Zak Brown discusses McLaren’s journey since ‘worst year in history’
Zak Brown also thinks that despite the apparent setback in 2022, McLaren improved as a 'racing team' - but they're still only 'halfway through the journey'.
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McLaren CEO Zak Brown
2022 definitely wasn’t ideal for McLaren, and could even be interpreted as a setback. At least in terms of championship position – they went from P4 in 2021 to P5 the next season. Moreover, they had spent the vast majority of 2021 fighting Ferrari for P3. While they eventually lost, they won a race at Monza – the Prancing Horses’ home race. But this time around, Ferrari were far out of reach for them. Zak Brown’s team were instead embroiled in a battle for P4 with Alpine.
The top three as a whole were in a league of their own. Still, though, McLaren got the only podium for any team outside the top three) through Lando Norris in Imola. Norris also scored the vast majority of their points – with Daniel Ricciardo’s struggles continuing, even leading to him being replaced by Oscar Piastri. Perhaps they could have beaten Alpine if Ricciardo did a better job. But, alas. On paper, it does look like a step back from where McLaren were in 2020 and 2021.
But Brown thinks that they have grown as a team. Speaking to ESPN, the American said: “In a positive year there’s learnings and there’s failures along the way. I think we’re a better racing team today than we were a year ago. That’s positive. I look at the way we started ’22 with our brake issue in Bahrain. … It was iffy if we were even going to race in Bahrain. So the positive of that was I was impressed at how the team reacted, how quickly they fixed the problem.”
Zak Brown highlights McLaren’s progress since his arrival
McLaren are one of the most successful Formula 1 teams of all time. But currently, they’re in the middle of a dry spell – they haven’t won a Constructors’ championship since 1999. Despite that, they were almost always contenders or there or thereabouts until 2013. After Lewis Hamilton left, they got worse with almost every passing year – with incredibly dismal seasons in 2015 and 2017, where they finished P9 both times. Since then, they’ve been on a road to recovery.
When Zak Brown came in, McLaren were in dire straits. Their situation right now is definitely considerably better, but that’s a low bar. The 51-year-old said of this: “When I took over as CEO in 2016 that was coming off of the worst year in the history of McLaren, ninth, our fans were disappointed in us, morale in the factory was low, we had very little sponsorship. Five years later, we’ve won a race, almost won another, we’ve had a pole, we’ve had nine podiums, we’ve been third, fourth, fifth, we’ve been mixing it up at the front.”
Brown further highlighted how McLaren outside of Formula 1 was also doing well – with a host of great sponsors to boot. Despite that, they’re only ‘halfway through the journey’ as he admits. to getting back towards the front of the field. He thinks they have everything they need to get there – but it’s still going to be ‘damn hard’. The very young, and talented driver lineup is definitely a boost for them in this regard. Fans will be eagerly awaiting seeing McLaren in action again.
In case you missed it:
- Zak Brown not expecting McLaren to ‘rebound’ as quickly as Ferrari did
- Kyle Larson plans a ‘wager’ with McLaren boss Zak Brown for an F1 test
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Aniket Tripathi
(1002 Articles Published)