The Russian oligarch, the arrested brother and the man at centre of an F1 storm

Telegraph

10-05-2025

Up until the start of this week no one outside of Formula One or motorsport had heard of Oliver Oakes. In the space of a few days that has changed.
Oakes's abrupt resignation from his role as team principal at Alpine F1 on Tuesday garnered headlines across sport, mainly because of the presumed involvement of Flavio Briatore.
The septuagenarian Italian, who has been involved in a string of controversies in a colourful and controversial career, and who recently returned from a 'lifetime ban' from the sport, was said to have had a disagreement with Oakes over the team's driver line-up.
But that still did not quite explain Oakes's sudden resignation. This was, after all, a highly rated young team principal – the second youngest in the sport's history when he was appointed last summer – who was being tipped to replace Christian Horner at Red Bull one day. Would Briatore have really let him go?
A joint statement from the pair of them the following day, denying any fallout and suggesting that Oakes had departed for 'personal reasons', only added to the intrigue.
Then on Thursday came a new twist: Telegraph Sport broke the news that Oakes's brother, his fellow director at his Hitech Grand Prix, a race team which competes in various world championships, as well as various other entities according to Companies House, had been charged last Friday, just days before Oakes's resignation.
What is more, the Metropolitan Police confirmed to the Telegraph that William Oakes, 31, had been stopped in possession of what it described as 'a large amount of cash', charged with 'transferring criminal property' and remanded in custody after appearing before Northampton Magistrates' Court last Saturday.
Oliver Oakes has not been accused of anything and is not wanted for questioning in relation to anything. He is understood to have travelled to Dubai after Miami but beyond that he has not surfaced in public. He declined to comment when contacted by the Telegraph Sport.
What we do know is that there is a lot of uncertainty at his junior racing teams, who compete in F2, F3, GB3 and British F4, as well as the all-female F1 Academy.
Oakes might have been driving for a Formula One team, rather than running one, had things worked out differently.
From The King's School to karting champion
Growing up in Norfolk, he grew up in the motorsport world. Oakes's father Billy was the founder and owner of the now-defunct F1 team Formula Renault, as well as the British F3 team Eurotek Motorsport.
By the age of four, Oakes was driving karts. And while he was a pupil at The King's School, formerly known as King's Ely, he found enough time to take his karting extremely seriously, becoming the British Open champion in the sport twice.
In 2005, now 17, he became a karting world champion, beating the likes of future F1 drivers Jules Bianchi and Valtteri Bottas to the top prize. This caught the eye of the newly formed Red Bull Junior Programme, as he joined Jaime Alguersuari, Sebastien Buemi, Brendan Hartley and a certain four-time F1 world champion named Sebastian Vettel as a member of the team.
Like Horner, the Red Bull team boss whose shoes he has been tipped to fill, Oakes graduated from karts to race cars where he had a respectable if unspectacular career. He finished sixth in Formula BMW and went on to compete in various other championships including the British Formula 3 International Series in 2008 against Sergio Perez. But like Horner, he quickly realised he was more cut out for driving race teams from outside the cockpit.
In 2011, Oakes formed Team Oakes, which took part in several major European and world competitions. Then in 2015 he formed Hitech Grand Prix, a team first started in 2002 but which he helped relaunch. It was there that his controversial association with Russian oligarch Dmitry Mazepin first began.
Mazepin initially bought a stake in Hitech in 2016, when his son Nikita arrived to compete in F3, with the team also gaining Russian minerals company Uralkali as a sponsor. Over the years, the Russian – a close, personal friend of Russian president Vladimir Putin, with whom he sat in the Kremlin on the day Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 – increased his holding in Hitech to 75 per cent via Cyprus-based investment company Bergton Management Ltd.
In a series of decisions which were important enough to be discussed in Parliament, Mazepin's shares were all handed over to Oakes nine days before Russia's invasion. Oakes then formed a new company to take control of the shares just days after Mazepin and his son were sanctioned by both the Government and the European Union. Nikita Mazepin has since had his ban overturned by the European Court who ruled that 'association' with his father was not enough to warrant it. There is no suggestion Oakes was involved in any wrongdoing.
Oakes, who said at the time that it was 'always part of the strategic plan for Bergton Management to exit Hitech in early 2022 and myself to own Hitech fully', has carried on running his teams very effectively by all accounts. Colleagues describe him as 'competent' and 'gregarious'. He was seen as the strait-laced Brit trying to run a tight ship at Alpine alongside the more volatile, combustible Briatore.
The news cycle has moved on so fast that Oakes was still listed as the Alpine team principal on the French manufacturer's website on Friday. Once tipped to replace Horner, his future is now unclear.