Zak Brown would’ve been “ashamed” if McLaren had lost the Constructors’ title to the “most iconic team” Ferrari in the F1 2024 season.

McLaren made their mark last year as the most improved team in the championship, their in-season gains putting Lando Norris in with a shout at winning the World title.

McLaren’s Zak Brown: ‘You’d be ashamed to have gone through all this…’

Although the Woking team was half a second down in qualifying at the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix and finished the race 45 seconds behind race winner Max Verstappen, their Miami Grand Prix upgrade triggered a resurgence.

Bolting a new floor onto the MCL38, the team systematically set about improving other areas of the car that meant as correlation issues hampered rivals, including Red Bull, McLaren had a solid base on which to build.

And build on it they did.

F1 2024 championship in numbers

👉F1 2024: Head-to-head qualifying record between team-mates

👉F1 2024: Head-to-head race statistics between team-mates

The team clinched six Grands Prix wins to win the World Championship by 14 points ahead of Ferrari while Norris finished a career-high P2 in the Drivers’ standings.

It was, however, a case of so near and yet so far.

As McLaren made inroads into Red Bull’s advantage on the track, the team fielding arguably the fastest car on the grid for half of the season, they were undone by mistakes from the drivers and the strategists.

It meant that even when Norris closed to within 44 points of Verstappen, the Red Bull driver needed just one perfect race to be assured of the title. He achieved that at a rain-soaked Brazilian GP as red flags, strategy and back-to-back driver errors cost Norris.

But while McLaren lost out on the individual trophy, they held on to win a first Constructors’ title since 1998.

The Woking team took the lead away from Red Bull at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix with the 2023 champions also losing out to Ferrari three race later in Mexico.

Ferrari closed the gap to McLaren and went into the season finale trailing them by 21 points with everything to play for. McLaren though held on to take the title by 14 points ahead of the Scuderia.

“We were the slowest team,” Brown told CNBC. “To have that type of turnaround was awesome.

“It was much more fun being the hunter, and then we were the hunted the second half of the season, so you do get into a bit of a… you’d be ashamed to have gone through all this, lead the championship and then lose it at the last race.

“I’m as motivated by the fear of defeat as I am the motivated by the thrill of victory so it was very stressful.

“I wouldn’t have wanted to be one of the mechanics doing the pit stop. I mean, the pressure that they would have been under you – about 16, 18 people in a pit stop – and you’re only as quick as your slowest person in that situation.

“And so to have them all lean in and do the fastest pit stop of the race was a great story.

“Ferrari, if there’s one team you want to go down to the wire with – the most iconic team in Formula One with the long history between Ferrari and McLaren. I like racing Ferrari,” Brown said. “I like Charles Leclerc, I like Fred who runs the team.”

Such is the friendship between Brown and Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur that the latter joined in Norris’ Miami Grand Prix celebrations with McLaren later partaking in Ferrari’s race-winning moments.

“That’s what was nice, we kind of got into… Fred when Lando won in Miami kind of jumped in on our celebration. And that kind of triggered a moment where we’ve jumped in on each other’s celebration over the course of the season,” said Brown.

“I think that’s the great side of sport. I wouldn’t say we do that with all of our competitors. We have various relationships in the pit lane. But so it was great that we were able to do it in such a sporting manner, and hopefully we can do it again this year.”

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