From the brink of collapse in 2020 to the world championship triumph of 2025, McLaren’s journey over five years is a story of resilience and strategic vision. Zak Brown kept the team steady, taking responsibility for decisions that ultimately changed its destiny. Chief among these was his decision to back Andrea Stella.
November 2016. McLaren was emerging from a disastrous season. Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button had finished the championship without ever reaching the podium, with their best results being two fifth-place finishes. Then something unthinkable happened: the man who had founded the team and maintained it at the top of the sport for three decades was shown the door. The Ron Dennis era was over. This was shocking news for Formula 1, and what followed shortly after was equally surprising: the name of Dennis’ successor. Zakary Challen “Zak” Brown was known in the paddock primarily for his work in marketing and commercial operations. Highly regarded by Bernie Ecclestone, Brown was an outsider in racing management, and “Mr. E” reportedly bet that he wouldn’t last more than two seasons at McLaren’s Woking headquarters.
There is an even more intriguing backstory involving Brown in November 2016. Alongside the McLaren offer, the American manager—who until then had run his own sponsorship company—received a proposal from Liberty Media, following their acquisition of Formula 1’s commercial rights. In that role, Brown would report only to Chase Carey and focus almost entirely on commercial matters. Then came another call: Mohammed bin Essa Al Khalifa, a member of the Bahraini royal family and sovereign wealth fund that owned a stake in McLaren, contacted him. They informed Brown that Ron Dennis was leaving and offered him control of McLaren Racing, with complete freedom to act. The choice was clear.
At the time, McLaren was a team in decline. Financial reports showed annual losses of €125 million, and results on track had been scarce since their last win in Brazil in 2012. Internal conflicts were rampant. Brown’s appointment was initially seen as a short-term solution. In his autobiography, he described his arrival at Woking: “When I arrived, I found a chaotic situation. Sponsorships were at historic lows, track performance was at historic lows, morale was at historic lows. The internal politics within the team were complex and thorny. Significant resources and investments were going into car development, but it really felt like the Formula 1 team lacked oversight. There were so many distractions at the board level that no one was fully focused on the team. Fundamentally, it was in decline.”
The first challenge: restoring financial stability
The McLaren team that would go on to win the 2025 Drivers’ and Constructors’ Championships had a long way to go. One of Brown’s first decisions was to return the team to its iconic ‘papaya’ livery—a symbolic step in reclaiming a lost identity. But the road back to the top was long. The first three years on the financial front were extremely demanding. Within the shareholder group, there were pessimists, while Brown pushed to fund investments, starting with a new wind tunnel. The team’s leadership structure was fully overhauled. More importantly, Brown became one of the earliest and strongest advocates for a seismic shift in Formula 1: the introduction of the budget cap. “Previously, it was a race to see who could spend the most money,” Brown would comment years later, “but it was like watching a football match where one team had 11 players and the other only 9. It made no sense.”
Competition would now be on a more level financial playing field, but McLaren initially lacked the resources allocated under the new budget rules. On track, 2020 saw progress, with Carlos Sainz and Lando Norris returning to the podium. Off track, however, financial tensions ran high. The team faced the prospect of collapse within months. Brown pushed desperately to relaunch the team, knowing that returning to the top was impossible without investment. “At that time, part of me was fighting for the team’s survival,” Brown admitted, “and another part projected confidence publicly, transmitting positivity and trying to convince Daniel Ricciardo to join us, since Carlos had already informed us he would move to Ferrari.”
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