When McLaren CEO Zak Brown first joined the Formula 1 team back in 2016, he admitted some surprise about what he found – and not in a good way.
From the excitement about joining his favourite squad, the reality check of the ‘chaos’ he walked into was not an easy one to deal with.
As he sits down exclusively with Autosport to reflect on his journey from that low point to get to where McLaren has become constructors’ champion, he admitted that the first impression was “a lot worse than I thought it was.”
At the time, the struggles McLaren was facing with Honda were pretty clear to see – but the mistake that many made was thinking that its engine was its only deficit. For Brown, problems were everywhere.
“I think we now know that wasn’t even probably the biggest part of the issue,” added Brown, who saw problems with management, structure and sponsorship.
“You had a revolving door in leadership and chaos at the board level, which has been well documented.
“You had no adult supervision on the racing team and people. You’ve got leaders, but people need good leadership.
“On-track sponsorship was at a record low and everything on the factory floor was a conspiracy theory. There was a lot of negativity.
“We were way behind on development. I think there was almost an arrogance of ‘we are so good’ that we took our eye off of wind tunnels and CFDs.
“So that’s kind of what I walked into.”
Making change
The team work on the car of Fernando Alonso, McLaren in the garage.
Photo by: McLaren
Having spent the first part of his career as a sponsorship guru, Brown knew how to run a big business, but his switch to McLaren was the first time he had stepped into a management role with a racing team of such a scale.
And being what he would even admit was a little bit wet behind the ears on that front meant he had to bat away any lack of self-confidence when it came to proving to the staff that he was in this for the long haul.
“I’d been around racing,” he said, “but actually standing up and talking to a racing team, when they’re all staring at you, you could feel the: How long is this guy going to be around?
“Everyone else had been around a year or two, and you could kind of feel that. So you had to portray confidence.”
Brown says that the priority from day one was sorting out the senior figures, because if that was not right then everything else was doomed.
“The first thing I did was change the leadership…
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