McLaren has recommended that Formula 1’s rule-making process adopts a secret ballot because the team believes this could decide crucial swing votes, rather than completely solve the issue of strategic voting.
F1 has switched from a governance process that requires unanimity to push through rule changes to one that has a majority vote threshold as part of the new Concorde Agreement all teams had signed last year.
The F1 Commission now comprises 10 votes from the 10 teams, 10 votes for the FIA and 10 votes for F1 itself, with a ‘super majority’ of 28 votes required for immediate changes and a majority of 25 votes or over sufficient for changes for the following season or beyond.
However, the existing thresholds still encourage the practice of teams who have alliances or supplier relationships voting together, and on Thursday ahead of the Portuguese Grand Prix McLaren CEO Zak Brown urged F1 to switch to secret votes in F1 Commission meetings to combat that.
He said strategic voting “isn’t sport” and “isn’t putting the fans first” but beyond the call to implement secret ballot voting did not elaborate why that would be effective.
But McLaren has now explained that it hopes that secret ballots will empower teams in crucial moments.
Asked by The Race on Friday to explain why this proposal may make a difference, McLaren team principal Andreas Seidl said: “The reason why we propose it as the way forward, we are fully aware that this is obviously not solving all issues, but we still think that it could change one or the other close votes.
“[It is] in order to get a result which is in the interest of the sport and more in the interests also of the majority of the teams.
“And sometimes it’s just about one vote. That could be a help regarding these situations. And we shouldn’t forget that for some proposals you only need a normal majority and there I would say there’s an even higher chance to get it through.
“The fact is, if you look back on a lot of decisions the last two years, we definitely can see that several votes went into a direction which were clearly not in favour of the interests of the majority of the teams and that’s definitely something which is an issue in the sport at the moment.
“That’s why we were proposing that as a short-term measure.”
The solution effectively encourages smaller teams to trust that the combination of anonymity and a majority process will stop their vote being revealed – and it appears that normal majority items are the safer target.
Even if voting took place in secret, it would be easy for a bigger team to be suspicious that one of its affiliates had ‘broken rank’ if the result fell a certain way – especially for ‘super majority’ items.
For instance, if Ferrari instructed Alfa Romeo and Haas to vote to block a rule change that every other team, the FIA and F1 are keen on, but the proposal then received 28 positive votes, Ferrari would know one of its customers voted in favour.
So, for the smaller team there may not be enough confidence that voting independently would go undetected.
McLaren is pushing for this as part of an ongoing opposition to so-called affiliate teams in F1.
Of the 10 teams in F1 at present, only Alpine has no form of alignment with another squad at all, as every other team is either an engine/parts supplier or customer.
McLaren believes, politically or otherwise, there is too much scope for big F1 teams to have influence and small teams to be dependent.
It thinks a secret ballot is a short-term solution to a process that should be corrected via revised regulations and governance agreements longer-term.
“The way we see F1 at McLaren is pretty clear, we would like to have a Formula 1 which consists of 10 teams that are independent, fully independent, constructors,” said Seidl.
“From our point of view the allowances which are there at the moment from the regulations regarding the sharing of infrastructure or resources, and also buying parts, is going too far.
“At the same time we have to accept the regulations as they are at the moment.
“But it’s definitely something where we have intense dialogue with the FIA and Formula 1, in order to look forward to the next cycle of the regulations and also the governance to correct that.”
