16 October 2026 09:00 (UTC)
Racing the clock, creating a papaya beacon, and exceeding Zak Brown’s expectations: How we created our new Team Hub
Catch Zak Brown on the golf course or at the racetrack, and he can talk for hours. When it comes to business, however, Zak is often a man of few words. So, when the new Team Hub was unveiled at this year’s Monaco Grand Prix, the “gushing praise” that followed left a few mouths open.
“What did he say? ‘This is the only time something's exceeded my expectations,’” says Chloe Todd, McLaren’s Executive Director, Business Strategy & Chief of Staff, chuckling in disbelief.
It won’t surprise anyone who’s worked with Zak Brown that he likes to be involved in every area of the business. But he also knows he can’t be across every decision. The details matter to him, but he can’t always be in the details. A project of this scale required a team he trusted to represent his vision.
Chloe knows Zak as well as anyone and was therefore an obvious choice to represent his vision. But her first task on the project was a tough one: telling the existing team that the Team Hub would need to be completed sooner than planned.
She explains: “Zak called me and said: ‘I’ve been told that the Team Hub can’t be delivered until 2027. I don’t think that’s right. I think it’s possible that we can do it quicker. I want you to make it happen next year.’”
“It was originally an 18-month project, and then we came back one weekend and it was 13 months…” Georgia Richards, Procurement Senior Specialist, recalls. “This is Formula 1, people want things yesterday, but you are thinking, ‘Can we actually do this?’”
“Receiving that phone call saying we're going to do it within a year could have been pretty difficult,” Liv Trimming, Assistant Project Manager, adds. “But honestly, everyone took it in their stride. The people involved in the project team made it easy.”
Formula 1 is a fast-paced environment. Whether it is on track or behind the scenes, teams are always looking to shave off a millisecond - but never by cutting corners.
The aim was to build Formula 1’s finest Team Hub. It needed to look better, function better, feel better, and the shorter time frame didn’t lessen these ambitions - it sharpened everyone’s focus. Designs now needed to be lodged and locked in much faster. There was no time to mull over every option: decisions had to be made in the moment, and the team had to trust their instincts
“McLaren are known for pushing the boundaries, so we wanted something that stood out, something dynamic, but it also needed to be practical,” Stu Robinson, Head of Brand Management, says.
“Good air con was high on the priority list,” Chloe adds. “As an industry, you’re competing with everyone on and off the track. We want the quickest car, but we also want the best hospitality for our partners, fans, and media. It needed to be world-class, to set the standard in the paddock.”
Today’s structures are unrecognisable from the motorhomes of the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s. Trucks that once doubled as transport and workshops evolved into buses and awnings that could host basic meetings, then into separate motorhomes where teams could entertain sponsors, hold engineering discussions and give drivers somewhere to escape the hustle and bustle of the paddock.
Today’s Team Hub is a much grander version of the multipurpose motorhome, transported and built from track to track. Like the trucks of the ‘60s, the Team Hub still wears many hats, but they’re now much more purpose-built.
“It had to meet our needs as both a working and an entertainment environment,” Mark says. “We wanted the space to be multifunctional, so we could use it for formal dining, events, product launches and more. Every time we looked at an area, we asked: what else can we use this for? That ensures longevity.
“We held some internal groups that brought in people from various departments within marketing, commercial, and racing, and we asked what they would want from the facility.”
Back in the ‘60s and ‘70s, they ‘made do’. Today, they would never dream of making do.
Chloe says: “Zak is very focused on the experience for our team and for our partners, and I think as you look around the space compared to the last one, it's a much more open, welcoming environment. That's by design.”
Beyond being a visual representation of the brand and a space to host partners, shareholders, fans, and the media, the Team Hub is, at its heart, a working environment. Many of our regular travellers spend more time there than back at the factory, and so it needs to be a comfortable space to work from, whether they’re creating a deck or a spreadsheet, taking meetings, filming content or eating lunch.
When mapping out the plans, there was a lot to fit into a relatively small space, creating inevitable tension between design and functionality.
“At certain points, we were just banging our heads together because you had Stu Robinson and Mark Norris - one of whom wanted something beautiful, and the other wanted something functional,” recalls Liv. “But we were all able to come together and make a decision on what was going to be the best for this overall.”
Before appointing Andrea Stella as Team Principal, recruiting Lando and Oscar as drivers, and returning McLaren to the pinnacle of Formula 1, Zak began his tenure as CEO by overhauling the team’s brand identity. Reconnecting McLaren with its papaya roots helped rebuild affinity with the fans, while attracting best-in-class partners whose resources and expertise could support the team’s progress.
With that change having borne fruit, the team’s identity has remained a central focus. On Zak’s watch, aesthetics will never take a back seat.
“The main ask was to make sure that our brand came to life, whether that is through colours, logos, digital touch points, carpets… This gave us the opportunity to build something that would become the centre of the paddock,” says Matt Kaveney, Design Senior Specialist. “It needed to be stunning.”
Colour is one of the most powerful ways to express your brand identity. The most recent iteration of our previous Team Hub had largely been wrapped, but paint was seen as a better way to stand out.
Our existing relationship with innovative global paint and coatings company AkzoNobel simplified the process. The partnership dates back to 2008, and the company had already painted several pieces of McLaren paddock infrastructure in recent years, including the race base and race car transporter.
“AkzoNobel have been our partner for such a long time that it’s kind of easy to forget how difficult this process would be with a different supplier,” says Matt. “We very much had an idea of how we wanted the physical finish to look, we just needed to execute that, and AkzoNobel really hit the nail on the head. What could have been a tricky process was made very easy.”
On the process itself, Matt explains: “The exterior needed to match our existing infrastructure, so that’s the garage, the race base, our trucks, etc. All of that is already a set tonality. Whereas, with the interior, we wanted something striking and innovative.”
“We will always use our core colours, and those are papaya, black, anthracite, silver, and white, but we can have different versions of each of those,” Stu Robinson, Head of Brand Management, says. “Even the papaya, we were able to play around with a bit, choosing this copper-coloured version, which gives you a richer, more premium finish. Working in a papaya office could become a bit much - we wanted it to feel calm and make it a place where people can focus.
“But in other areas, the papaya has to be the exact, core shade – getting that right is always a challenge. We worked really closely with AkzoNobel to deliver this.”
As well as being functional and visually striking, it would need to last.
“The Team Hub is open to the elements: sun damage, water damage, scratch damage - it has to be long-lasting and hard-wearing, through all of the builds and pack downs, and the weather,” Stu says. “It needs to be durable, season after season, without the need for constant facelifts.”
Beyond the budget, weight and size were arguably the project’s greatest constraints. Formula 1 imposes strict limits on a Team Hub’s width, while its height and weight are governed by what can feasibly be transported and assembled at each circuit.
“One of the main considerations which I wasn't even aware of going into this project was weight.” Stu says, smiling as he recalls the realisation.
Mark adds: “This isn’t an office block that stays in place once it’s built. It’s a semi-permanent structure that gets taken down and put back up again every five days - in rain, shine, night, day, hail or wind...”
F1 guidelines state that the Team Hub must be no more than 15 metres wide by 17 metres deep and has to be assembled without using external cranes. The team must be able to dismantle and rebuild the structure repeatedly throughout the European leg of the season, completing each build within 24 hours and transporting every component safely between circuits.
Our chosen build and engineering partner for the project, Bischoff + Scheck, a German special vehicle manufacturer, developed a novel solution using pods and a bespoke lifting device.
The Team Hub comprises 35 pods transported between circuits in 23 trucks. At each venue, a bespoke crane-free lifting device transfers the pods from the trucks onto a rail system. They are then moved along the rail and connected in position to form the three-storey structure.
“The lifting device that’s been created to build this facility is unique,” Mark says. “Nothing has ever been built like it before.”
The transport and assembly requirements also limited the materials and furniture the team could use. The complete Team Hub has a net weight of around 200 tonnes, but it would have been much higher if the team had used a finish such as marble or granite.
Plastic furniture would have been one way to cut the weight, but Zak set a zero-tolerance policy from the start.
Chloe explains: “We had a few jokes beforehand around plastic chairs, which we had in the previous Team Hub, because Zak had said in advance: ‘zero plastic chairs... I know you can have premium plastic chairs, but that’s not what I want.’
“There was a lot of thought and attention put into those finer details, but that’s what takes something like this from being good to great. He was really involved from that perspective, and he loved being able to finesse his office with those little touches, and various sporting memorabilia.”
Georgia adds: “I remember that, in one of the design meetings, we showed him what the rooms would look like, and we were so on edge about whether he’d like the chairs. He spent around 20 minutes sitting in each of them. Thankfully, he loved them, which made us all really happy. It was like Goldilocks and the Three Bears!”
To truly make the Team Hub stand out from the competition, it needed a defining feature, something distinctive that would command attention and hadn’t been done before.
“Zak wanted to make a statement in the paddock,” Mark Norris, Commercial Trackside Operations Director, says. “When we were looking at the designs at the start, he wanted it to be three stories, with a central staircase, and he wanted an outside space, which is the roof terrace… but it still needed something else, something big.”
Landor, our design partner for the project, proposed several ideas for what this could be, and there was one obvious winner.
“When we were presenting the various options to Zak, Lando walked past, and so we brought him into the meeting,” Stu says. “When he saw the portal, his instant reaction was: ‘Wow, this is cool.’”
Lando’s reaction helped settle any remaining debate, affirming the team’s belief in the papaya portal. The wraparound, double-height LED display framing the Team Hub’s entrance would become its signature feature.
“You can see it from all over the paddock, so even if you’re not one of our guests, you can still see this beam of papaya,” says Liv. “In Monaco, it was shining out onto the harbour.”
Chloe corroborates: “I came into the harbour on a tender so that I could see what it looked like from afar, and it was exactly what you hoped it would be – it really stands out. We wanted to prioritise the entrance portal because we felt it could be really impactful – even if that meant making other compromises.”
Stu adds: “It’s a papaya beacon, and wherever you are in the paddock, you can see it. No one else in the paddock has anything like it, and we can use it to bring our brand or partner content to life.”
Against the odds - but to the surprise of no one within the team - the project was completed on time, allowing for a grand unveiling ahead of the Monaco Grand Prix - F1’s most prestigious race and the location of our 1000th Grand Prix.
“Of all the paddocks, Monaco is the one,” says Chloe. “It’s the place where you’re going to get that wow moment. The first time I saw it, I was staggered by its size and stature. It’s all down to the team, both internal and the partners we worked with. Everyone has worked unbelievably hard against tight deadlines to make it possible."
“The feedback from the media, the team, and our partners has been great,” Stu says. “You never know what the reaction is going to be when you’re working on these projects, but we’ve been blown away since launching in Monaco. There were a lot of long nights, and a lot of stress, but seeing that first pod pushed into place was a real highlight. It was a really proud moment.”
