Zac Brown SB Nation Last autumn, in explaining McLaren’s incredible mid-season turnaround, he summarised the reasons for McLaren’s ascent quite simply:
“A faster race car,” was how McLaren’s CEO explained it.
but, talk Independent Ahead of this weekend’s Hungarian Grand Prix, McLaren’s boss offered a different explanation for the team’s turnaround.
trust.
Brown spoke about the state of McLaren when he took over as CEO in 2018, describing the team as being largely adrift. McLaren finished ninth in the F1 constructors’ championship in 2017, before he took over, but he said it was “a world away” from where McLaren was then.
“It’s a night-and-day difference,” Brown said. “Most of the people are the same, but the culture is fundamentally different.”
And it comes down to trust.
“The environment was pretty toxic, there wasn’t a lot of trust or belief. Everything was really bad. When I started, people were presumed guilty until proven innocent,” Brown continued. “It was damaging to the culture.”
Brawn had high praise for McLaren team principal Andrea Stella, who took up the role in December 2022 ahead of the 2023 F1 season.
“Trust each other,” Brown added. “There’s a big cultural difference in not making up conspiracy theories out of thin air. Andrea has done a great job of setting clear direction and instilling in her team a mindset of improving a little bit every day — learning from and embracing mistakes, rather than blaming anyone.”
A chat with Brown Independent Some eyebrows will likely be raised as McLaren bosses deal with the ongoing aftermath of the Austrian Grand Prix, when Max Verstappen and Lando Norris collided while battling for the lead in the closing stages of the race, resulting in both drivers suffering punctures.
The contact put both drivers out of the race, with Norris being eliminated from the race.
But McLaren’s rise has been one of the most remarkable aspects of the past year in the sport, going from simply “fighting for points,” as Norris explained to me in April 2023, to competing for podiums by the end of last year.
Now? Now they are fighting for victory.
It was simply a matter of trust and perhaps a faster race car.
