Has Zak Brown Dodged A Shareholder Sized Bullet?

At the start of the season McLaren had one of their worst opening rounds for many years. From Lando Norris’ car requiring multiple pit stops to Oscar Piastri’s failed wiring loom. We know from Formula 1 reliability can sometimes be potluck with a prime example being Austria 2020 where
kerbs were shaking the Red Bull cars apart with concerns across the entire field.
For McLaren though it is a little different. Bahrain and namely its Crown Prince and the Mumtalakat (the sovereign wealth fund of Bahrain) having a majority share of McLaren, both the Formula 1 side
and their Automotive companies makes the season opener an unofficial home race.

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​A couple of weeks later in Saudi Arabia another dismal result of 15 th and 17 th failed to gain
confidence.

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​However back at the McLaren Technology Centre actions were already being taken to change the
prospects for the year but this was a conversation which had started late 2022 and not helped by the
monumental effort to move away from James Key’s failure with the 22 car and work towards his
departure and filling the role, one that later developed in to three roles then Andreas Siedl
blindsiding Zak Brown with his resignation.

There has always been a question mark over whether McLaren’s board were going to depart ways with Zak Brown. It must be said that Zak’s contributions to McLaren have seen a rapid increase in sponsorship and engagement for the brand as a whole. Attending races over the last couple of years since the pandemic the varied range of McLaren fans can easily be identified by their papaya baseball caps regardless of age.

​But as this is all good and well, the results have been inconsistent both from the cars performance and that of the drivers with McLaren’s multi million-dollar flop Daniel Ricciardo putting in a rookie level effort against his much younger counterpart Lando Norris. The comparison of their 2022
season results is a bitter pill to swallow for the fan favourite Ricciardo. However, during all of this, Zak had been maintaining doing his best used car salesman to sell the fans on it being the cars performance until it was finally announced McLaren and Daniel were parting ways with a heavy cost both financially and notably with the fans.

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​With that parting of ways, the final stages of announcing Daniel’s replacement Oscar Piastri started off confusing just about everyone with Alpine announcing him as their replacement for Fernando Alonso, then for Oscar to publicly announce that wasn’t the case and then a couple of days later McLaren confirm the appointment. I believe Alpine did this deliberately to force the confirmation but isn’t that what silly season is all about?

© Zak Brown social media

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After the first two races of 2023 there were some quite noticeable changes with Zak. First starting at McLaren’s headquarters with a more hands on approach including moving offices from the beautiful lake road view CEO offices to within the office space of teams responsible for building the car.
The second notable change was his social media. If you weren’t aware who Zak Brown was you could easily be confused for who he works for or owns. Varying posts containing McLaren, United and Supercars to name a few not including times he was driving himself.

Lastly the change in what must have been the equivalent of being a pinball fired around a machine level of travel. If you take a close look at Zak’s movements over 2022 to say at times, he was absent from races and attendance at and all time low at HQ wouldn’t be far from the truth as he explored his other hobbies.

Lastly the change in what must have been the equivalent of being a pinball fired around a machine level of travel. If you take a close look at Zak’s movements over 2022 to say at times, he was absent from races and attendance at and all time low at HQ wouldn’t be far from the truth as he explored
his other hobbies.
With a positive result for Lando Norris at Austria, new upgrades coming for a rapidly approaching Silverstone and special livery to boot, no doubt Zak will be hoping for positive result from both cars.

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David Stone 
Writer @ F1 Journal