McLaren lifted their first Constructors’ title in 26 years at the end of F1 2024, with Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri claiming a combined total of six victories across the season. The secret to the team’s success? People power.
To appreciate the significance of McLaren‘s first Constructors’ title in more than a quarter of a century, it is worth recalling the state the team were in when Zak Brown arrived in late 2016.
An edit of this article originally published on PlanetF1. com’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix Findings
As he explained in a recent interview, Brown found a place lacking just about everything required to make a successful F1 team.
There was no structure, insufficient investment, an ancient wind tunnel and simulator, hardly any sponsors, a dissatisfied workforce, a dispute in the boardroom and, to top it all off, an uncompetitive car.
It was, in other words, a team that had lost all semblance of self-respect.
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McLaren’s position in the F1 landscape had been taken by Mercedes, which first came to take its star driver, then its technical director, then its main sponsor and finally replaced its former partners as the victorious normal force. and looking for a title.
Ron Dennis, it had long been clear, had stayed too long in spite of all the intelligence he had made.
Not that Brown has been perfect.
There were times in the first couple of years when he carried the air of a superfan that got lucky, too willing to kneel at the Temple of Fernando Alonso, who for all his skill was afforded a little too much power and influence for his team boss to be taken seriously.
There have been symptoms of that naivety this year too, with Brown reacting emotionally – disproportionately – to clashes between Lando Norris and Max Verstappen, as if it were too difficult to present McLaren as a serious and sustained risk to Red Bull.
As if he wanted to convince ourselves – all of us – that the world, despite everything, had righted itself on its axis to make McLaren the new Mercedes, a decade after Mercedes became the new McLaren.
His fellow team managers mocked the fan sitting just below the surface, pointing out that Brown wouldn’t recognize the front of a Formula 1 car from behind even if he tried.
This is invariably an insult, but does it not highlight Brown’s marvelous strength?
Do you recognize the limits of your own wisdom and experience? And fill those gaps by finding the right people and training them sufficiently?
Brown is an all-encompassing interference team leader, the worst kind of team leader.
It takes a certain humility and mastery of one’s ego to delegate effectively as he does.
Most of the credit goes to Andrea Stella, but we also think of her predecessor, Andreas Seidl, last seen undignifiedly leaving Audi F1 operations, who is credited with driving McLaren’s turnaround by leading the decisions. strategic plans to return to Mercedes engines and commit to the structure. of a new regulatory wind tunnel in 2019.
Here’s how it works at McLaren those days: Stella, like Seidl before him, has complete freedom to run the racing team as she sees fit, while Brown stays in his lane and does his homework of dealing with shareholders. , captivating your customers. potential. sponsors, courting the media and acting as the team’s mascot on Sundays.
It is a two-man job yet essentially no different to how Toto Wolff and Christian Horner have insulated the Mercedes and Red Bull race teams from their respective boards over the years (Fred Vasseur, with a similar feel for how things should be done, is in the process of implementing an identical structure at Ferrari).
After all, F1 groups reach their peak productivity and agility when they function more like large F3 groups, fully focused on the essentials and machinations of the global organizations to which they are linked. Motor racing is confusing enough not to bother you.
In other words, being McLaren’s shield, Brown Stella will be the sword.
The effects have been spectacular, the team’s trajectory so encouraging in recent years that the triumph they dreamed of for so long and feared would never happen in those darkest days, has become inevitable for a few months.
The McLaren revival is finally complete. Even sweeter, maybe, that they did it by blowing away their old friends at Mercedes with their own engine.
The magic of this sport?
It is discovered in the technical tricks, nuts and bolts, ride heights and tire pressure.
It’s in the people. Relations. Obligations. Human chemistry. Flesh and blood.
Do it too, as McLaren did, and you’ll have a chance.
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