Who Owns Formula 1: And Why Red Bull Owns Two

Formula 1 is owned by Liberty Media, the American group controlled by John Malone, which bought it for about $8 billion in 2017. The business is now valued at an estimated $22 billion.

Beneath that sits something football would not allow: one company owns two of the eleven teams.

The grid in 2026

Team	Owner
Ferrari	Agnelli family via Exor, ~33.8% of voting rights
McLaren	Mumtalakat — Bahrain’s sovereign wealth fund, majority
Mercedes	Toto Wolff ~33%, with INEOS and Mercedes-Benz AG
Red Bull Racing	Red Bull GmbH
Racing Bulls	Red Bull GmbH
Aston Martin	AMR GP Limited, controlled by Lawrence Stroll
Williams	Dorilton Capital, acquired August 2020
Haas	Gene Haas, 100%
Audi	Volkswagen Group; Qatar Investment Authority holds 30%
Alpine	Renault Group 76%, with Otro Capital
Cadillac	Backed by General Motors, debut 2026

Audi and Cadillac joined for 2026, taking the field from ten teams to eleven — the first expansion of the grid in over a decade.

Two teams, one owner, no objection

This is the part that looks ordinary inside motorsport and extraordinary from outside it.

Red Bull GmbH owns both Red Bull Racing and Racing Bulls. Two of eleven entries in the same championship, competing for the same points, under the same ultimate owner. It has been that way for years and is not controversial within the sport.

Now set it against football. UEFA’s rules state that no entity may have “control or decisive influence” over more than one club competing in the same competition. RB Leipzig and Red Bull Salzburg — owned by the same group — had to demonstrate a clear separation of powers before both were cleared for the Champions League, as our guide to multi-club ownership sets out.

The same company. The same question. Two sports that answer it in completely opposite ways.

And Red Bull’s sporting portfolio is larger than either sport sees on its own: five football clubs and two Formula 1 teams. No governing body assesses that total, because no governing body’s remit crosses the boundary.

Sovereign wealth and private equity own a third of it

Four of the eleven teams are held by state funds or investment firms rather than by manufacturers or individuals. Ownership guides for other sports are collected in our ownership hub.

Type	Team	Holder
Sovereign wealth	McLaren	Mumtalakat (Bahrain)
Sovereign wealth	Audi	Qatar Investment Authority, 30%
Private equity	Williams	Dorilton Capital
Private equity	Alpine	Otro Capital, with Renault

That is a familiar pattern. It is the same investor class that now holds eleven of twenty Premier League clubs, covered in our guide to Premier League owners — and it moved into Formula 1 for the same reason: a rights-holding business with global broadcast reach and a rising valuation.

Germany’s football clubs are protected from precisely this by the 50+1 rule, upheld by the country’s competition authority in August 2026. Motorsport has no equivalent, and has never sought one.

The $8 billion to $22 billion story

Liberty Media’s purchase is one of the best-timed acquisitions in modern sport.

Paid, 2017	~$8 billion
Estimated value now	~$22 billion
Change	roughly 2.75×

The uplift came from making the championship a media property rather than a race series: a documentary franchise, a US audience built almost from nothing, three American races, and a sponsorship market rebuilt around them.

That transformation shows up directly in what the sport pays out. Our guide to F1 prize money sets out the column payments teams now receive, and the cost of attending has moved with it — Paddock Club access runs to thousands per guest, as our guide to F1 tickets covers.

Who the teams actually answer to

Three distinct models sit on the same grid, and they behave differently.

Manufacturers — Ferrari, Mercedes, Audi, Cadillac, Alpine — are in the championship to sell cars and validate engineering. Their commitment follows corporate strategy, and can be withdrawn when it changes.

Individuals — Gene Haas, Lawrence Stroll — answer to nobody, and can act faster than any board.

Funds — Mumtalakat, Dorilton, Otro, QIA — hold an appreciating asset. They need the valuation to keep rising more than they need a championship.

What none of them own is the championship itself. That is true of NASCAR too, where one family holds the sanctioning body privately — set out in our guide to who owns NASCAR.

A grid where a third of the entries are financial positions rather than sporting projects is a newer thing than it appears, and it is why the sport’s ownership map now looks more like the Premier League’s than like its own past.

How we checked these numbers

The Liberty Media ownership, John Malone’s control, the ~$8 billion 2017 purchase and the ~$22 billion current valuation are from PlanetF1’s explainer and Liberty Media’s own Formula One Group page. The team-by-team ownership — Exor’s ~33.8% of Ferrari voting rights, Mumtalakat’s majority at McLaren, Wolff’s ~33% alongside INEOS and Mercedes-Benz AG, Red Bull GmbH’s control of both Red Bull teams, Stroll’s control of AMR GP, Dorilton at Williams from August 2020, Gene Haas’s 100%, Volkswagen Group with the Qatar Investment Authority’s 30% at Audi, and Renault’s 76% at Alpine — is from PlanetF1’s ownership feature. Cadillac’s General Motors backing and 2026 entry are from Flashscore, with grid context from Formula 1’s own team family tree.

Ownership percentages and voting rights are different things, and Ferrari is the clearest case: Exor’s ~33.8% is a share of votes in a listed company, not a 33.8% stake in the racing team. Several structures here run through layered holding companies, so a single named owner understates the arrangement.

Review class: seasonal, plus event-driven. Recheck at the start of each season, on any team sale or new entry, and on any change to Liberty Media’s holding.