McLaren CEO Zak Brown has revealed how a particular mindset within the team didn’t sit well with him when he first arrived at Woking.

McLaren returned to the top of Formula 1 in F1 2024, winning its first Constructors’ Championship title since 1998 as Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri proved the duo to beat.

Zak Brown: McLaren were just underperforming

It’s been a long road back to the top for McLaren, whose heritage and prestige counted for little when the Woking-based squad fell off the boil in the early 2010s.

A calamitous switch to Honda power after 2014 saw McLaren plummet to the bottom of the grid, and the rebuild project began in earnest with the arrival of Zak Brown in 2016 before he took over as CEO in 2018.

Management changes at the top, along with a change to Renault power, steadied the ship before a switch to Mercedes and the hiring of Andreas Seidl as team boss began showing signs of clear improvement.

A return to victory in 2021 with Daniel Ricciardo was somewhat fortuitous at the time, but the ingredients were coming together.

Showing constant upward momentum, the arrival of a comprehensive upgrade package under team boss Andrea Stella at the 2023 Austrian Grand Prix marked a clear return to competitiveness for McLaren, and that upward momentum has remained as McLaren became the outright quickest team on the grid in 2024.

As F1’s second-oldest team and one of the largest in the sport, Brown revealed that a mindset had crept in at Woking in the team’s barren years – one that didn’t sit well with him as he revealed on Sky F1‘s end-of-year season review.

“They’ve done an amazing job. I was at the team barbecue last night,” he said, when asked about his pride at how McLaren kept the pressure up on Red Bull and Ferrari to come out on top of the championship.

“When I started at McLaren, I remember one of the things that used to drive me nuts was the team would say, ‘Yeah, the big three’, ‘the top three’, and ‘the big three’. We weren’t part of that conversation.

“I was like, ‘We’re McLaren, we’re not in a good place right now but, no, it’s the big four. We’re one of them. We’re just underperforming.”

With belief coming back to McLaren, Brown said that mindset has now evidently changed.

“Now all the men and women of McLaren who have done such a good job, we talk about the others, the other top three,” he said.

“It’s great to have McLaren showing up now every weekend, and people are looking at where we are on the timesheets. That’s how it should be.

“Obviously, all teams go up and down – McLaren, Ferrari, Red Bull, Mercedes, but it’s great to be back, and credit to everyone at McLaren for getting us here.”

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Andrea Stella: McLaren has gone through a circle

Speaking to media including PlanetF1.com after the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, team boss Andrea Stella said he often refers back to 2015 when speaking with other McLaren team members, in a bid to highlight how much things have changed.

“The time [since] I joined McLaren [to] now 2024, end of the season, celebrating a championship means if you want that we have gone almost through a circle,” he said.

“I often mention to the team the fact that first race in 2015 in Australia, between our lap in Q1 and the pole position there were five seconds and three seconds to the best lap in Q1.

“We have gone all the way. And we have gone all the way thanks to great resilience, thanks to great belief.

“I would like to thank in particular Zak Brown, Paul Walsh, all our shareholders for their faith in the change.

“Faith in the change that gradually they have implemented and put McLaren in a very solid position from a management point of view.

“When you are solid from a management point of view, when you are trusted, when you start to be able to deliver the investments that were necessary then you can compete.

“I think the final bit of this circle if you want came through the people.

“Unlocking the people which is something that I’ve said several times.

“I’m not sure if it’s something that… who listens can actually appreciate what it means if you are not part of seeing such a rapid progress of 1,000 people.

“But that’s what has happened because you cannot achieve these standards, this performance, this operations, this reliability without every one of the 1,000 people operating at very high level.

“That’s what we have gone through in these 10 years at McLaren but hopefully this is not an endpoint, this is just a starting point for more to come in the future.”

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