19/03/2024
NEWS STORY
Zak Brown claims that each of the current ten F1 teams is worth "north of £1bn".
The claim comes weeks after F1 officially rejected Andretti's bid to join the grid, McLaren being one of only two teams that publicly supported the American outfit's bid.
There is no doubt that F1 fully reaped the benefits of the pandemic, as people in lockdown around the world found Drive to Survive to be the perfect means to while away the hours.
Also contributing to the sport's rise in prominence was the fact that it was eventually able to scrape together a fairly meaningful calendar, even if the majority of the tracks that were called upon to rescue the series are likely never to be used again.
Boosted by a whole new army of fans, a large majority of whom are female, the sport has seemingly gone from strength to strength, and as the busiest season in F1's 75 year history continues, Brown is confident that things can only get better.
"Half the grid is profitable," he told a Bloomberg event in Jeddah. "They weren't five years ago.
"What Liberty is wanting to do is protect the value of the ten teams that exist," he added. "In the pre-Liberty era you had teams falling away. Now in the Liberty era, there are teams lining up that want to get into the sport. So I think Liberty is just seeing how, when and if they want teams to enter."
Of course, Brown appears to forget that at one point it looked like even McLaren might "fall away", but luckily the Bahrainis were they to provide a much needed financial safety net.
While Brown believes that ten teams is enough, the quality over quantity argument doesn't stretch as far as his belief that the sport could handle more races, and while the current Concorde Agreement limits the number of events each year, in a bid to bring more fee-busting host tracks on board, some of the current events could be rotated.
"If we needed to dial up a few more races, I'd say Asia is an important territory," he said. "If we had more markets to go into, I'd say a race in Asia, India, South Africa. That would really give us a global footprint."
Rather than a sport that had for decades exuded passion, bravery, technological genius and excitement, it actually sound more like he's promoting a hamburger chain.