Zak Brown likes to say that his job is to solve other people’s problems. He verbalizes it with a half smile that makes it clear if he’s being serious or joking. He joined McLaren at the end of 2016, and the Woking team was just that: a disaster. Nothing that was not irreparable, as was later confirmed, but a conglomerate of elements with a lot of potential, but which did not fit well with the DNA of a brand with more history than present. Ron Dennis’ legacy, as admirable as it was suffocating, was beginning to look leaden in the Technology Center, where nothing had been celebrated for too long.
Today the World Championship seems on track for one of its drivers, Lando Norris, to give McLaren its first drivers’ title in 17 years. The competition leader scored his seventh pole position on a Las Vegas circuit frozen by low temperatures (11 degrees in the atmosphere) and where the rain made life even more complicated for some drivers who had difficulty keeping their cars in black. Verstappen will start the second; Carlos Sainz, with Williams, will be third and Alonso, seventh, behind Piastri, with the other McLaren, which qualified fifth.
Brown arrived in Woking with the label of entrepreneur, coming from the world of marketing and sponsorships, but with the suspicion that that experience was adequate in an ecosystem where the most valuable clothes are the fireproof ones. However, he quickly understood that in modern Formula 1 you win as much in the wind tunnel and on the track as in the boardrooms. In these ten years the Californian has demonstrated that he dominates both latitudes. He was able to bring peace to a structure that, until his arrival, had seen five owners pass by in five years, with a record of only one victory (Monza 2021) in nine years. “When I arrived, I realized there was a lot of paranoia at the factory and very little transparency. Our fans were angry with us, with the sponsorships, because of the terrain, and the results on the track were terrible. The good thing was the brand,” Brown said this same week on the podcast High performance (High performance).
The first step was the most painful: the break with Honda. For three seasons (2015-2017), the marriage between British engineers and Japanese motorcyclists was more of an exercise in diplomatic containment than a technical alliance. In 2017, Brown precipitated a breakdown that allowed McLaren to breathe. It didn’t solve anything immediately, but it stopped the bleeding. Then came Renault (2018 and 2019 and 2020) and then Mercedes (2021); a transition that did not bring immediate glory, but stability, a taboo word in those years.
The second step was structural. The promotion of Andrea Stella, an engineer who before Fernando Alonso had worked with Michael Schumacher, gave credibility to a troop that welcomed the Italian with open arms for his temperate and open-minded character. At the same time, Brown promoted investments that seemed impossible in an era of regulated austerity. The new wind tunnel, inaugurated at the end of 2023, symbolizes that quiet rebirth. The team had been renting facilities from other people (Toyota) for more than a decade. A bit as if a starred chef had to improvise in his neighbour’s kitchen. Then came the renovation of the simulator, as a preliminary step to the third pillar: shaking in the sports area.
Brown has combined his experience in the commercial sector with his soul as a runner: he did it years ago, in the United States. He opted for Lando Norris (2018), a homegrown talent. The young Briton was accompanied by Carlos Sainz (2019 and 2020) and Daniel Ricciardo (2021 and 2022), which did not go well, before the robbery from Oscar Piastri to Alpine. The definitive take-off which confirmed the infallibility of the method arrived in mid-2023, after a miraculous update of the car, right at Silverstone. The fourth position in the ranking reserved for the manufacturers of that route gave way to the first title in 16 years, in 2024. Only the magic of Max Verstappen prevented Norris from scoring a double, which he will most likely manage to achieve in 2025. Depending on what happens this evening in Las Vegas (05:00 in the morning, Dazn), the Somerset driver could already throw the confetti next week, in Qatar, the penultimate stage of a calendar in which papaya racing cars validated Brawn’s bet and a reconstruction that was not epic, but patient; Not very flashy, but effective.
