Brown appeals to FIA: 'Change super licence rules'

McLaren CEO Zak Brown hopes the FIA will change the rules around the super licence. In an interview with the BBC, Brown says that in his opinion, the rules are unfair towards IndyCar drivers.

McLaren has worked a lot with IndyCar drivers this year. Alex Palou and Pato O'Ward both drove in free practice for McLaren and Colton Herta completed a test day for the British team. Herta was also on Red Bull's radar to replace Pierre Gasly at AlphaTauri but due to obstruction from the FIA it never materialised.

In Formula 2, the entire top three automatically get enough points for a super licence. In IndyCar, only the winner does. All other places in the championship get fewer licence points by default than their equivalents in Formula 2. According to Brown, this is wrong. He wants the two championships to give the same amount of points so that IndyCar drivers can move on to Formula 1 more easily. He says all three drivers who have tested for McLaren this year are capable enough to compete in Formula 1. Of the three of them, however, only Palou has a super licence because he became champion in 2021.

Brown pins hopes on Ben Sulayem

The rules can only be changed by the FIA itself. FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem has not yet said anything about plans to look into this but Brown is confident that this will happen in the near future.

"The thing that I've seen about Mohammed is he's prepared to challenge rules that are in place and fix them moving forward," said Brown. "So he's playing it by the rules - 'These are the rules and we're not gonna bend the rules,' which I think is the right thing to do. Even if we think the rules aren't good, such as the super-licence. But what he's very prepared to do is go: 'Maybe that's not a good rule. We should review that rule and make a change'."