Why Mercedes and Ferrari are allies in F1's new war

It's been apparent for some months that Ferrari and Mercedes are currently aligned in terms of their views on the future of Formula 1, and that the fierce on-track rivals have formed an unlikely alliance as the championship's new management tries to implement change.

That was underlined last year when provisional proposals for a simplified power unit package, tabled by Liberty and the FIA, were quickly shot down by both manufacturers. Ferrari president Sergio Marchionne warned of dumbing down the series, and his frustration led to a threat to withdraw from F1, and subsequent talk of a breakaway series in 2021. Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff did not dismiss this.

It was also clear to see that F1's two top teams are on the same page by looking at an FIA press conference from the Australian Grand Prix. During proceedings, Christian Horner was vocal on the Laurent Mekies affair, and accused Ferrari of breaking a gentlemen's agreement over the length of gardening leave for ex-FIA personnel.

In stark contrast, Wolff, sitting between Horner and Ferrari team principal Maurizio Arrivabene, declined to criticise the Italian team - he simply didn't want to get involved in a public slanging match.

After the race in Australia there was another sign of their current accord when Wolff made a point of heading over to Arrivabene to congratulate him on the unexpected win. A quick post-race nod or handshake between rivals is good manners, and not unusual in the F1 paddock, but on this occasion, it developed into a friendly chat, with smiles all around, before Wolff headed back to Merc's base.

The timing of this new friendship is no co-incidence. In Bahrain this weekend, F1 will present its blueprint for the future to the teams, signalling the start of what promises to be an intense period of lobbying, politicking and positioning in the build-up to 2021. If Ferrari and Mercedes are working together - with their respective customer teams potentially also in alignment - they will start any negotiations from a position of strength.

The Mekies case exposed simmering tensions beneath the surface as the teams jockey for position. Red Bull, which can no longer benefit from the special relationship that Horner and owner Dietrich Mateschitz used to enjoy with Bernie Ecclestone, clearly fears that it might lose out.

"It's no secret to anybody that there's a very close working alliance between Ferrari and Mercedes," Horner told Autosport. "They are positioning themselves regarding the next Concorde Agreement, which obviously dictates finance, regulations etc. It's an unusual position for two extreme competitors. They have tremendous influence through engine supply over customers. That's an issue for F1 to deal with."

The breakaway threat, wielded on several occasions in the past, remains in the arsenal of the top teams. Just before Melbourne, Ecclestone stoked the fire by saying that Liberty must offer the teams the right deal - and should take Marchionne's threats seriously.

"It's no secret to anybody that there's a very close working alliance between Ferrari and Mercedes" Christian Horner

"Talking to people like Sergio and Toto, they are not idiots," he said. "They will weigh up whether it's better for everyone to leave and do their own series, or do we need the FIA to look over things? So, people will start to think what to do.

"The trouble now is that Sergio has come out and said, 'The next time I see you, I'm going to punch you in the face.' And when he sees the people he's got to be sure that he's going to punch them in the face. And Sergio is not the guy that makes threats as a joke and then runs away from it."

Frustrated by Ecclestone's comments on the potential breakaway, and by Ferrari's unsubtle attempts to wield its power, Sky F1 pundit Damon Hill weighed in on Twitter on the morning of the Australian race. He noted that "the sooner Ferrari and Mercedes breakaway the better as far as I'm concerned. These massive industrial complexes are ruining the sport."

That triggered a brief war of words with the Brackley team's Twitter account, which reminded Damon that he had once benefited from dominant Renault power - and Hill in turn rightly pointed out that he actually drove for a humble "garagiste" team in the form of Williams, and not a mighty manufacturer...

Later, Hill expanded on his views, and underlined his distaste for the way he feels F1's two biggest players are working in tandem.

"Ferrari and Mercedes are acting in concert to try and create conditions under which they would stay in the sport," he said.

"If you would have accused them of working together in the past they would have denied it, but now here they are paired up nicely to try and get conditions under which they would continue to stay at the front of the pack.

"My argument is that it's a sport that should be trying to create at least the opportunity for all of the competitors to have a reasonable chance of competing. That's always been a difficult problem for F1, because it rewards the dominant disproportionately."

It's that imbalance of power that Liberty is hoping to address with its 2021 package, via new technical and sporting rules, and revamped commercial arrangements. The catch-22 is that the new management has to push it all through in the face of what will likely be strong opposition, at least to certain disliked aspects, from the Ferrari/Mercedes alliance.

Ross Brawn and his colleagues have now had over a year to formulate a plan, and the former Mercedes boss is adamant that Marchionne's criticisms are unfair.

"It's critical that we have a vision of where we see F1," he said in a recent interview on SiriusXM radio. "I find it very frustrating that people accuse us of spoiling the DNA of this, that or the other. F1 has a long history of incredible competition, and it's the pinnacle of motorsport, and why would we choose [to] damage that? I find it personally offensive when people accuse me of dumbing down the sport.

"We know if we did that we'd spoil the sport at its core, and we'd spoil the commercial basis as well. The teams at the top are probably spending two or three times what they were spending five or six years ago, and you wouldn't say that five or six years ago the sport was dumb.

"So it's just a question of degree. We have to help the teams at the top recognise and realise that for the future we've got to re-base the commercial revenues for the teams, [and] we've got to re-base the amount of scope that the teams are allowed to explore technically in order to give a more exciting competition."

"I find it personally offensive when people accuse me of dumbing down the sport" Ross Brawn

Red Bull and McLaren - now both operating as big independents - have made it clear that spiralling budgets have to be addressed. The inevitable challenge is that those who are currently winning are not keen to relinquish their advantage.

"There's always vested interests," Brawn noted. "And it's not just a simple technical problem - we have the political problem of what's the governance going forward? In other words, what role do the teams play, what role do we play, what role do the FIA play? So, governance is a sensitive topic. The commercial revenues to the team is a sensitive topic - budget control, which is something we're very enthusiastic about, is a sensitive topic.

"Broadly-speaking, the technical side, which we're discussing, is well supported by all the teams. They recognise that if we're talking about solutions for 2021, they're not affected in the short term, they're not disadvantaged in the short term, and we should work towards better solutions for the future."

He remains optimistic, but Brawn and his colleagues are clearly bracing for what could be a protracted debate with the teams, and especially the two big friendly giants with which he was so closely associated before he turned gamekeeper.

"The reality is every team has a different set of objectives," he said. "There's quite a number of teams who want to do as well as they can, but they want a more sustainable business model, because the way the revenue is shared in F1 at the moment makes it extremely difficult for the lower half of the grid.

"The top half of the grid are obviously happy with their results, and they want to maintain the differential they have, and that sometimes leads to too big a range of performance across the F1 field."

It promises to be a test of wills. But does F1's management really have the strength to push through change if the two top teams don't want it? As Brawn notes, future governance is up for discussion, and a key issue is therefore how much control Liberty really has. And as that battle develops, Brawn and his colleagues may receive support from a surprising quarter.

"Look at MotoGP, how that works," Red Bull's Helmut Marko said in Australia. "The teams and the FIM don't have the power. It's run by Dorna, and it works."

In other words, one of the sport's biggest players has hinted that it might be willing to cede some of the power that the teams now jointly enjoy to allow F1's owner and promoter to do what it wants to do.

Will that be the only way for Red Bull to counter the Ferrari/Mercedes alliance?