Brown’s decade at McLaren: From ‘darkness’ to dominance

When Zak Brown first walked through the doors of McLaren’s Woking headquarters in late 2016, the silence was telling. This was not the roar of a team chasing glory – it was the hush of an organisation weighed down by its own past.

Nearly ten years on, that same team stands at the summit of Formula 1 once again. Constructors’ champions. Drivers’ champions. A commercial powerhouse.

But for Brown, the true story of McLaren’s rebirth isn’t written in trophies – it’s written in people.

A team lost in the shadows

Brown’s first impressions were stark, almost cinematic in their gloom.

"I think about my first day joining," Brown recently told media. "It was a dark environment, and that was literally the paint on the race car, being black and dark grey, to the walls.

"You could feel it was a cold environment. It wasn't a happy environment. The partners weren't happy, our drivers weren't happy, and the majority of our race team wasn't happy, [and there were] a lot of conspiracy theories running around."

At the time, McLaren was a giant struggling to remember how to stand. Performance had dipped, morale had fractured, and internally, divisions had taken root. The once-mighty name had become synonymous with underachievement.

Yet buried beneath the surface, Brown saw something others might have missed: potential.

Unlocking talent, rebuilding belief

What followed was not an overnight revival, but a slow, deliberate cultural reset – one that would ultimately redefine McLaren’s identity.

"I think we're a much more vibrant team. There was a huge amount of talent in here. It was just about unlocking it, providing motivation, excitement, and bringing some fun back,” Brown added.

"We race cars for a living. It's more fun winning than losing, but at the end of the day, it's a pretty fun job."

That philosophy – simple, almost disarmingly so – became the cornerstone of McLaren’s resurgence. Brown didn’t just want faster cars; he wanted a happier, unified workforce capable of building them.

Key to that transformation was dismantling the invisible walls inside the organisation.

"So [it was about] getting everyone in a teamwork environment and the culture that all of the people in the leadership team, and obviously, Andrea [Stella] is the one who is most visible to all of you, but my head of people, our CFO, the commercial department, comms, they've all done a wonderful job in their respective departments,” the McLaren chief explained.

Under Brown’s leadership – and with figures like Andrea Stella playing a pivotal role – McLaren became something it hadn’t been in years: cohesive.

One team, one direction

Perhaps the most striking shift came in how every corner of the organisation began to see itself – not as separate departments, but as contributors to a shared mission.

"When I joined, there was an us and them, upstairs, downstairs, racing team, commercial department?” Brown recalled.

“Now it's exciting to see when we do something like a weight-saving exercise, and you start having to kind of modify the vinyl on your race car, as small as that may seem, the commercial department gets excited about feeling like they're contributing to the solution to make the race car faster.

"So when we win on Sunday, the finance department knows they had a big role in that, etcetera. So when you can get 1400 people, not all of those are on Formula 1, but the predominant amount, rowing in the same direction and all understanding how important their role is to our on-track success, it creates an awesome environment."

That unity has translated into results on track. With Lando Norris delivering a long-awaited drivers’ title and McLaren reclaiming its place at the top of the constructors’ standings, the turnaround is no longer theoretical – it’s tangible.

And yet, Brown remains grounded in reality.

"I wouldn't want to be as naive as to say we have no politics here, but I'd say we have very little,” he said.

• Read also: Zak Brown shuts down Verstappen-to-McLaren fantasy

McLaren’s revival under Brown is often measured in silverware and sponsorship deals. But the deeper story – the one the 54-year-old American himself returns to – is cultural.

From a fractured, mistrustful organisation to a unified, high-performing team, the journey has been as much about human connection as engineering excellence.

In Formula 1, where success is often defined by milliseconds, McLaren’s transformation is a reminder that the biggest gains sometimes come from within.

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