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When Zak Brown joined McLaren Racing in 2016, he discovered a storied organization badly in need of a reboot. The team was firmly in the midfield, finishing sixth that season and experiencing record low sponsorship. Around the paddock, the workforce was disgruntled, and a culture of distrust had set in. Partners were fleeing, and fans were angry.

Brown first walked the factory floors that winter, meeting every mechanic, engineer and marketing staffer he could find. He wanted to understand them.

They all soon became well-versed in Brown’s story: He once dreamed of playing professional baseball but instead discovered racing by chance and endured years of failure while climbing the rungs of the Formula One world as a dealmaker. His reputation as a self-made scrapper appeared to be exactly what McLaren needed at the time, and after Brown was named the team’s chief executive in 2018, bold moves followed.

The return to relevancy was not linear — the team faced bankruptcy during the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/coronavirus/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">coronavirus</a> pandemic — but nearly eight years after Brown arrived, McLaren has reversed its financial fortunes with surging revenue and is on pace to win its first constructors championship since 1998 with two races to go.

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“We kind of had a lot of people that were lost, if you like, and a great brand that was being damaged,” Brown said. “But it’s a strong brand. So it was one you could polish again, which was a great foundation to start from. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

McLaren <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/sports/racing/mclaren-reports-eye-watering-multi-million-dollar-profit-after-f1-indycar-success-1962725#:~:text=As%20the%20team%20clawed%20its,of%20CO2%20to%204%2C264%20tonnes." target="_blank">reported</a> revenue of $571 million in 2023, a 31 percent increase from the year before, when it had incurred millions in losses. Those gains have been bolstered on the track over the past two seasons, including in 2024, when British driver Lando Norris contended for the drivers championship for much of the season and, alongside Australia’s Oscar Piastri, has positioned McLaren for its first team championship in 26 years.

“It’s not been beyond my wildest dreams,” Brown said, “because this is my dream.”

Daniel Kalisz

Brown’s dream in racing can be traced back to an invitation to compete on “Wheel of Fortune” as a 13-year-old in 1984. He combed his blond hair and wore a bright red shirt for the cameras. The show’s host, Pat Sajak, asked him whether it was true that he wanted to become a baseball player. Brown nodded and eventually won $3,050 on the show, which he spent on a set of gold watches.

The jewelry sat in his bedroom drawer for a few years, and eventually he stopped going to class and got kicked off the baseball team. His parents had once taken him to a race, and the cars always held his fascination. At 17, he decided to do something about it. He attended the Long Beach Grand Prix and had an opportunity to meet legendary driver Mario Andretti. Brown worked up the nerve to ask Andretti: How do I get into racing?”

Brown flipped open his program that day and found an advertisement for a racing school. He sold his watches to a local pawn shop to buy a go-kart. He didn’t have family money to go racing; he convinced Trans World Airlines to be a sponsor because his mother was a travel agent. TWA bought him airline tickets to compete in events.

“I just learned in an entrepreneurial way how to kind of become a dealmaker,” he said, and eventually he started his own company, Just Marketing, to broker sponsorship and advertising deals in motorsports. When he started, it was hand-to-mouth. Most prospective client calls ended in rejection. He could barely make payroll and would FedEx paychecks to employees overnight.

But Brown had the same obsessive work ethic as his parents. His father was an introverted musician who worked around-the-clock, he said, and his mother was an extroverted saleswoman always cutting deals. He channeled lessons from them and steadily grew his young company to include relationships with Formula One, NASCAR and IndyCar, and it eventually became one of the largest motorsports marketing agencies in the world.

Michael M. Santiago

“He’s a racer. He has a racing mentality, and he wants to win. … He [also] loves the commercial world. He loves doing deals,” said Matt Dennington, who has worked under Brown for more than a decade at Just Marketing and McLaren.

Brown started as the executive director of McLaren Technology Group in 2016, a year after the team finished ninth and endured what Brown has called its worst season in history. By the time he took over the racing arm in 2018, he vowed to develop deeper engagement with fans and help defrost the brand.

McLaren had not won a drivers championship in a decade at that point, and he wanted to get back to its heritage. At the forefront was returning the color to papaya orange.

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“The brand had kind of became cold and steely. … I didn’t really know where this was going, but it was like, ‘We’re going back to our roots, and we’re going back to papaya.’ That was a huge change,” said Louise McEwen, McLaren’s chief marketing officer. “That vision started then and has been a huge resurgence to the brand. It has given fans that affinity to hold on to.”

That momentum of a rebrand stalled as the team was hemorrhaging millions at the onset of the pandemic. McLaren suffered heavy layoffs and sold its headquarters in Woking, England, for nearly $240 million to a New York-based real estate investment company and arranged a 20-year leaseback. A U.S.-based investment group, MSP Sports Capital, invested about $200 million into McLaren for a 15 percent stake. Bahrain’s sovereign wealth fund took full ownership of the McLaren Group this past spring.

“We were right on the verge,” Brown said. “The investment that we received wasn’t a nice-to-have. It was a need-to-have for survival. We were in a terrible state.”

As the team stabilized financially, Brown made other crucial moves to survive, including hiring Andrea Stella as team principal in 2022. He vowed to create the most diverse team in the sport — McLaren said it has the most female representation on its leadership group of any team in the sport — and he has ruthlessly defended his drivers, including Norris, who in October was attacked by Red Bull’s Helmut Marko for “mental weaknesses.”

Brown himself has traded barbs in the media with Red Bull star Max Verstappen in recent weeks. He has never considered himself an outsider in the sport — “You can’t be an outsider with McLaren,” he said — but in the boardroom or the paddock he insists he’s the same guy hustling watches to fund his first car or selling sponsors to launch his first business.

Jared C. Tilton

“I’m definitely a street fighter,” he said. “My street fighting ability, I’ve been able to mature and use. But I’ve got a different level of weaponry now, in the sense of when it comes to politics and gravitas of being the McLaren CEO, the Rolodex that that comes with, you use your power and influence to benefit the team and our partners in a different way because you’re carrying a heavier bat.”

With two races remaining, McLaren holds a slim 24-point lead over Ferrari in the constructors standings. At a corporate event before last week’s Las Vegas Grand Prix, Brown <a href="https://www.espn.com/f1/story/_/id/42540793/mclaren-taking-granted-f1-team-championship-sight" target="_blank">told reporters</a> that some people have already approached to congratulate him early on the title. “I kind of want to punch them in the nose,” he said, knowing how quickly fortunes can change in Formula One.

“It’s never enough,” he said. “I feel like I’m just getting started, and that drives me.”

Patrick T. Fallon

University of Montana, BA in history, print journalism

Roman Stubbs is a sports reporter for The Washington Post.

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McLaren CEO Zak Brown has helped lead it to cusp of an F1 title

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Zak Brown, a self-made scrapper, has led McLaren to the cusp of an F1 title

McLaren needed a reboot. The bold moves of Brown, its CEO, have helped position it for a team championship.