My First Race: Zak Brown

The turnaround that Zak Brown has overseen at McLaren during his tenure as our CEO has been truly historic, culminating in our first back-to-back Constructors’ World Championships since the early ‘90s, and our first Drivers’ title since 2008, but the atmosphere in which he made his full McLaren debut was febrile.

As we prepare to celebrate 1,000 Grands Prix, we’ve asked key McLaren team members to look back on their first race with the team. And in the first of this new series, CEO Zak Brown recalls the tough times of his debut, his joy at being on the pit wall with his boyhood dream team, and how he was nearly hauled off it by none other than F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone…

The winter of 2016 had been billed as a period in which the difficulties that had plagued McLaren since 2015 would ease. A fully redesigned power unit from Honda and a new set of regulations that would add downforce, grip and speed were flagged as potential game changers for a team that had finished the 2015 Constructors’ Championship in ninth place and only improved to sixth in 2016.

It was a bitter blow, then, to emerge from pre-season testing in firefighting mode, with the team tackling a host of issues with the all-new MCL32 and with Honda’s RA617H power unit. Across a pair of four-day tests in early March at the Circuit de Barcelona Catalunya, the team was sidelined on numerous occasions. The issues would be addressed by the Japanese PU manufacturer with a ‘Spec 3’ version of the PU that, on its introduction at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, would lead to the season’s first points, but as the team prepared for the first race of the season, the Australian Grand Prix, morale was low, tensions were rising, and the pressure was on.

Appointed as the team’s Executive Director towards the end of 2016 following the departure of Ron Dennis, the opening round of 2017 was Zak’s first race front and centre for the team.

“Unofficially, my first race with McLaren was the final race of the year in 2016 [the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix],” Zak recalls. “I'd been announced but I hadn’t officially started yet. It was also Jenson Button's last race, so it was kind of neat to be there for that. But my first official race was Australia 2017 with Fernando Alonso and Stoffel Vandoorne.”

On the surface, it was a dream come true for the Californian who had parlayed his passion for racing into, first, a career at the wheel in junior single-seater series and sports cars, and later into building and running the world’s largest motorsports marketing agency. But at the root of it all was an obsession with papaya.

“McLaren had always been my favourite Formula 1 team,” he says. “Ayrton Senna was my favourite driver, so when he moved from Lotus in 1987 to McLaren in 1988 and we won 15 of 16 races… McLaren, Ayrton Senna, Alain Prost, that became my favourite racing team, and it is until this day.”

And it was the thrill of joining the team he had supported since his youth that Zak still recalls as the overriding emotion of Australia 2017.

“Just being there with McLaren was unbelievable,” he says. “I always dreamed about racing for McLaren, and now I've been fortunate to be on the top step of a podium with team. It would have been nice if it were in a race suit, but being in a management shirt isn’t such a bad thing!”

But the joy at representing the team for the first time was almost short-lived. Within minutes of striding out of the team’s Albert Park garage to take his place on the pit wall next to the other senior race team member, he felt “a little tap” on his shoulder.

Zak recalled: “He said: ‘Mr Ecclestone would like you to come off the pit wall because you don't have the appropriate pass.’ He then presented me with the correct one, so I think that was Bernie’s official welcoming. That was fun.”

McLaren’s performances in the sessions meant that it was a less-than-dream debut for Zak on the pit wall from a results point of view, but, crucially, it taught him plenty about what he would need to do to turn this team around.

“We weren't competitive, and it was clear that we weren't going to be competitive,” says Zak of the pace of the MCL32. “That was the only thing that took a little bit of the shine off the moment. The McLaren I grew up with – and fortunately, where we are today – was always a front-running team, and when I joined, we definitely weren't.

“I learned a lot that first weekend and the first thing I noticed was our culture, it wasn't where it needed to be. Our people weren't working well together, they weren't motivated, and they were down, because prior to myself joining the team, I think we had the worst season in the team’s history [2015].

“You could just tell it was not a happy environment. I was happy because I was brand new to it, but you could tell not many others were. There was a lack of trust. We had a race car that wasn't very fast. We had a lot of work ahead of us.”

The task of turning things around began almost immediately, and though success was hard to come by in 2017 – the team ended the season in ninth place with 30 points from just eight top-10 finishes – the following years brought increasing rewards.

The process came with risk, however. Management and financial restructures, along with operational upheavals, if mishandled, could have resulted in spiralling fortunes, but with Zak’s steady hand on the tiller and with the increasing influence of talents such as Andrea Stella - who in 2018 stepped up to the role of Engineering Director and then became Team Principal in 2022 - each change brought more stability, and ultimately, more performance. And Zak confesses that it wouldn’t have been possible without the support of key individual behind the team.

“Mansour Ojjeh, who unfortunately passed away a few years ago, and Sheikh Mohammed [Bin Essa Al Khalifa] recruited me to McLaren, and I always knew I had their total support - they had a deep passion for McLaren. We knew we were on the road to recovery… But it was pretty intimidating at the time.”

The years since have, of course, been a tale of incremental gains followed by an explosive spell of Championship-winning success. And looking back to Australia 2017, Zak says that version of McLaren is almost unrecognisable compared with the current incarnation.

“The team is night and day from what it was when I joined at the end of 2016,” he says.

“We've got a great work environment, and great people who are working really well together. We really want to win, but when we do lose, it makes us want to win even more.

“All the business units are contributing to the success of the racing team,” he adds. “So, no matter what department someone is in, when we win on Sunday, everyone knows they contributed to that win, whether they actually physically touch the race car or not. We also have a great group of partners: Mastercard, Dell, Google, Cisco, OKX - the list goes on.

“And so, when you look at where we are, we're back to the McLaren that I grew up idolising.”

It's a long way from almost being hauled off the pit wall and watching his favourite team limp a single car home in 13th place, two laps down on the winner, with the other having retired. And for Zak, that means the celebration of 1,000 races sets the tone for the future of the future.

“It's a privilege to show up to work every day and to be part of 1,000 grands prix,” he says. “And it's amazing what this team has accomplished – 23 World Championships, some of the most iconic drivers in the world, some of the fastest race cars in the world. We have unbelievable facilities, and some of the smartest people in the world.

“We've set some big milestones already – the joint earliest to clinch a Constructors' Championship in a season, back-to-back Constructors' Championships, a Drivers' and Constructors' double last year. We’ve had 50 one-two finishes, over 200 wins, so it's pretty cool to be part of the record books – and we're not done putting stuff in the record books yet!”