McLaren CEO Zak Brown Still Gets FOMO About Racing Cars

When Zak Brown joined McLaren a decade ago, the future CEO wasn’t exactly signing on to a winning enterprise: Once a Formula One juggernaut, the team had slumped into irrelevance on the race track—with an internal financial crisis to match.

Ten years later, the McLaren turnaround story is well known among millions of F1 fans around the world, and clear even to racing novices like me. Brown, a former driver turned marketing executive, has revitalized the team and its accompanying business. In 2024, McLaren won its first constructors’ title since 1998, and in 2025 the team—helmed by drivers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri—secured 12 wins, including the Monaco Grand Prix. Money is pouring in: Brown tells me that McLaren is approaching $500 million in annual sponsorship revenue (the team barely scraped together $50 million when he took over a decade ago).

If you’re an F1 aficionado, or know and love one, then you’re probably familiar with the fervent fandom that accompanies the sport. As a non-driver and complete F1 amateur, I wanted to understand it better. So I asked Brown to stop by the WIRED offices for a conversation. We talked about the early-career hustles that led him to McLaren, how he deals with obsessive fans—the good ones and the bad ones—and the meticulous, tech-infused, and very, very expensive process of building and iterating on a McLaren race car. Which, yes, he still sometimes gets to drive.

Thrilled to have you. I need to start with a confession. 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 we cover 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 US in a significant way.

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.

I mean, there are people in the WIRED newsroom who were begging to come listen to this taping because they are such massive F1 fans. So I understand the power of Formula One. I just don't know as much about it as I would like to.

Where do I get started? I'm originally from Los Angeles. My first ever Grand Prix was the 1981 Long Beach Grand Prix. I remember it like it was yesterday. I remember meeting my first racing driver, getting my first autograph. The speed and the sound and the kind of the visceral experience. I was 10 years old. I'm a lot older now.

A couple years later, I was able to go on W