By Andrew Benson.
McLaren Formula 1 boss Zak Brown says he is “surprised” to find the team in a battle with Red Bull for the world championship this season.
McLaren trail Red Bull by just 42 points in the constructors’ championship as the season heads into its final 10 races.
“If I were to sit here and say I’m not surprised, that would be disingenuous,” Brown told BBC Sport in an exclusive interview.
“Red Bull had such an advantage over everyone and Mercedes has been so dominant.
“I felt like we’d continue to close the gap. Did I think we would be here at the summer break, one race away from getting the lead?
“That race would have to be first and second and fastest lap, and do I think it’s going to happen like that? No. But if we keep the same trajectory we’ve been on the last six, seven races, we’ll be where we need to be by the end of the year.
“I thought we might get where we are now by 2025. I didn’t think we would be where we are now in 2024. But I’m not complaining.”
McLaren were 115 points behind Red Bull after the sixth race of the season, the Miami Grand Prix, where their driver Lando Norris took his maiden victory.
At least one McLaren driver has been on the podium at every one of the eight races since then, Norris’ team-mate Oscar Piastri has also taken his first grand prix win, and Red Bull’s form has slipped after a dominant start to the season.
But Brown suspects the constructors’ race will run all season – and says it’s hard to predict because of the form of Red Bull’s Sergio Perez, whose recent slump is partially responsible for the closing gap. Perez has not finished higher than seventh since Miami.
“It’s going to be tough,” Brown says. “I think it’s going to come down to the last race. There’s not much between the cars. It’s gonna come down to how does Sergio Perez perform?
“If he can perform as he’s capable of performing, it’s going to be a hard fight. If he continues to perform as he has this year, we have a pretty good chance, because we have two drivers constantly performing at the front.”
Learning from mistakes
In the drivers’ championship McLaren are also second, but winning that is a tougher task – Norris is 78 points behind Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, an imposing advantage when the Dutchman performs at such a consistently high level.
McLaren and Norris could be in an even better position had the team and driver not made a handful of small but key errors.
Norris’ slips have often come at starts, such as in Spain, Hungary and Belgium. With the team, at Silverstone a couple of strategy choices were also costly.
But Brown, McLaren Racing’s chief executive officer, says: “We’ve all made a variety of errors, which to me are learning experiences. I thought [Mercedes team principal] Toto [Wolff] was accurate with his comment. He said: ‘Well, sometimes you figure these things out once they’ve kind of been put on your plate.’
“So if I look at the mistakes we’ve made – whether those are drivers or us, kinda doesn’t matter; we’re one team – we wouldn’t make these mistakes again. We’re learning. And I think maybe because we have got where we are quicker than we thought, it shows we still have learning to do.”
Brown admits the British Grand Prix was one that got away. “We probably should have finished first and second at Silverstone,” he says.
“And yeah, Lando is trying to fight for a world championship. He’s going for it. He’s learning, as are we. So I’m not concerned about it.”
How McLaren got here
McLaren find themselves in this position because of their remarkable progress since Brown made Andrea Stella team principal in December 2022.
The move was prompted by former team principal Andreas Seidl telling Brown he would be joining Audi in 2025 in time for the start of their F1 programme.
Brown decided to expedite the process. He let Seidl go early and promoted Stella. Seidl’s departure was followed by that James Key as technical director and head of aerodynamics Tony Salter.
Since then, McLaren’s turnaround has been nothing short of astonishing. They admitted they would start 2023 slowly, a legacy of design errors made in 2022, but said they could see progress was coming.
The first big upgrade to the car in mid-2023 leapt them from the lower midfield to the leading pack behind Red Bull, where they were competing with Ferrari and Mercedes for the rest of last season.
This year started with them third fastest behind Red Bull and Ferrari, but a major upgrade in Miami – on pretty much the whole of the car – put them toe-to-toe with Red Bull, and they have been there ever since.
Brown points to Stella and the changes he has made to the team’s structure and operations as the main reason for this.
“He unlocked the talent that we already had here,” Brown says. “We’ve got approximately 1,000 people here in F1. I changed three. But it was three leaders. So 997 are the same people who gave us the [uncompetitive] car at the beginning of 2023.
“A leader’s job is to get the most out of their people and that’s what we didn’t have previously. We weren’t able to let the talent we have in here flourish.
“Andrea communicates very well. He listens very well. He’s very hard-working. He’s very technical. He leads by example. All the traits you would want in a great leader. He unlocked the potential this team clearly had sitting there.”
Stella joined McLaren in 2015 but was not promoted to team principal for another eight years. Why?
“Truth be known,” Brown says, “I offered it to him the first time around [when Seidl was appointed in January 2019], and he declined it. He felt he wasn’t ready.
“Andrea is someone who knows his capabilities and doesn’t overreach.
“The second time around he knew me better, knew the team better, even though he’d been here a while. And still he didn’t say yes in the first phone call. It took a couple of days because he’s very methodical, very thoughtful.”