McLaren boss Zak Brown credits ‘trust’ for team’s stunning turnaround

Speaking ahead of the Hungarian Grand Prix McLaren CEO Zak Brown outlined how ‘trust’ was essential to the team’s turnaround

When Zak Brown sat down with SB Nation last fall to explain McLaren’s stunning mid-season turnaround, he summed up the reason behind their rise rather simply.

“Faster race car,” was the explanation from the McLaren CEO.

However, speaking with The Independent ahead of this weekend’s Hungarian Grand Prix the McLaren boss had another explanation for the team’s turnaround.

Trust.

Brown described the situation at McLaren when he became CEO in 2018, outlining how the team had almost become adrift. McLaren finished ninth in the Formula 1 Constructors’ Championship in 2017, the year before he took over. But he stated things are “night and day” from where McLaren was back then.

“It is night and day,” stated Brown. “The majority of the people are the same but the culture is radically different.”

And it comes down to “trust.”

“The environment was pretty toxic, there wasn’t a lot of trust or belief. It was all really bad. When I started, people were guilty until proven innocent,” continued Brown. “It was damaging to the culture.”

Brown offered a lot of credit to McLaren Team Principal Andrea Stella, who took over in that role in December 2022, ahead of the 2023 F1 season.

“Trust with each other,” added Brown. “There’s a big culture difference in not creating conspiracy theories out of nothing. Andrea has done an outstanding job in setting a clear direction and getting the team into a mindset of just doing incrementally better every day. Learning from mistakes, embracing mistakes, as opposed to blaming someone else.”

Brown’s chat with The Independent will likely raise some eyebrows, given how the McLaren boss addresses the ongoing fallout over the Austrian Grand Prix. In the closing stages of that race Max Verstappen and Lando Norris touched wheels while battling for the lead, leading to punctures for both drivers.

The contact knocked both drivers out of contention, and Norris out of the race.

But McLaren’s rise is one of the most notable aspects of the past calendar year in the sport, as they went from simply “fighting for points” as Norris described to me in April of 2023 to fighting for podiums by the end of last year.

Now? Now they fighting for wins.

It was simply a matter of trust, and perhaps a faster race car.