Zak Brown of McLaren talks Lando Norris, Oscar Piastri, and when a championship is coming

McLaren’s Zak Brown talked exclusively with SB Nation about their dramatic turnaround and more

As the Formula 1 season draws to a close, there is perhaps one name on everyone’s lips.

McLaren.

Early in the 2023 season, Aston Martin was the darling of the F1 world. They were the surprise package during pre-season testing and stormed out of the gates to second in the Constructors’ Championship early in the year. They held that position following the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, the fourth race of the season, with 87 points on the campaign.

As for McLaren, they left Baku down in fifth place, with just 14 points in their account. By the time the summer came, they were down in sixth place, now sitting behind Alpine with just 17 points on the season after eight race weekends.

Since then the conversation has changed.

Dramatically.

McLaren roared to life in the weeks that followed, starting with a strong fourth-place finish from Lando Norris in the Austrian Grand Prix. Podiums soon followed as Norris finished in second in both the British Grand Prix and the Hungarian Grand Prix, and teammate Oscar Piastri followed with some podiums of his own.

Now? Now McLaren sit fourth in the Constructors’ Championship, with 242 points on the season, a mark which saw them pull ahead of Aston Martin in the standings this past weekend when Norris finished second at the United States Grand Prix.

For McLaren CEO Zak Brown, the rise of McLaren these past few months comes down to three simple words:

“Faster race car.”

Of course, it goes much deeper than that, as Brown knows intimately well. SB Nation talked with the McLaren boss ahead of the Mexico City Grand Prix about the team’s resurgence this year, and his vision for their future.

That resurgence? It was a total team effort, starting with some much-publicized restructuring at the beginning of the season. The team reorganized its managerial staff early in the year, creating a new Formula 1 Technical Executive team that reported to Team Principal Andrea Stella. That put the right people in the right places, according to Brown, to cultivate conditions for their recent success.

“But there’s a lot of great people at McLaren that have contributed to that,” said Brown regarding that faster race car. “We made a team principal change, and technical director and head of aero, which were effectively our three most senior positions within a racing team, and put Andrea Stella in charge.

“And what that enabled us to do was to restructure the team, empower the great talent that already existed within McLaren because I think the impressive part is the people that gave us the car at the start of the year are the same people that have given this fantastic race car that we have now.

“So we really weren’t set up for success and didn’t have the right leadership approach to getting the most out of our people, and that’s ultimately what’s changed back at the factory.”

The result of those changes? A very, very fast race car, one that in certain weeks has given Red Bull’s RB19 a run for its money.

“And the output of that [restructuring] has been a rapid development of our racing car that has been very strong from Austria onwards.”

To that point, Red Bull is the only team to have outscored McLaren since Austria.

Of course, having a great pair of drivers certainly helps, and McLaren has that in Norris and Piastri. The two were integral in the development of the MCL60 early in the year, according to Brown.

“Starting with the driver is very, very important because they’re giving you the feedback and at the end of the day, driving the race car,” said Brown when asked how the McLaren drivers aided in the development of the MCL60.

“So they’ve got the last say … we can see on data where the car doesn’t perform. But getting the feedback from the driver is also needed because they’re the ones that are able to tell you why it won’t perform. We can see it doesn’t perform in, you know, turn one, but we can’t tell you why,” added Brown.

And in Norris and Piastri, McLaren has, in Brown’s mind, the best driver pairing on the grid.

Photo by Dan Istitene – Formula 1/Formula 1 via Getty Images

“Best driver lineup of the grid when you look at a combination of experience, age, talent,” said Brown when asked about McLaren’s duo. “I think clearly Lewis [Hamilton] and George [Russell] are awesome. “But Lewis is, you know, towards the near of his career as opposed to the start.

“So I think when you look at a complete package and you’re looking at, you know, five years down the road, there’s some awesome teammates out there but I think given our age, experience, and youthfulness, we’ve got a driver line up second to none.”

Brown’s point regarding both Norris and Piastri and their age, is a critical one. Norris, who marked his 100th F1 start in the United States Grand Prix — and secured his fourth-straight podium — is set to turn 24 just before the Las Vegas Grand Prix. As for Piastri, who is winding down his rookie campaign, he turned 22 back in April.

But when Brown elaborated on both drivers what stands out to him, despite their age, is their maturity.

“First, he’s obviously naturally very fast and very talented,” said Brown about what makes Norris a great driver. “He’s very mature. He’s very precise. He’s got all the natural talent in the world and then the patience, maturity, aggressiveness, technical ability, and is great in the team environment to get the most out of the team.

“He’s just a complete racing driver. If we had a car capable of winning the world championship right now, he would be competing for the world championship.”

Brown sees the same maturity in Piastri, which is remarkable for a rookie.

“He has been fantastic. I think it’s been the best rookie season since Lewis Hamilton, at least that’s what everyone keeps telling me,” said Brown about Piastri. “He has all the same qualities Lando has just, what he doesn’t have is the experience Lando has. But as far as his natural skill, his determination, his maturity, you know, he’s 22 years old.

“But a lot of young drivers are over eager on Friday, and they get themselves in trouble, and then they never recover and have a good weekend because they spent time getting their car repaired.”

That is not the case with Piastri, from Brown’s vantage point. The maturity pays off with how the rookie approaches each opportunity in the MCL60.

“Oscar kind of creeps up on it, he uses Friday as a test session and that’s exactly what Friday is, a test session. And he doesn’t get, which a lot of rookie drivers do get lulled into the, ‘I wanna win Friday free practice’ and then they end up not focusing on Sunday.

“So that takes a maturity to be able to come into a race weekend and be, mature enough and confident in your own abilities to look at the team timesheet on Friday and go, ‘oh, I’m a little further down than I’d like to be.’ But that’s because he’s thinking about Sunday. Not about Friday.”

Photo by Gongora/NurPhoto via Getty Images

As for how high this driver pairing can take McLaren this season, it is technically true that fourth place is not the ceiling. Doing some “back of the envelope math,” there is a world where McLaren could even catch Ferrari, and finish in third in the Constructors’ Championship. They would need a near-perfect run down the stretch, and some help along the way, but it is plausible.

However, Brown took the more realistic approach when asked about that scenario.

“I think realistically, someone asked me that the other day. It’s possible but not probable,” said Brown.

“Ferrari is a great, great team and you know, I think we can score another 80 points, which is what we’re behind them. But that would require them scoring none, and that’s not gonna happen,” added the McLaren boss. “So I think realistically we’re probably going to run out of time in the racing schedule to be able to catch them because they’re very competitive.”

However, he did add a caveat.

“But I would have said the same thing about catching Aston five races ago,” added Brown. “However, Ferrari is more competitive than Aston, and Ferrari have two great drivers who are delivering points on a regular basis. So we’re gonna give it all we’ve got, all we can do is control our own racing and see how many points we get at the end of the year.

“But I would manage expectations that third is probably gonna be short of a miracle.”

Even if fourth is where McLaren lands in the Constructors’ Championship, their form since Austria has many wondering how high they can climb in 2024. After all, many teams have turned their focus to next season, and with McLaren’s recent success, the door could be open to an even higher finish in 2024.

But how high?

“I think it’s probably still a little bit early,” said Brown when I asked if a Constructors’ title could be in the cards next year. “I’d like to think that we’re gonna be able to compete for wins. We’re certainly getting very close.”

Still, Brown is clear that they will give it their best shot.

“Now, the, the team’s very confident. The off-season development, from what I’ve seen so far is going very well. So, you know, we’re gonna go for it. That’s our desire,” said Brown. “I think we gotta wait and see what comes out of the oven with our race car, but I love the trajectory we’re on and with all these podiums, and, finishing ten seconds off Max [Verstappen] where at the start of the year we were getting blue flagged and lapped, is just hats off to the men and women at McLaren for the progress that they made.

“So hopefully we can keep making that type of progress. And if we are, I think we’ll be fighting for the Constructors’ sooner rather than later.”

McLaren caught Aston Martin faster than Brown expected. So perhaps that fight for a title really is around the corner.