McLaren F1 team principal Zak Brown has accused the hierarchy of Formula 1 of forgetting about the sport’s fans which he says without them the sport would be nothing.
Speaking at Autosport International show earlier this month, Brown was sceptical of Liberty Media’s management and ignoring their original policy of putting the fans first, something which the American firm had promised when they brought the sport from Bernie Ecclestone.
“At the end of the day, the sport’s for the fans, so it all starts with the fans,” explained Brown. “If you don’t have lots of great fans from around the world, new ones, old ones, then you’re not going to have sponsors to pay for the racing.
“I think sometimes the sport has forgotten who we are doing this all for and I think at times we feel we are doing it for us, we are doing this for the fans.”
Brown also explained his reasoning on why he opened up McLaren’s Woking HQ to companies such as Amazon Prime when they did a documentary on the team’s preparations for the 2017 season.
“This is sport entertainment, and so to me, it feels quite natural to want to open up the team, I know being a fan myself, I love seeing what is going on in Formula 1, meeting the drivers, and seeing what is going on behind the scenes, so I think to deprive the fans of that is crazy, so, we have gone the other way when we started doing the Amazon film, and then obviously we were very early to participate in Netflix, I think without fans, we don’t have a sport.”
