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If you ask our team what the keys to success in Formula 1 are, you’ll hear several answers you’d expect: state-of-the-art facilities, innovative Technical and Design teams, and the best driver pairing on the grid, but also one answer you might not expect: a strong Commercial department.

Since joining McLaren Racing as Executive Director in 2016, Zak Brown has continuously highlighted the importance of the Commercial department, unequivocal in his view that the work of our marketing teams would play a vital role in getting McLaren back to the front of the grid. As we’ve made huge strides towards that goal, this view has only strengthened.

To help explain why, we’ve gone behind the scenes with McLaren’s Commercial Leadership Team, Lou McEwen, Matt Dennington, and Nick Martin, to give you an insight into how McLaren’s marketing operation functions and why it’s crucial.

Funding the race team

We’ve enjoyed a hugely successful start to the 2025 season and sit first in the Constructors’ Championship after six rounds. Hundreds of people have played a vital part in designing, producing parts for, and building the cars you see hit the track each weekend, but for many at McLaren, their roles revolve around securing or generating the funds to achieve that, which is just as vital.

Every year, teams receive prize money from F1 based on their position in the Constructors’ Championship, but no matter how high they finish, none would exist competitively without additional revenue streams. Those could be partnerships, merchandise and licensing deals, or hospitality experiences. The more diverse, the better.

More than half of our revenue is generated by these types of Commercial successes, which are invested back into the team and used to develop, retain and recruit the best talent, manufacture the fastest cars, and build the best facilities within the limitations of the cost cap.

That includes our two state-of-the-art factories in Woking, the MTC and MRC, the machinery inside of them, and our trackside facilities, which are key to not only our racing objectives but also to the hospitality experiences we offer.

“In a restricted cost-cap environment, we want to make sure that we are spending to the cap and not leaving any performance on the table,” says Matt, Co-Chief Commercial Officer (Partnerships). “The partners are our lifeblood and ensure that we can continue to perform at the top of our game.”

“We exist because our partners allow us to go racing,” adds Nick, Co-Chief Commercial Officer (Business Development). “We're passionate about racing, and we're passionate about bringing an incredible spectacle to our fans, so we’re appreciative that our partners support us on that journey.

“They allow us to put on incredible experiences and to bring the McLaren brand to millions of fans around the world, and it’s that financial support that allows us to go racing.”

Returning to our roots

Zak Brown joined McLaren with a background in racing and marketing, having founded JMI, a hugely successful motorsport marketing agency, on the back of a 10-year racing career.

His expertise and understanding of both worlds gave him a unique perspective with which to lead the team, and have seen us excel on and off track, with our Formula 1 team rising up the standings while enjoying massive commercial growth. That the two have been achieved on a similar timeline is no coincidence - one wouldn’t be possible without the other.

One of Zak’s first major decisions at McLaren was to switch our colour scheme from black and red to our traditional papaya - first used by McLaren in the late ‘60s across F1, Can-Am, IndyCar and even Formula 5000 and Formula 2 - as he sought to overhaul our brand’s look and feel.

Our team has been associated with different colours throughout history, from papaya to red and white, silver and black, and chrome. In the early 2010s, after several years of less consistent liveries, Zak wanted McLaren to return to its roots, believing that by adopting our original colours, we could become more recognisable in the sporting world and beyond.

“It’s hard to believe that we've only been Papaya for seven years,” says Lou, Chief Marketing Officer, who collected our 2025 Miami Grand Prix trophies with Lando and Oscar, becoming the 11th woman to stand on an F1 podium. “Our entire look and feel has changed. Our identity feels really strong now, and that’s what all good brands have - they don’t overhaul their colour schemes or designs every year.

“Seeing our new identity grow has been exciting. You see it when you’re out and about, especially at the circuit.”

"One of the biggest success stories in this time is the work we’ve done with fashion brands such as Abercrombie & Fitch and Reiss. Both have released McLaren-inspired clothing ranges, reaching different audiences outside the traditional motor racing fan and increasing McLaren’s reach and popularity. You want your brand to show up in these different areas, but to do that, you have to make it fit for purpose in each of those spaces while staying true to your roots,” Lou explains.

Matt adds: “We want to be disruptive and impactful in our marketing efforts.”

Growing our partnerships

Our new brand identity has played a critical role in attracting commercial partners.

“We started from a pretty small partner base in 2017 and have worked incredibly hard to appeal to the best businesses in the world, and a lot of that has come from the development of our brand,” Nick says.

Most of that growth has come in the years since the COVID-19 pandemic. During this time, we proved we could still deliver value even without racing and have gone from strength to strength since.

Our now-proven approach, which was defined during that period and is continually being refined and improved, has helped us attract larger and more prestigious brands while retaining the high-profile ones we already had on board.

“We take a very bespoke approach,” Matt says. “Our Partnerships Team sit at the centre of the department and pulls on the various teams to support the delivery of each partner’s contractual rights - whether that be the execution of social media rights through our Digital Team, the design of a livery enhancement through our Brand Creative Team, or the delivery of hospitality experiences through the Brand Experience team.

“We utilise the expertise and skillsets we have in-house, but it wasn't always like that. It was more reactive in the past and slightly more rigid. Whereas now, everything is purpose-built, based on that partner’s objectives.”

Nick adds: “These are partnerships, not sponsorships – we’re not just slapping a logo on the car. We’re after best-in-class, like-minded partners who share our values and want to tell a story.”

Supporting us on and off track

As well as helping to fund the race team, many of these are Technical Partners who physically support our efforts on and off track.

DP World help us to sustainably transport our F1 freight from circuit to circuit, Dropbox enables us to transfer content across the world from our factory in Woking to our team at the track, and Dell Technologies has turbocharged our team's efficiency through its AI Factory.

These are just a few examples. Another is our hugely successful partnership with Google. “We've been incredibly successful in this area over the past few seasons,” Matt says. “Emer Acton, our Head of Human Performance, films our pit stops on an Android tablet and then uses the tablet to review the footage, comment on it, and sends it to the pit crew with notes on how we can work better as a unit.”

That’s why it’s crucial to work with the right partners - those whose values reflect our own and whose work we genuinely believe in. Together, we can deliver impactful initiatives and campaigns, whether that’s improving environmental sustainability in our sport through the F1 Constructors’ Circularity Handbook with Deloitte, or creating unforgettable fan experiences like exclusive tickets to the F1®75 all-team season launch and a luxury hotel stay with Hilton.

For the fans

Ultimately, it all comes back to our fans. We go racing to entertain the Papaya Army and that includes the best-looking cars, exciting competitions, and engaging content - whether you want to know more about the drivers' lives away from the track, the inside scoop on F1’s more technical side, or you want to delve into the history of our sport, it’s our ambition to show you that and to take you beyond the curtain.

We do that day-to-day through our website, app, and social media channels, as well as through purpose-built fan-focused campaigns and livery takeovers, like last year’s celebration of Ayrton Senna at Monaco.

“These are an opportunity to rally our fans, to support, and with the help of our partners,” Lou continues. “The way we worked with OKX to execute this campaign allowed us to tell his story and to keep his legacy alive, and we saw a huge swell of fans get behind that. We’re very proud of the campaign and everything that it stood for.

“We’re a fan-first team, and we want to be the best at that on the grid. Only one or two per cent of F1’s global audience ever gets to go to a race, so we want to create incredible opportunities to bring them closer to McLaren in other ways. We need to listen to what our fans want and what appeals to them.”

However, nothing entertains the fans more than watching the best drivers winning races in the fastest cars, and this season, our race team have produced a Championship contender.