Zak Brown’s first memories at McLaren: “It was much worse than I thought”. McLaren CEO Zak Brown reflected on his initial impact upon joining the team.

McLaren’s long crisis
Starting from Jenson Button’s victory at the 2012 Brazilian Grand Prix, the final race of that season, McLaren endured one of the darkest periods in its history, with a total absence of wins until Daniel Ricciardo’s triumph at the 2021 Italian Grand Prix. In between, technical partnerships with Honda and Renault failed to deliver the expected results (famously, Alonso compared the Japanese power unit to a GP2 engine at Suzuka in 2015). The first signs of recovery only began to materialize in 2019, coinciding with Carlos Sainz’s first career podium.

Zak Brown’s arrival
During that season, American Zak Brown was already part of the team, having joined as McLaren’s CEO at the end of 2016. He played a crucial role not only in the team’s gradual return to competitiveness but also in its 2024 Constructors’ Championship victory, the first for Woking since 1998. It was a long and complex journey, fraught with challenges that Zak Brown recalled in an interview with James Allen on F1’s official channels: “It was much worse than I thought,” he admitted. “I arrived knowing things weren’t in great shape. You could see it from the brands on the car, you could see it from the results, but once I got there, I realized things were really bad. I tackled the commercial side first because that’s where I felt most comfortable, and we needed a lot of resources.”

A ‘toxic’ environment
After addressing the commercial issues, Zak Brown focused on personnel changes, appointing Andrea Stella as Team Principal and Rob Marshall as Technical Director: “I knew that the commercial impact would be the biggest contribution I could make in the short term, along with changing most of the senior leadership team—but one at a time, after getting to know everyone,” he continued. “It took some time to turn things around. The atmosphere in the factory was quite toxic in terms of politics. At the time, we all believed the problem was Honda’s power unit, and while that was certainly a major factor, it wasn’t the only issue. This became very clear once we switched to Renault—the results improved a little, but we knew we had fundamental problems. It was a tough challenge to overcome, but in the end, we succeeded.”