The Tech Behind McLaren Racing’s F1 Dominance

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2:20From WIRED, this is The Big Interview, where we'll get to know the people beyond the headlines in conversations that explore the intersection of technology, power, and culture. I'm Katie Drummond, WIRED's Global Editorial Director. Formula One auto racing, or F1, is already very popular overseas. And in the past few years, it's broken into the U.S. in a big way. Much of that success can be attributed to the sport's representation in movies and on streaming platforms. Netflix has a series, Formula One Drive to Survive, that's now in its eighth season. And you may remember that among the Oscar contenders for Best Picture this year was the blockbuster named, fittingly, F1, starring none other than Brad Pitt as a race car driver.

3:01But in the world of auto racing, one team in particular has made a huge comeback. McLaren Racing, one of the sport's oldest teams, won three world championships between 2024 and 2025. Each marked the first time the team has clinched those titles in decades. And at the helm of the storied racing franchise is CEO Zach Brown, who's credited with much of the team's recent success. He joins me now to talk about all this and more. Welcome, Zach. Thank you for having me on. We're thrilled to have you. I'm so excited to talk. And I need to start with a confession. I need to start by leveling with you here.

3:36Wired covers sports a little bit, particularly on YouTube. We have just fanatical audience for auto racing. Anything F1, people go absolutely crazy. but I have to admit I'm the global editorial director, which is a fancy way of saying I'm the editor-in-chief. I'm not an expert in everything that we do here at Wired, and cars and driving is not my strong suit. I do not have a driver's license, but I do know that F1 has been breaking through in the U.S. in a significant way. We're going to get into the specifics of it all. You're going to teach me more about auto racing. You're going to talk to me about cars.

4:11I want to learn. I want to understand this world. I think our listeners do too. But first, I want to actually start with your personal story because it's a fascinating one in terms of how you got to where you are now. And I understand that it started with watches and it started with Wheel of Fortune. So take us back many, many years to the origin story of Zach Brown. I don't think any of us can be experts at everything. I'm certainly not an expert at all things McLaren racing. I just always laugh when I'm talking about cars because I literally cannot drive one. Yeah. Okay. All right. Fair enough.

4:43Fair enough. I would never be able to be an editor. I have Wired. I mean, there are people in the Wired newsroom who were like begging to come listen to this taping because they are such massive F1 fans. So like I understand. The power of Formula One. The power of Formula One. Like this is a cultural phenomena that I experience in the newsroom. I just, I don't know as much about it as I would like to. Well, we're going to. We're going to change that. We're going to change that today. Perfect. Yeah, where did I get started? So I'm originally from Los Angeles. My first ever Grand Prix was the 1981 Long Beach Grand Prix.

5:15I remember it like it was yesterday. I remember meeting my first racing driver, getting my first autograph, and the speed and the sound and kind of the visceral experience. I was 10 years old, a lot older now. And a couple years later, I was able to go on Wheel of Fortune Teen Week. Teen Week. 13 weeks. I was 13 years old. Won the first two rounds. The Smurfs. I knew who the Smurfs were. Okay, good. Wild Bill Hickok. I need to rely on Wikipedia to tell me who Wild Bill Hickok was. But I got the spelling right and won. And you do what you do as 13 years old. You look immediately at what's the most expensive thing I can buy.

5:57How much money are we talking about here? $3 ,050, I think it was. That's not an insignificant sum of money. Yeah, and went to the top of the list, which happened to be his and her watches, which kind of as it came out of my mouth was, what does a 13-year-old want with some very nice Cartier watches? Wow. Then went back to the Long Beach Grand Prix in 1987 with my buddy in high school, met Mario and Jaretti, and I was very intimidated. Now I wanted to kind of get into racing. And I asked him, how do you get started? He said, karting. I knew or assumed my parents wouldn't help me with that. Go-karting, you mean go-karting?

6:36Go-karting, yep. That's kind of where you get the little league, if you'd like, even though it's very serious. And I thought, ah, I know I can pay for this. I got some watches in my drawer that I think I can go take to a Van Nuys pawn shop. Went and sold them, got some cash. They never asked me, why do you have these watches? Yeah. Today, I'd probably, they did not pass the KYC test at a pawn shop. Sold them, bought a go-kart, and that's how I got started. And your parents were, yes, sell these watches, buy a go-kart? No, I'm not sure I ran the idea past them. They were my watches. An independent teen.

7:13Exactly. They were your watches. I was definitely a very independent teen. But from there, you actually had a career as a driver. Yeah, for 10 years. Tell us about that for 10 years. For 10 years. So I was successful in karting, so then I wanted to pursue my dream of Formula One. It requires sponsorship. My family wasn't in a position to support me much, you know, certainly by racing standards. My mom gave me her salary for one year, which was enough to move to England, which was very great of her, but not enough to go beyond that. But she was a travel agent, still is a travel agent, knew someone at TWA who liked racing.

7:48So they gave me some airline tickets, which I would then barter and sell. And that's how I got started in the sponsorship business. So I would go to companies and go, give me 50 grand to go racing. And not only will I put your logo on my race car, you can have some hospitality. I'll give 50 grand in airline tickets to match it. And so it was kind of a, that's a good deal. So that's how I got started. Then I became obsessed with both my racing career and the need for sponsorship. So I just started calling everyone and just trying to understand how does it all work. And I still carry that with me to this day.

8:26You were running like a mini enterprise. I mean, you were running your own business. I was running my own business. So I raced for 10 years. And then when I stopped racing, everyone said, hey, you're really good at the sponsorship stuff. Ended up building what was the world's largest motorsports agency. looked after the corporate side of the sport. So the sponsors, because I felt no one was advising them. And they've got a lot of juice in the sport. They're the money. So I thought, hey, I can get you great deals here. I had the credibility of understanding the sport being a racer and built that business up, did it for 20 years, sold it, and then had the opportunity, a great opportunity, to either join Formula One itself or McLaren.

9:06Ultimately, tough decision, but very happy with my decision. which was I'm a racer, so I felt I'd done sponsorship for so long that joining McLaren would give me both the commercial side of the business, which I absolutely love, but when the lights go out, or in America the green flag comes out, you go racing. And that was something that was very exciting for me, and so now I'm in my 10th season at McLaren. You raced for 10 years, so you would know what kind of person is drawn to the sport. Like, who wants to get behind a wheel of that car? looks terrifying to me personally. What kind of person is drawn to that as a career?

9:46What do you think drew you to it? I think certainly adrenaline. Sure. Plays a role being competitive, loving the field for speed. You get nervous and if you get scared too often, you shouldn't do it. But anyone who says they don't get scared, you know, you have a big moment or you crash or you're in wet weather or something like that. But I think same thing being a baseball player, which is what I wanted to be. You know, if you have 100-mile-an-hour fastball coming at your head, I would imagine that's pretty scary if you're a football player and Michael Strahan's about ready to hit you. That's got to be pretty scary.

10:19So I think fear is a natural element of sport, but that actually creates adrenaline and excitement, which drives performance. You know, and then it requires motor racing, not just physical skills, but mental because the race cars are very sophisticated. So understanding the equipment is something that all these sports, there's playing the sport, but then there's understanding how the sport is played. And motor racing, you need to be pretty switched on to understand how to get the most out of the race car and the team. And I want to ask you a lot more about the cars themselves in a few minutes, but I'm curious about your arrival at McLaren.

11:00What were the biggest challenges when you showed up? You walked in the door and you thought, oh my God, and what came after that? I mean, if you did think that. But I think there's a pretty significant transformation here that you're committed with. First, because there was a lot of arrogance in the team, given the unbelievable history. And we were new with Honda, and Honda was really struggling. And so I came in with the belief that I think the team believed and led everyone to believe, which is, we're great. This is all on Honda. And that was not the case. You know, Honda definitely had their challenges.

11:35But when we replaced Honda and we put another engine in, Renault, while we took a step forward, We went from being our worst year ever when I joined, ninth. We hopped up to an all great sixth. And it was like, okay. Honda might be responsible from ninth to sixth. But who's responsible from sixth to first? That's on us. So that's when I realized, wow, we're not as good as we think we are today. We had record low sponsorship, less than 50 million. Today we're up over close to 500 million. Wow. We were ninth in the championship, a team that has been the second most successful team in the history of the sport.

12:15We had our worst year. Our employees were not happy. And as I say, other than that, everything was great. Now, what was great was we have this great iconic brand that was not in a good place. But sitting here in New York, it's kind of like, OK, if the Yankees have a bad season, they're still the Yankees. So you can revitalize that brand with success quite quickly. So I knew we had an unbelievable brand. And then we have 1 ,400 people at McLaren, about 1 ,000 of those in Formula One. And as you kind of walked around the halls in the shop, it was like there's a lot of race wins and championships here.

12:53So the problem isn't the masses. The problem is the leadership or the lack of the leadership team. And that wasn't any one person's responsibility. It was the leadership team as a whole. So I set out focusing on the people. I changed the leadership team quickly, one at a time, get the right leadership in place to create the right energy and the right culture. Attacked the commercial side of the business because that's something I love and was very comfortable with. And I felt if we could sell the brand and set a new vision and get people to buy into that. The first big partner to kind of buy into that was Dell Technologies in 2018.

13:36And it was like, okay, once you get a Dell, then they're going to help attract the Googles and the MasterCard. You know, that kind of starts to feed. Success begets success. Yeah. And so then with that, that created a new energy that brought in some revenue so we could upgrade our technology. We were behind in technology. We could hire the best drivers in the world. and all just started to build. And sitting here now today, 10 seasons in, we've won the last couple championships. We've got the best driver lineup in Formula One. We have revenues, you know, just on the partnership side, you know, knocking on$500 million.

14:10So we've 10x'd that. A lot of excitement and energy. And most importantly, very engaged with our fans and a very inclusive team. We were kind of a dark, unfriendly team. I kind of called us Darth Vader, which people like Darth Vader. Darth Vader can be cool. Foreboding. But Luke Skywalker is the good guy. Sure, yeah. And so we went to our papaya, which was our iconic color, orange. And we did that because that's what the fans wanted. So we started to really engage with our fans and be a team that fans loved or liked, which there was some data that came out recently, and we were the most loved and least disliked racing team, which is very important.

14:52It's great to be the least disliked. Yeah, because in sport, you know, it's quite a polarizing business. And a lot of credit that to our two drivers, you know, world champion Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, two of the nicest guys in the world when they don't have helmets on. And when they got the helmets on, they're tough characters. I wanted to ask you about the fans and the fandom and sort of that piece of it. And so something I was wrapping my head around as I was learning about F1 and learning more about McLaren when I was getting ready for this interview is that you have it's the McLaren team.

15:26You have two drivers and fans can get behind the team, but they get behind one driver or another. There's a bit of that sort of like rivalry piece. Can you explain how that works and sort of the significance of that for McLaren fans and the fandom? Yeah, I think there's a lot of different ways fans kind of take in sports and racing. So you have people that are fans of teams. I'm a McLaren fan. I'm a Ferrari fan. I'm a Mercedes fan. And when a driver moves, they kind of remain loyal to the team and they pick a favorite driver or two, not necessarily an either or. And then you have fans that are fans of the drivers.

16:06And if the driver moves, they maybe move with the driver. Take Lewis Hamilton as an example. You know, the most famous Formula One driver. I do know about Lewis Hamilton, yes. Yeah, and so you have people that, you know, are Lewis fans in front of Mercedes who's driving for us. So when you went to Ferrari, they're now Lewis Ferrari fans. And, you know, I think when you have two drivers competing for the world championship, they have a huge fan base. So it's interesting that where, you know, I'm cheering for McLaren, but I want Oscar to win or I want Lando to win. And when they become each other's biggest rivals, then naturally when you're a fan of one, it kind of makes you not a fan of the other because you want your guy to win.

16:46So it's an interesting dynamic where fans can at times get grumpy with the team. But we love both our drivers. So, you know, we try and get our fans to be papaya fans. And maybe if you have one driver as your favorite, maybe the other should be your second. But when they want to win, they then start to see them as the rival, even though we're inside the same team, different than stick and ball sports, right? Yeah. I'm a St. Louis Cardinals fan, but again, we're in New York. You're a Yankees fan, but you're kind of cheering for everybody on the Yankees because it's a team win. And while Aaron Judge might be your favorite player on the Yankees, you probably don't dislike anyone else on the Yankees because you want the Yankees to win.

17:28where our sport, you've got a team aspect to it, but then you have an individual aspect to it. And that sometimes conflicts fans where they're for your driver, but grumpy with the team if the other driver's winning because they somehow see it's kind of your fault. Right. Yes. It's a weird dynamic. I'm wrapping my head around this. It's a different dynamic. Do you think about these for the fans in the context of storylines? Like, are there narrative arcs that you're thinking about as a season progresses? All we try and do is we are very principled on our racing values. We stay the course, I think, in sport.

18:05And it's a beautiful thing because it's such a popular thing. Has there been anything in the time that you've been with McLaren that has surprised you about the fans? Well, there's good and bad. Let's start with the good, the passion people have, I have the notes I get from the strong majority of fans of the love they have for McLaren and our drivers. And I got a note, you know, and I read them all, try and read them all of kids that decorated their rooms. And we try and reach out for every fan as much as we can. Because I remember, you know, the 1981 Long Beach Grand Prix meeting my driver. So those are the awesome stories, and that is the strong majority of it is people's love for the sport.

18:52And when they convey that and you see the birthday cakes, we've seen people propose at McLaren. We've seen weddings. Like, you know, that is awesome when we're that much ingrained. So that's the beautiful side. The 2%, which sometimes are louder than the 98%, are quite frankly are shocking. You know, as far as the language, the allegations, the death threats. No. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've seen it all. And that's pretty disappointing. You've got to just ignore it and kind of go, maybe there's just something wrong with some of these people. Some of that 2%. Some of the 2%. And they can be pretty loud.

19:35But I think that's the world we live in today. Oh, sure it is, yeah. Same with journalism. I think we all see it around all a variety of topics. And so the haters, if you'd like, are pretty loud. But I think you just got to blow them off and realize that's not really our fan. Yeah, yeah. You know, as fervent and passionate as this van base is, I know that you have aspirations still to grow it. And you've talked before about women and sort of the gender dynamics of the sport. Talk to me about how you plan to grow the audience for F1 racing, especially in the context of women. How do you get more women excited about the sport?

20:14To be clear, plenty of women in the Wired newsroom really wanted to be here today. So it's not like it's amazing. It's already happening. To kind of wind back when Liberty acquired the sport in 2016, 17, there was three things the sport needed to kind of go to the next level. It needed North America. And I think we're, you know, five years ago, I wasn't sitting in New York doing interviews about Formula One. Yeah. So it's it's tackled North America. I think Drive to Survive played a big role because I think we opened up the sport. We went from being exclusive to inclusive, showing people how the sport worked.

20:48It's got a big soap opera drama element to it, which everyone loves and get to know the characters. I think fans want to engage and understand. And Formula One for a long time was look but don't touch. And we don't want to show you what's behind the Wizard of Oz robe or what have you. So we opened that up. Then that also brought in women, diversity, and youth. And that was what the sport needed to go to the next level. We have a racing series with only a team that has two female racing drivers in what's called the F1 Academy. me. So racing drivers obviously get everyone excited, but then also lots of engineers.

21:28We have programs with our partners around STEM. So we're trying to get women involved, you know, actually working at McLaren and those numbers are dramatically increasing. And then same thing with the fandom side. And now when I'm stopped often, it's mostly from women or it's from guys who go, my wife, my daughter, they're a fan of Lando. So it's happening. It probably has much more of a balance than people would think. You know, it's about 60 % male audience, 40 % women in the audience is getting younger, which is great. 75 % of our new fans are women and youth. So that's exactly what the sport needs to have a really strong future.

22:11You know, just being accessible to all fans. And I think these events are awesome and exciting. They're glamorous. They're global. And then something that we're putting a lot of effort in is only 1 % of our fan base actually makes it to a race. So we're trying to make sure we pay as much attention to the 99 % that don't make it to a race. So we did some live events in Trafalgar Square in London. We did Miami live in in Miami, as it says on a tin. We've done events in the Apollo Theater. So we want to be the most exciting and most engaged sports team in the world. We want everyone to feel part of McLaren.

22:52Probably doesn't hurt that we have two pretty cool racing drivers that are, you know, multi-millionaires racing around the world. Very nice guys. So they definitely draw attention. Put all that together, We just have an awesome fan base. We want to keep doubling down on it. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back.

23:26I want to ask you about Formula One's deal with Apple. Actually, Apple, my understanding, is now has exclusive rights to broadcast Formula One races. How do you think about that kind of deal in the context of building up a new fan base in terms of access, right? The need to subscribe to watch the races. Is there a limiting factor there or do you see more opportunity in that dynamic? Definitely opportunity and that's proving out. I think there was concern by some, myself included, that anytime you go behind paywall, are you going to lose an audience? The reality is they've now gone public with their numbers.

24:00They're up over, I think, 30 percent. So I think that was the biggest concern. The production quality, the content is amazing. And I think reality is the way we're all growing up today is a technology world and pay to play is a thing, right? Netflix and Apple TV. And I think if people want content, they're prepared to kind of pay for it or go that extra step. And everything's on your phone now or on your tablet or on your laptop or your TV. And so I think people are comfortable. You know, for me, it would have been, oh, it's an extra step. But people want live sports. And now with technology partners like Apple, they're able to distribute the sport in different ways.

24:50And I think because we're such a technology-driven sport, there's a lot of different ways to watch our sport. People sometimes just watch it via kind of data. And so I think it's a great opportunity. And I think the concern of are you going to lose audience when you're behind a paywall, that's proved to not be the case. You're talking about technology, which brings me to a very interesting conversation I think we can have in a very wired conversation, which is actually around the cars themselves. I mean, this is an incredibly technical, technologically sophisticated sport. Talk to me about the teams who actually build the cars.