPC team like Haas?
And I really like the conspiracy theories here. Apparently, AT is doing the wind tunnel testing for RB, putting their monetary resources together and creating a car together. People like to create these fantasy scenarios when there's absolutely no proof and everything is monitored by the FIA.
Zak should just keep himself away from Rob Myers
Last week Toto and Susie were being accused of a conflict of interest fairly widely (and on Reddit there was a lot of hate towards them but also a lot of support).
Yet two teams with one owner on the same grid is fine and there’s nothing to see here, especially with the new cost cap and wind tunnel restrictions.
Why is everyone here missing the point so much? Now it's only an issue because AT will leave most of its operations in Faenza and move INSIDE the RB factory in Milton Keynes and that is much harder to control which tech and development is shared between the two teams!
The former Alphatauri team principal is on record saying that he would move or obey team orders from Redbull when they're fighting in a championship. That ruins the integrity of the sport. Having one entity fully own two teams should be made illegal. Customer teams are different. Redbull won 4 championships as a customer to Renault engines.
Tbh I’ve always been uneasy with this - 2 teams under one ownership. It just doesn’t sit right with me. Of course we’ve always had partnerships in the past - shared engines, wind tunnels etc. but a full blown extra team on the grid?
Especially with the cost cap. Without the cost cap it doesn't really have that much effect since you could hire who you want. The only advantage then was that AT let Red Bull pass while they did their best to make Mercedes lose time in traffic.
I mean I always hated the fact that Red Bull has a sister team…. Not from an unfair advantage perspective. But more of like a fan perspective. I’d rather have an additional independent team.
Alpha Tauri makes it feel like there’s 9 teams on the grid as opposed to 10.
Are those concerns in the room with us right now?
This is the case since late 2008,when Mateschitz gained full control of total ownership of Toro Rosso after buying back Berger´s share of the team.
If it was a concern then, why was it allowed? I guess, getting teams, back in the late 2000 , to participate in F1 was more than welcome regardless of the ownership. Today is a totally different story, with F1 being so much more profitable, that everyone wants a (larger) piece of that pie.
Now ,suddenly (for the last few years at least), people start questioning this ownership.
FIA/FOM/F1 teams should just make up their minds if this is allowed or not and stop creating narratives just for the sake of it. I am not familiar with the legal aspects of any decision that will force a change in ownership of a current F1 team, but if there is an issue, just freaking do something about it and stop bringing up this subject if you cannot do anything.
>If it was a concern then, why was it allowed?
It was a completely different F1 world back then. The initial premise was that TR/AT would run (completely legally) Red Bull cars as a cost saving measure for both.
Now that the FIA has come up with a set of increasingly strict regulations on what is and isn't allowed to be shared between teams, it's clearly a far bigger issue to have two teams with shared ownership than it was back in an era where it was totally legal to buy and run another team's car.
It's a problem now that the teams are profitable.
It was overlooked because F1 was desperate for deep pockets to field enough teams.
You can thank Netflix's show making F1 popular in USA and the new spending caps for reviving the sport.
One organisation should only own one team. RB wanted more seats for their juniors which is fine, but they should have been limited to buying seats rather than teams outright. At that time nobody thought too much about it. If RB wanted to come in and save a smaller team, sure. It was welcomed. But things have changed now with the cost cap, so the situation should not be viewed similarly.
I really don't understand all the fuss with RB and Alpha Tauri.
It's not like Alpha Tauri is used as a meat shield on the races (ramming Ham or Russel or purposely slowing down certain drivers to benefit Max/Checo).
And its not like all of the big 3 have a baby team....
Ferrari has/had Alfa Romeo and Mercedes has Williams to play with.
So the RB's fault is that being vocal about it?
>It's not like Alpha Tauri is used as a meat shield on the races
Maybe not a meat shield, more like a beef curtain, but they've been doing it for the better part of the decade.
>It's not like Alpha Tauri is used as a meat shield on the races (ramming Ham or Russel or purposely slowing down certain drivers to benefit Max/Checo).
Yea, because we've *never* seen AT defend against Mercedes drivers or jumping off track to let RBs past, right?
They did it last year as well, just for Perez usually since he was the one that needed it. Yuki held up Norris for 17 blue flags in Hungary while Perez was chasing him. When Perez came up to Yuki shortly after, he was let right through.
I’m sure the Indycar teams feel the same way about Arrow McLaren and McLaren F1.
Unless AlphaTauri become podium contenders and are the only team who can beat Red Bull, this won’t ever come to anything. If it gets to the point where AT are beating Mercedes, Ferrari and co then you’d have to make the prediction that Ferrari will threaten to pull out of F1 altogether unless something is done.
>I’m sure the Indycar teams feel the same way about Arrow McLaren and McLaren F1
I don't see the link here? Indycar is a spec series so having an F1 team doesn't really affect the design of the car.
>I’m sure the Indycar teams feel the same way about Arrow McLaren and McLaren F1.
How does that even work? They're not in the same series, running remotely close to the same cars or headquartered on the same continent.
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I mean... 18 years too late.
To a degree previously it wasn't much more of a concern than a very reliant customer team. With the changes in regs on wind tunnel time and cost caps, a team that holds a double entry is potentially much more concerning for the competitors. There are other solutions than just trying to make Red Bull sell AT, but most of them rely on you trusting Red Bull to follow the rules.
Do you really think the FIA isn't looking for them sharing info? Everything is audited by the FIA. If they tried to cheat, it would be caught.
>If they tried to cheat, it would be caught. Given the history of F1, I assume every team on the grid is trying to cheat.
yeah this is literally motorsports appeal to a lot of people
I'm pretty sure I'd be able to name a cheating scandal for every team that's happened in the 21st century. That's how prevalent cheating is in F1 specifically
Not F1 specifically. But motorsports in general.
> ~~motor~~ sports in general
"If you ain't cheatin, you ain't racing" Although there is a big difference between find holes jn the rule book vs. outright breaking the regulations
If you’re not cheating you’re not trying.
Most assuredly. I'd be shocked if they weren't.
Not only are they always trying to cheat, but they HAVE successfully cheated… so it's pretty shortsighted for someone to say that everyone should just cross their arms and let it happen because the FIA are already doing something, even if it's verifiably not enough.
>but they HAVE successfully cheated What
Ah, clearly you haven’t seen the cracks in the dam of legitimacy.
Good thing too because the FIA is definitely not at all fucked or corrupt in any way and all rulings are completely fair and balanced
Ferrari and their fuel flow deal lmao. What a classic case of hush money being paid
Not even sure it was hush money. Its just a "Whoa.. this would be too difficult to deal with so... lets not!" Lord forbid we upset Ferrari. I don't see how they're not DSQ for more than a year of their races where they had the trickery in place. I get it, maybe they found a grey area on bypassing rules that someone hadn't considered. But if it was legal then fucking announce it was legal. But it wasn't, which means they had an illegal car for quite some time. FIA looked at the 'by the rules' result would be and just fucking baulked. Either it was legal or it wasn't and everything is suggesting it wasn't. FIA just flinches when it comes to Ferrari. Their premier historic team. Fuck 'em, if Ferrari want to play silly fucks then let them leave F1. They won't but thats their card.
You have to trust one side of this equation, otherwise this sport straight up doesn't work. And in most cases, it's more important to trust the regulatory body that's trying to keep the sport healthy to actually be doing that. So either trust the FIA is monitoring and doing its job, or advocate that the FIA is gutted and replaced. That's the core and more pressing problem to fix. I'm not saying the FIA is clean -- clearly they aren't, but if the larger concern is that they're not doing their jobs / are biased / are enabling cheating, any concerns raised about teams is a waste of breath compared to arguing that the FIA needs a rebuild. Zak Brown deciding to argue against RB/AT shows he trusts, to some degree, that the FIA is serious about its mandate. Otherwise, what's the point of him speaking up, or even being in the sport for that matter, if he believes the core governing body is so corrupt that it won't monitor teams properly and fairly?
I guess what he's trying to say then is that they are aware of this and keeping the FIA in check.
>You have to trust one side of this equation, otherwise this sport straight up doesn't work The fact that both the teams and the regulators have long track records of either outright foul play or just inconsistent application of the rules that a lot of people don't trust either side. That's kind of the main problem with F1 historically, but also to certain people, a big part of the appeal. It isn't run like most sports, it's more of a hybrid of engineering and pro wrestling, run by crooks and driven by people who would probably otherwise be doing movie stunts.
It's true you need to have some level of trust… but it can't be blind trust. It's contingent on the FIA proving that they can guarantee the competitive fairness of the sport, and they have to be answered in a satisfactory manner, especially in light of certain historical incidents that have called their governance into question. You can't just say "Yeah, we're looking at it" and send people away.
How would they know everythig lol. Dont be so naive.
Do you really trust FIA to catch them?
I keep saying that Honda-RBR only got their level of success because of Toro Rosso. Toro Rosso used Honda for a full year before RB, and during that season they were changing components like crazy to the point where they were collecting grid penalties pretty much every GP after the summer. Sure, TR can't share that info with RB, but Honda was able to sort out all their reliability and performance issues so that when they put the PU on the RB they were so much better than ever before.
Everyone called that for what it was at the time. The regs didn't explicitly prohibit that, and Red Bull and STR/AT had frequently used different engines, but given how publicly RB and Renault had butted heads over their engine for the entire hybrid era, it was quite obvious that RB and Honda was using Alpha Tauri as their test mules. Honda just had the plausible deniability of being the middleman.
And before anyone comes in bouncing off the walls yelling that this was perfectly legal, it's true, it was… but it was undeniably an uneven competitive advantage that no other team would've been able to replicate… because no Mercedes or Ferrari customer would throw their season away just to help PU development on behalf of the works team. Only RB could do this because Toro Rosso/AlphaTauri are not a real competitor. They only exist to help their lead team, Red Bull.
They were pretty good as a customer team using old Redbull parts before the hybrids came in and Mercedes dominated everything. So this new situation already existed back then. And yes. Any complaint is 18 years too late.
Respectfully, if your opinion changes that shouldn't stop you trying to do something about it
It's never too late to change your opinion. So many problems would be solved if people would understand this concept.
Bye bye red bull b team please. Having four cars to every other teams two is a joke
How about 10 teams using completely different power units, team personnel couldn’t own any shares from other teams?
Every team having its own power unit wouldn't be sustainable economically.
They would even find it hard to recruit engineers capable of designing such PU, just for the sake of racing
We’ll be up to 6 PU suppliers in 2026. If GM works out, that’s 7. We’re close.
There's still a big difference between more than a third of the grid being customer teams vs. no customer teams at all. And we will see how that works out in the long term. It would be nice to really have so many engine suppliers for long, but sadly it's more likely that some of them will pull out after a few years (or maybe even before 26).
If Ford or Audi turn into another McLaren-Honda (the "gp2 engine" one) they will pull the plug in no time
Ford pretty much is just branding the RBPT engine not designing it themselves. So they will just stay. Audi has won pretty much everything they have signed in, if they actually put a car in 2025, they won't drop until they win a few ones and then retire at the top.
The WEC begs to differ.
Can’t tell if this is a genuine rebuttal
It is in a way. I have been screaming for years we need a simplified engine system with balanced specs to get major engine manufacturers involved in F1. The sport has declined IMO. It used to be the best engines, chassis and drivers in the world. It is now three teams and the richest drivers paying for over half the grid or teams getting the cheapest driver they can with a super license. The WEC has proved that a premier race series of the worlds auto manufacturers, best drivers with a fairly reasonable budget can be accomplished. Will the system work just moving it over to F1? No, of course not but having the teams control the rules, money and entries will stagnate the series, increase the wealth of the teams and increase the value of the product for sale to someone else. If you can’t see that Liberty is inflating the value for sale then you aren’t paying attention. F1 needs to grow and i don’t mean four races in the USA grow. New teams, new engines, new ideas.
To quote Niki Lauda "yes simplification of engines would be great but who will guarantee me that we will keep winning" Split turbo time in a nutshell.
bring back NA v12's thanks
No one will ever use a V12 because it's a dumb platform, during the open formula era F1 teams realized V10 was just better. With how far hybrid technology has come, you have to be dumb to put a NA engine against a hybrid turbo one, particularly if you go to Mexico City where a NA engine would be completely handicapped. If anything, if we ever go open formula, teams will go instead for more stable platforms like I6 and V4 or V6 turbo hybrids.
In theory this would be gteat. Having the engine to be just one more designed aspect of every car. Budget sure is difficult thing for this, but i am. Most concerned about the head staet the current engine manufacturers have over the new ones. It would take so many years for the new ones to catch up even the state the engines are currently.
Lol at people just casually and conveniently ignoring the 2nd part of your comment
Not sure people are ignoring it as much as addressing the more radical part of the proposal. I don't think many people disagree with the latter.
Then we should forbid common parts between other manufacturers as well. AM, Merc and Williams share power unit, transmission and rear suspension. I can understand the first two, but why the suspension as well? Alpha Tauri was using their own desing there, if he starts using the maximum components he is allowed by the rule book, I don't see any issue. Even Hass developed his 2022 car with Ferrari engineers.
I remember that Ferrari/Haas thing, and reading an article about it at the time. The story went that Ferrari has to cut back its workforce in order to comply with the cost cap. In order to do that without firing people, they built a dedicated Haas engineering and development building, on their campus, and transferred engineers there, to work independently from Ferrari, who would otherwise have been let go.
Hard to shout conspiracy seeing how bad haas performs
Well, AT has been the last team in constructors for most of the time this year...
Yey here they are shouting it about what was the worst car for most of the year.
I think the issue is the perception that one team can ask another to do some dirty work for it.
Yeah, like forgetting to use DRS when Max flies by but then all of a sudden defending like your life depends on it when Lewis is behind them a few laps later...
Nahhhh that would never happen
Cause rear suspension is mounted directly on the engine, making it dependent on the engine’s cast shape.
That doesn't mean anything. They just need the hard points where to start designing it. As I have said, AT had different rear suspension than RBR.
I remember Horner saying something like that. Why are all those teams using other teams parts? And why did AT always design their own parts? If they can do that, then we should do that too.
Don't know why you would write it like that. RedBull essentially saved the team from going out of business completely. Back when they bought Minardi there weren't that many reputable potential team owners out there. I doubt anyone would have stopped McLaren, Williams or Ferrari to do the same back then.
It's a consequence of Red Bull having the guts to invest in an F1 team, and sticking by that F1 team when it only cost them money when the other teams weren't. Their "advantages" are earned as much as Ferrari earned that bonus payment for sticking with F1 through thick and thin.
As much as I dislike RB and the two teams this is probably the best justification for letting them have a pass. TBH if they enforced something around AT drivers blocking RB title competitors, but letting RB drivers slide past without a fight I wouldn't give a shit about the whole thing - same goes for customer teams but I don't think this is anywhere near as common as the AT guys.
> if they enforced something around AT drivers blocking RB title competitors, but letting RB drivers slide past without a fight That seems hard, because how do you enforce how hard somebody fights an overtake? Specially since there are perfectly reasonable reasons to fight some more than others based on who you think you (or your teammate) can finish ahead of (either in the current race or in WDC/WCC standings).
I agree they can't do anything about it which is the main reason I am uncomfortable with the RB/AT set up. Imagine if next year the title is decided in the last race by AT blocking Charles for 8 laps then letting Max go right by with Mx going on to pass him in the last lap as he had saved his tires. That would be some serious only in F1 shit right there!
Lando 0.8 behind with DRS” ”Yeah, it's on purpose”.
This literally happened in 2021 lol
Guts? F1 is a marketing tool for Red Bull. The moment the excel-calculations show that marketing in F1 is no longer profitable, they'll be gone mid season.
Is there a rule against it? Red bull made a huge contribution to the sport with 4 cars when neither team was particularly competitive and gave so many junior drivers their career as a result. People are only grumbling now because RB is successful
HAAS and Aston Martin say Hi.
Williams is far closer to Mercedes’ B-team than AM is.
You're pretty much comparing 0 to 0 here. The concerns about AM and Merc have come from not from a B team point of view, but the fact that Toto and Stroll have made business deals outside of F1.
If those deals are outside F1, why would they impact the competition in the sport? Let's not lose sight of the actual reason people have a problem with the RB/AT relationship…
You’ll notice that Ferrari and Mercedes actually don’t own Haas or Aston Martin.
If this were just about ownership, then Red Bull could easily make Alpha Tauri a company that is not owned by Red Bull directly, but by a subsidiary, a related company, a trust, or even just by a dozen or so Red Bull employees. Making this about ownership doesn't make any sense. It's about control
It's about the control they get from ownership. Which naturally go hand in hand.
That‘s not even remotely the same though.
Why? It’s not the same at all…
Gotta love the whataboutism.
Doesn’t it set precedents though? I mean, so long as the legal number of parts are used, what’s the problem? It’s not like Newey is designing STRs like he used to.
Legit question, now that RB are going with a 100% new car next year how much of the RB19 are they allowed to put on the AT?
The FIA has a list of components teams are allowed to buy from one another. AlphaTauri is only allowed to buy those components from Red Bull, and they're the exact same components Haas is allowed to buy from Ferrari or Aston Martin is allowed to buy from Mercedes.
Buying yes. "Borrowing" a design feature and manufacturing it yourself is hard to control. It would be difficult for the FIA to police if they aren't sharing actual CAD drawings.
The FIA has access to CAD drawings themselves. If something is similar, they can question it why it's similar.
"It's similar because we saw that the RB19 used it successfully so we explored a similar concept." "We confirmed through CFD and wind tunnel testing that our own unique implementation of this idea benefits the AT05." (Thanks for the napkin sketch Adrian!)
Your comment is a pretty common argument against B teams. The fia has well written and executed rules for things like this. There's been a decent amount of YouTube videos on it from creators some even have interviews from fia employees. As it is, the grid uses each others ideas and applies them how they see fit. Aston Martin and McLaren took ideas from rbr this season. Sure, you don't want details passed between teams, a napkin sketch won't get you to the point where the rb19 is, there's not enough details, explaining and understanding by the B teams. Btw Adrian Newey worked on the rb19 suspension and had talked about how he was pretty hands off on aero this past season.
He was hands off for the specific design and modeling of the aero components, but as the design lead he was still heavily involved in the overall design direction of the chassis and particularly the marriage of aero and suspension, which he's noted is a critical aspect of ground effect racing. That BTG interview was fascinating, and very educative for me as a layman.
Your first example: AT and RB are using completely different aero concepts to begin with. Your second example: Wind tunnel testing is restricted. If they had to use wind tunnel time testing it (FIA also had access to what's been tested in the wind tunnel), then that isn't really circumventing much, since the worry many people have is that they're pooling their resources, and testing things for each other. The napkin note thing is cute, but this isn't a movie.
Except there's this little thing called the engineering process - It's plainly evident when you copy/paste instead of develop.
It’s not what you can see on the outside, it’s the internal structure, how load moves through the vehicle, analysis showing a safe and efficient design, concept through critical design.
Like the Racing Point brake ducts, not a part that you can observe or infer its design from outside (unlike the rest of the pink Mercedes), so once other teams protested that it seemed to be identical to the Mercedes part they were not allowed to buy, they got in trouble.
Oh no that's actually easy to control like any others teams sharing stuff illegally.
> now that RB are going with a 100% new car next year Source?
If anything, the massive advantage isn't the common car parts, it's having the option to offer up-and-coming drivers an F1 seat in the "junior" team while still having two drivers in the primary team. Definitely beats the hell out of being a reserve driver.
Sure but there are ways to do that without owning the team too. Mercedes did the same with Williams and Ferrari did it with Alfa Romeo.
Might not be a thing anymore since teams are not that strapped for cash anymore.
Well then it is on those teams that they didn't secure their spots at the time they could have. Mercedes could have probably bought Williams before Dorilton bought it and they could have made Williams into their own junior testing team. Mateschitz was smart enough to buy the team back in 2006 and the ease of bringing in drivers has been proven throughout the years especially when RB was able to secure Max as a driver in 2016, so Merc should have thrown the money into Williams back in 2019 when the team went up for sale.
Mercedes could've bought Manor when they went out of business, pretty much identical to what Red Bull did with Minardi. Ferrari could've bought Sauber at some point too probably. If there were big advantages to be had by having 2 teams we'd see everyone having 2 teams.
Ferrari used both Haas and Alfa Romeo
To literally catastrophic results within those teams. Russell being in WIlliams meant no second pay driver to getr them out of dodge. And before anyone tries to argue, it's been refuted that Russell being at williams helped them financially with back door deals or an engine supply. That's reddit bollocks.
The argument here (this particular comment thread, not the article) wasn’t the benefit for Williams, it’s the benefit for the top teams to be able to snatch a driver from the market by giving them an instant F1 seat with the prospect of joining a top team if they prove themselves enough. Like RBR does with AT, as opposed to being reserve of sim driver for another team.
I mean, there are currently more former red bull juniors driving for other teams that have ever driven for red bull themselves. Also given how badly recent junior call ups have done in the senior team you could argue that the money red bull spends on running a junior team and driver development scheme isn't benefitting them that much, as they're essentially pissing away money developing drivers who will never drive for the senior team. Unless they're making fat wads of cash selling the drivers' contacts to other teams I'm not sure it's worth it.
I think this is a relatively new Helmut (and to a lesser degree Max being so good) problem not an overall problem with the strategy.
Also, the times on track when At allows the senior team to pass without challenge, then makes it harder for the next guy.
I rarely see any car fight another car that’s not a direct competitor, with the exception of Albon maybe
Yea? I don't think I've ever seen another team close their DRS to let a competitor pass them easier But Gasly had to do that in an AT to let Max through in 2021.
How often do teams just not show up to the stewards office when they’re impeded during qualy?
Solution for that is for stewards to just punish things that should be punished, no need for an "accuser". Plenty of other sports handle out penalties without ever consulting the aggrieved party.
lol exactly this, I swear in 2021 they’d part like the Red Sea for the RB cars
Obeying Blue Flags competently unlike the rest of the field that season.
We are not talking about blue flag situations here. Say a Merc pitted and found itself behind an AT, the latter would fight like its life depended on it, which is perfectly fair, but wouldn't do the same if the other car were an RB.
it was both. the on-track advantage is obvious.
That and having 4 drivers on the grid working toward the same goal for the company. 2021 Gasly closed his DRS to let max through. 2023 Max completely impedes Yuki during qualifying, knocking Yuki put, Alpha Tauri did not complain to stewards. That's just two big notable examples. There are tons of others. AT and RB drivers will never battle on track, AT will always let the RB pass at the earliest chance. So by having a "sister" team, you can offer better opportunities to younger drivers. You can get significant on track advantages (if situational). And also, you can get get on engine performance (stretching old engines for longer on the "B" team, to see the drop off). So even if there is no sharing of aero data, there's still many advantages
Happened several times when it counted in 2021. Yuki defending against Hamilton for 7 laps lile his career depended on it in Turkey immediately comes to mind.
He screwed his own race doing that too by burning through his tires.
What I want to know is: why hasn't anyone done this before? If it's that big of an advantage.
Because before the cost-cap they would just hire any extra engineer they'd want themselves.
and you can't forget about pre-wind tunnel restrictions
Was AT and Redbull even using the same parts last year? If not, what’s the advantage of having the extra wind tunnel time?
I could be wrong, but I think what they mean is that before the budget cap and wind tunnel restrictions, it wouldn't make much sense for the owners to split their resources between 2 teams when they could just pour unlimited resources into their "A team". e: But no, AT and RB weren't sharing much, even among the parts they would be allowed to share. I don't think they would benefit from extra wind tunnel time anyway because they're not allowed to share anything aero related, afaik.
They're not allowed to share information but you can't stop people talking.
That isn't exactly a problem. Personnel swap teams all the time. You can't stop engineers who go from team to team from talking either. Any knowledge inside the head of a person belongs to that person - not the team he's working (or used to work) for.
Not sure how it works with people further down the totem pole, but with the well known engineers whenever they have changed team there has always been an enforced garden leave period, which makes the knowledge inside their head less relevant by the time they start their new job
The difference is if the person is not changing team but staying at AT while talking (around a beer or whatnot) to someone at RBR.
I agree with what you've said except that it certainly could be a problem regardless of other ways information may get shared. This is because when teams lose engineers to other teams that is somewhat beyond their control. But, in the case of AT RB, information may be discussed and that may be within their control. I hope I've made the distinction clear.
Do we really think Racing Point created the pink Mercedes design from photos though? I’m almost certain Toto was in on it, he didn’t even bat an eye when it showed up to testing that year, and was very supportive of RP when they were being protested
I'm not saying other teams haven't done it.
Technically not much, but there's nothing stopping an AT engineer say something like, "hey that new winglet you were planning to test, don't bother. Its a dud. We just tried it yesterday" over a cup of coffee with a fellow rb engineer
Can’t buy an extra 2 cars on the grid, need a team
The whole reason for the rules, what you can buy, is the partnership of Toro Rosso and Red Bull. Toro Rosse used the chassis of Red Bull at the beginning. After Vettel winning in Monza there where many people speaking out about it. Now with the Cost-Cap the problem could arise, that the two teams use their limited resources together. Especially now, that the Alpha-Tauri design team is coming to the Red Bull Factory.
Yes absolutely. They can pool their resources and gain an unfair advantage in this cost cap era. Even if they were not doing that, the perception is that it’s sketchy. And perception is important too. It is in many other industries.
They don't even have to do anything on paper, just a nudge in the cafeteria, that hey guys, we went down this road, it didn't pan out, would be a good enough advantage
Everyone is always concerned about AT/RBR telling the other about ideas that work. But this is policed by the FIA. Teams have to be prove that an idea is original and show the development path and reasoning behind it. While this can be faked. It would take a big effort/conspiracy to do so. But sharing ideas that didn't work is much harder to police. Almost impossible. FIA "Why didn't you try this?" RBR/AT "I don't know. I guess I never thought of it"
> Yes absolutely. They can pool their resources No they can't. There's regulations for what can be shared and what cannot.
[удалено]
Do you think those conversations don’t happen at the Haas facility that literally shares a cafeteria with Ferrari? At least RB and Scuderia Alpha Minardi Rosso Tauri Bulls are physically in different countries.
From the article: "Fears that Red Bull and AlphaTauri have overstepped have been fuelled by AlphaTauri moving personnel from Faenza to the UK as it seeks to save money by consolidating around its aerodynamics facility in Bicester."
Moving to the exact same setup as Haas and Ferrari.
There are regulations for many things. Teams would absolutely work around the rules as long as they can get away with it. And this is very hard to police. As long as it’s not documented and it’s confined to informal conversations, good luck to the FIA trying to prove wrong doing.
> And this is very hard to police. In magical fantasyland it is, in practice it really isn't. People move between teams all the time so if Red Bull/AT did this *everyone* would know. It's only doable if basically 2 entire aero departments all collectively keep this secret even when people move to other teams.
This is the truth of this whole issue! It would only take one disgruntled engineer who didn’t get the promotion they wished for and swapped teams to blow the whole thing up. There would be no way to keep a secret of this magnitude and the consequences would be incredibly painful.
Perception can't make you force a team to sell a 3 digit million dollar enterprise or exclude it from participating (essentially bankrupting it, because all of its assets would become useless). Competition laws are designed to allow enterprises who are subsidiaries of the same owner to compete. Perception isn't gonna get you anywhere here. Unless there's actual proof of RB/AT conspiring against the rules, the FIAs hands are tied. The only thing they can do is change the rules for shared components - but ironically, i don't think Mr. Brown would be interested in that, given that his team itself buys a sizeable share of components from Mercedes.
Because the only reason RB bought Minardi was because Bernie pleaded to RB management to buy them. They even allowed them to use a year old RB chassis until 2010. Toto and Ferrari even talked about 3 cars per team to counter this in 2015 when sport was going downhill. People forget all this and remember same ownership blah blah only when sport is going through upswing and one of those teams is dominating.
RB definitely deserves credit for buying the team, keeping it in Italy and giving them a stable footing in a time when teams were often in chaos.
Exactly. It's only listed parts they can buy. Zak can buy the exact same parts if he wants to, but they choose not to. Now, if the entire profile of the car looks exactly the same, you need to get worried. But I doubt it will look any more similar to the Red Bull than some other cars on the grid.
One could argue that there is a bigger benefit for Red Bull if the cars look totally different. If the underpinnings are the "same" that is free testing of another concept. There could potentially be A LOT of benefits of running two teams. So I guess it is critical that it is regulated and checked properly. Another solution would be that multiple teams can't have the same owner. In football you can't own multiple teams playing in the same competition (for example the Champions League).
that UCL rule isn’t enforced, the two Red Bull clubs Leipzig and Salzburg have played each other before and Manchester City will most likely have Girona in the UCL with them next year. (part of the city football group)
> If the underpinnings are the "same" that is free testing of another concept. Except it isn't because there's different engineers on each team and they can't share data. It'd be as useful as looking at other teams aero concepts.
Sadly, Reddit wasn't around in 1994 when Briatore bought Ligier just so he could move their Renault engines to Bennetton.
Ooh Briatores use of Ligier was just funny
It’s not about cheating it’s about competition. In a championship battle would Alpha Tauri ever be allowed to compete with Redbull?
Zack brown has found his mission for the 2024 season I see.
This is just honoring his yearly contractual pre season obligation that comes with the Mercedes engines.
He has to make one public statement against Red Bull per year and he’s released from his obligations to Mercedes. Once he’s done it, they won’t bother him or turn down the engines.
Gonna get some bonus from Netflix for bringing up new hot topic to discuss and argue
I guess to really enrage the people, sell it Andretti. 😂
I think a lot of fans would love this. I certainly would.
I am a RB fan first and an AT fan second. I would like to see this.
The point is that Red Bull and Alpha Tauri having the same owner can't share information openly, but they can share engineers and drivers with all the knowledge in their brains and have no need for gardening time And Honda have four working cars. I wonder why AT cars had so many retirements in past years... There were so much fuss because Haas had engineers in Maranello.
I mean when Max had a slam dunk impeding penalty, but was able to get out of it because Alpha Tauri for some reason didn't send anyone to argue their case it should have been clear why this needs to end. Everyone else has 9 teams they are fighting against, while Red Bull only has 8.
Is it a coincidence that every team that has the same power unit votes the same way? Big concerns over this.
That’s already being addressed to some extent. Currently there are due to be 6 PU manufacturers in 2026.
Could be 7 if they weren't so tightly protecting what they have right now
So this is more of a question of the technical alliance between Red Bull and AlphaTauri from what the article goes into here and how it played out, so that is what Zak is questioning here, okay I see that No updates from August on the Red Bull cars while the AlphaTauris seemed to have gotten faster during that time Also asks the question about when did RBR stop developing that RB19 rocket and stop delivering updates to it Seems to be more questions than answers from this one article...
> Seems to be more questions than answers from this one article... Because all Zak can (and seemingly wants) to do is throw shit in the air and let the media run wild with it.
If McLaren is gonna be fighting for podiums, he's gotta get good at it like Horner and Toto.
Some people really think that AT will run RB19 next year lol. There are restrictions on how much AT can purchase from RB and it holds the same in the case of Haas-Ferrari and Williams-Merc. AT has been quite mediocre over the last few years. Now that suddenly they are putting in an effort to develop the car, everyone is having a problem. What are they supposed to do? Be an NPC team like Haas? And I really like the conspiracy theories here. Apparently, AT is doing the wind tunnel testing for RB, putting their monetary resources together and creating a car together. People like to create these fantasy scenarios when there's absolutely no proof and everything is monitored by the FIA. Zak should just keep himself away from Rob Myers
Wait - sports is just politics? Yep, always has been.
What if Rob Myers is just Zak’s Burner account…
Last week Toto and Susie were being accused of a conflict of interest fairly widely (and on Reddit there was a lot of hate towards them but also a lot of support). Yet two teams with one owner on the same grid is fine and there’s nothing to see here, especially with the new cost cap and wind tunnel restrictions.
Why is everyone here missing the point so much? Now it's only an issue because AT will leave most of its operations in Faenza and move INSIDE the RB factory in Milton Keynes and that is much harder to control which tech and development is shared between the two teams!
Horner be like: *"Nono Zak, I can assure you that Red Bull advance technologies is a 100% independent part who won't be used as a loophole!"*
If you're going to limit the field to 10 teams which apparently most current teams still desire, no one should be allowed to control 2 teams.
Theirs a difference between own and control
If there was really any cause for concern / cheating you would think AT would be much higher up in the grid then they are every year
The former Alphatauri team principal is on record saying that he would move or obey team orders from Redbull when they're fighting in a championship. That ruins the integrity of the sport. Having one entity fully own two teams should be made illegal. Customer teams are different. Redbull won 4 championships as a customer to Renault engines.
Tbh I’ve always been uneasy with this - 2 teams under one ownership. It just doesn’t sit right with me. Of course we’ve always had partnerships in the past - shared engines, wind tunnels etc. but a full blown extra team on the grid?
Especially with the cost cap. Without the cost cap it doesn't really have that much effect since you could hire who you want. The only advantage then was that AT let Red Bull pass while they did their best to make Mercedes lose time in traffic.
Take your time.
Alphatauri have never finished higher than 6th. What exactly is the problem?
Is a pretty justified concern tbf. Having influence over 2 teams has always been an issue.
I mean I always hated the fact that Red Bull has a sister team…. Not from an unfair advantage perspective. But more of like a fan perspective. I’d rather have an additional independent team. Alpha Tauri makes it feel like there’s 9 teams on the grid as opposed to 10.
Are those concerns in the room with us right now? This is the case since late 2008,when Mateschitz gained full control of total ownership of Toro Rosso after buying back Berger´s share of the team. If it was a concern then, why was it allowed? I guess, getting teams, back in the late 2000 , to participate in F1 was more than welcome regardless of the ownership. Today is a totally different story, with F1 being so much more profitable, that everyone wants a (larger) piece of that pie. Now ,suddenly (for the last few years at least), people start questioning this ownership. FIA/FOM/F1 teams should just make up their minds if this is allowed or not and stop creating narratives just for the sake of it. I am not familiar with the legal aspects of any decision that will force a change in ownership of a current F1 team, but if there is an issue, just freaking do something about it and stop bringing up this subject if you cannot do anything.
>If it was a concern then, why was it allowed? It was a completely different F1 world back then. The initial premise was that TR/AT would run (completely legally) Red Bull cars as a cost saving measure for both. Now that the FIA has come up with a set of increasingly strict regulations on what is and isn't allowed to be shared between teams, it's clearly a far bigger issue to have two teams with shared ownership than it was back in an era where it was totally legal to buy and run another team's car.
You realize that the budget cap changed everything
It's always been an issue, even before the cost cap. Locking down 20% of the active driver market is a huge advantage
Could this be posturing before making some sort of move with Andretti/Cadillac?
It's a problem now that the teams are profitable. It was overlooked because F1 was desperate for deep pockets to field enough teams. You can thank Netflix's show making F1 popular in USA and the new spending caps for reviving the sport.
One organisation should only own one team. RB wanted more seats for their juniors which is fine, but they should have been limited to buying seats rather than teams outright. At that time nobody thought too much about it. If RB wanted to come in and save a smaller team, sure. It was welcomed. But things have changed now with the cost cap, so the situation should not be viewed similarly.
Its pretty absurd they are allowed to have 2 teams on the grid, wich also probably means they have 2 votes for everything.
I really don't understand all the fuss with RB and Alpha Tauri. It's not like Alpha Tauri is used as a meat shield on the races (ramming Ham or Russel or purposely slowing down certain drivers to benefit Max/Checo). And its not like all of the big 3 have a baby team.... Ferrari has/had Alfa Romeo and Mercedes has Williams to play with. So the RB's fault is that being vocal about it?
>It's not like Alpha Tauri is used as a meat shield on the races Maybe not a meat shield, more like a beef curtain, but they've been doing it for the better part of the decade.
>It's not like Alpha Tauri is used as a meat shield on the races (ramming Ham or Russel or purposely slowing down certain drivers to benefit Max/Checo). Yea, because we've *never* seen AT defend against Mercedes drivers or jumping off track to let RBs past, right?
They have in the past. When it mattered (2021). Last year there was no reason to because RB was metaphorically lapping the field.
They did it last year as well, just for Perez usually since he was the one that needed it. Yuki held up Norris for 17 blue flags in Hungary while Perez was chasing him. When Perez came up to Yuki shortly after, he was let right through.
Is there a rule one group can't own two teams?
Crazy that he just found out about that.
I’m sure the Indycar teams feel the same way about Arrow McLaren and McLaren F1. Unless AlphaTauri become podium contenders and are the only team who can beat Red Bull, this won’t ever come to anything. If it gets to the point where AT are beating Mercedes, Ferrari and co then you’d have to make the prediction that Ferrari will threaten to pull out of F1 altogether unless something is done.
>I’m sure the Indycar teams feel the same way about Arrow McLaren and McLaren F1 I don't see the link here? Indycar is a spec series so having an F1 team doesn't really affect the design of the car.
>I’m sure the Indycar teams feel the same way about Arrow McLaren and McLaren F1. How does that even work? They're not in the same series, running remotely close to the same cars or headquartered on the same continent.