McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown Takes on Red Bull, Ferrari

On a flight from Mexico City to London last month, McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown tuned into a new docuseries, Game 7, which explores the tension surrounding decisive moments in sports. Brown felt like he could relate. Much like the 1994 New York Rangers, who led their Stanley Cup Finals series over the Vancouver Canucks 3-1 before losing two straight games to Vancouver to force a win-or-go-home Game 7, McLaren’s lead in the F1 constructors standings had just been narrowed, via a victory for Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz Jr. He sent Rangers captain Mark Messier, also an executive producer on the anthology show, a note.  

“It's like everything I'm feeling,” he told Messier.  

The 2024 Formula One season has delivered fans some very welcome elements; namely, drama and intrigue. Prior to this year, driver Max Verstappen and his Red Bull Racing team ran roughshod over the F1 standings. But with two races to go in ‘24, McLaren and Ferrari are contending for the constructor title. Verstappen is still in position to win his fourth straight F1 championship, but Lando Norris from McLaren and Charles LeClerc from Ferrari have put pressure on the Red Bull superstar. 

Brown, the American who’s been in charge of U.K.-based McLaren since 2018, spoke with TIME about this chase for the F1 title, the keys to his sport’s continued growth in the United States, and his biggest mistake. 

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

The McLaren F1 team is in the running for its first Formula 1 constructors’ championship since 1998. What’s that like?

A combination of awesome, exhilarating, nerve-wracking, stressful, all the things that you think would be. Huge excitement, a lot of nervousness, fear, you run the gamut. I’m kind of living on the edge of my seat. That’s why sport is always going to be one of the most engaging forms of  entertainment for people around the world.

Are you sleeping all right, or is your mind racing with all this stuff?

Mind racing, but that’s not new. I’ve been like that for 30-plus years, because I’ve always been fighting for a championship. That’s how business feels to me; this one’s just public in front of hundreds of millions of people. When you're running a business, you’ve to kind of fight every day like you're fighting to win the world championship. So I've never been a good sleeper.

Max Verstappen and Red Bull have dominated F1 the past two seasons. But this year, both the team standings and driver standings have tightened. What explains this?

The cost cap, which has now been in place for a few years now, has brought financial parity, which then brings sporting parity. And then in our sport, when technical regulations don't change a lot in time, everyone kind of gravitates towards the same technical solution. It therefore becomes a lot closer.

What would it mean to Formula 1 for McLaren to win for the first time in 26 years?

I think it'll be a fan favorite. Lando Norris and Oscar [Piastri] are two of your fan favorites. Fans get tired of watching the same team win over and over. We're a team that hasn't won in a long time and has immense popularity. Same goes for  Ferrari. They haven’t won the constructors championship since 2008. What's cool is you now have two of the most iconic, historic teams that haven't won for a long time, battling it out. 

At the October 27 Mexico City Grand Prix, Verstappen was assessed 20 seconds worth of penalties in two altercations with Norris. You called Verstappen’s driving “a bit ridiculous” and said, “Let’s just have some good clean racing going forward.” Do you think we will see clean racing?

I think we will be seeing cleaner racing. The FIA [the F1 racing governing body] sent a message of, we’re not going to tolerate that type of driving anymore. Max is an unbelievable driver. He’s very smart. He drove what he could get away with, and now that he's not gotten away with it, I think he'll adjust his driving because he doesn't want to get penalized.

Why label it “ridiculous”?

It’s ultimately dangerous, right? It put Lando in a position where it was either run off the track or crash into me. Our racing needs to take place between the white lines, not off the track. No one wants to see huge accidents.

There’s been outstanding growth for F1 in the U.S., but other sports still dwarf the audience. What has to happen for that growth to continue?

We’ve just got to keep doing what we’re doing. I don’t think we need more races. We’re a new phenomenon in North America, and we need just more time. I think the Brad Pitt movie [F1, set for 2025] will move the needle—-because who doesn’t want to be Brad Pitt as a Formula 1 driver? Just like everyone wanted to be a fighter pilot after Top Gun, right? A U.S. driver that's a star, a world champion, would be huge, because we don't have one of those, and haven't had one of those since Mario Andretti. That would move the needle for sure.

Do you remember the moment you first fell in love with auto racing?

The 1981 Long Beach Grand Prix Formula One race. I didn’t know anything about racing. I was 10 years old, but to see a bunch of Formula 1 cars ripping around the streets of Long Beach—the sound, the speed, the size of the crowd, the technology of the cars—was just insane. I still have the racing program. I remember everything about it. I was a big baseball guy, but I definitely walked away and became a big racing fan from that moment onwards.

What kind of leadership skills do you think you need in your position that are unique to F1?

The skills are kind of no different than, say, my old company [JMI, a motorsports marketing agency]. Get yourself surrounded with great people. Be a good listener. Empower people. Be clear on goals. I think that’s kind of like CEO 101. Maybe what’s different is everyone knows my business, often at the same time I do. They see the pit stop when I see the pit stop; they see the race results when I see the race results. 

What’s the biggest mistake you’ve made as a leader, and how have you learned from it?

My biggest mistake was the Indianapolis 500 in 2019, when I didn't qualify with McLaren and Fernando Alonso. So to show up to one of the biggest races in the world, with one of the biggest brands in the world, with one of the most famous, successful racing drivers in the world, and not qualify, well, that's a failing. It was a horrific kind of business failing. The biggest I’ve ever had. I’ve also learned so much from it that I'm a better CEO. We're a better racing team. I'm proud of how we didn't run from it. Quite the opposite. Let's learn from this. Let's be smarter next time. And you know, we're gonna win that damn thing. We've come damn close.

Bianca Bustamante, the first woman in your driver development program, has a huge following. How far do you think she’ll go?

I don’t think she’s a future Formula 1 driver, because you’ve got to be one of the best 20 in the world, and I don’t think she’s demonstrated that level—not to say she’s a bad racing driver at all. I think she can definitely have a great career.

What’s the biggest tech innovation in F1 that we might see in the next few years that you’re excited about? 

The combination of hybrid technology, which we’ve had for 10 years; battery technology, which we’re continuing to develop; and sustainable fuels. That’s what’s going to be the future propulsion of the automobile. Formula 1’s always been an R&D lab. 

Can F1 be sustainable, given the travel and everything else? 

I think it definitely can, and I think it will be, [but] you hit the nail on the head as to our single largest challenge, which is, we’re a global sport. We’re in [21] countries. There’s what Formula 1 can do, what the racing teams can do, but we also are going to need our supply chain, like the airline industry, to lean in.

What’s the biggest challenge facing F1? 

Just the state of the world. It doesn’t mean we’re perfect, [but] there’s nothing that’s keeping me up at night that I feel is in our control, any icebergs ahead where I’m saying, “Steer left.” Our big revenue stream is our fan base and our partner base, and what impacts those groups is world economies and wars and things of that nature. But I can’t control any of that. That’s not a Formula 1 problem. That’s an issue for all of us.