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Full Noise by SN
Important update on 1476AMMcLaren boss takes swipe at Ricciardo amid F1 rumours
SEN • April 27th, 2026 2:37 pm
McLaren boss Zak Brown has taken a swipe at Daniel Ricciardo in a bid to highlight a long-running issue in Formula One.
Amid reports that Mercedes is set to buy out a 25% stake in rival team Alpine, Brown has vented his frustrations on the notion of A-B teams in the sport.
Red Bull have a long history in this department after buying Minardi in 2006 and transforming the team into “Toro Rosso”.
The team’s name has been ever-changing with stints as Alpha Tauri, Visa Cash App Racing Bulls and now Racing Bulls, but its role has been the same.
A home for rising talents to prove their worth and come up through the ranks with an opportunity to drive for Red Bull the pinnacle for the lucky few.
But Brown’s issue is the bias sister teams can and have shown when F1 can so often come down to single points.
The American used Ricciardo’s final race in the sport back in the 2024 season as an example of the benevolence he takes issue with.
At the climax of the race, Ricciardo – who was running 18th in the race - snatched the fastest lap meaning he took a valuable point away from winner Lando Norris who was in contention for the drivers’ title with Max Verstappen at the time.
"I've been saying for 10 years, I don't like co-ownership. I don't like AB teams. I think it runs a high risk of compromising the sporting integrity of the sport," he said.
"We've seen fastest laps from one team. You know, Daniel Ricardo take a point away from McLaren to help Max Verstappen and Red Bull."
Formula One returns this weekend after a five-week break.
Both the Bahrain and Saudi Grands Prix were cancelled due to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, so teams have had an unexpected hiatus to improve their cars.
McLaren duo Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris will have entirely new cars for the Miami Grand Prix this weekend as they look to improve on their initial setbacks.
Mclaren currently sit third in the constructors’ standings as they look for a third consecutive title while Norris and Piastri sit fifth and sixth respectively.
A double did not start in China paired with Piastri’s DNS in Melbourne impacted the start to their campaign.
"In our intent, there was always the idea to deliver a completely new car – especially from an aerodynamic upgrades point of view – for the North American races so we could keep up with this plan," Stella said this week.
"Obviously, the fact that the calendar has been changed sort of helped a little bit, like I'm sure helped all the other teams that could work more streamlined towards upgrading the car rather than being busy with racing.
“But I could say overall that, across Miami and Canada, we will see an entirely new MCL40.
Again, I would like to stress that this is what I would expect of most of our competitors so (it is) not necessarily going to be a shift in the pecking order, it will be effectively just a check who has been able to add more performance within the same time frame.
“We also have some performance to recover if we look at Mercedes, and to some extent Ferrari as well, but we are quite happy with the development that we've been able to manage in the background.
"Hopefully we should be able to see a slightly more competitive MCL40 in Miami and then in Canada, considering that the last race was already a decent competitive performance in Japan. So we definitely look forward to the next races.”
