Zak Brown is finally seeing light at the end of a tunnel. In the case of the McLaren boss, that is the gargantuan wind tunnel being built at the team’s Woking headquarters.
It is a sizeable piece of the jigsaw all aimed at turning one of Formula One’s most iconic teams into a championship contender once more.
For all the initial hype about their winter testing pace and conjecturing from their rivals, the team CEO is adamant that won’t be this season. But gone too are the years of languishing between sixth and ninth in the constructors’ championship as they did from 2015 to 2018.
The man anointed as the chosen one to bring home a first drivers’ title since Lewis Hamilton is Lando Norris, a driver Brown believes is Hamilton-esque.
Norris has endured just two race crashes in his three F1 seasons to date, the more recent at last year’s Hungarian Grand Prix after being driven into by Valtteri Bottas.
Brown tells Standard Sport of the British driver: “I always thought he’s a world champion in the making. He’s as fast as anyone and he rarely makes mistakes. He doesn’t make big mistakes.
“Take Lewis, he is extremely smart. Look at how Lewis raced in Saudi. That was such a highly intelligent drive, forget about the speed. He avoided three or four accidents with a damaged car. That was his experience and intelligence, and not getting emotional in the race car.
“He just seems to drive with a plan and a mission. Lando does the same thing. I’ve never seen Lando emotional in a race car.”
Brown’s one early gripe was that the 22-year-old was too polite on the race track. He was simply asked to “get his elbows out”, which he duly did.
“But he does it the right way,” says Brown. “There are some drivers out there who tend to get over the limit when they are pushing and you haven’t really seen Lando do anything silly.”
That driving has been rewarded with a multi-year contract while Brown and the rest of his leadership team have agreed long-term deals in a bid to complete the final part of the McLaren renaissance.
Alongside Norris, McLaren are confident of seeing the “Daniel Ricciardo of Monza” – the race the Australian won last year after previously struggling with the car.
McLaren have encouraged their drivers to race each other although not too the detriment of the team, and if series four of the F1 documentary Drive to Survive is anything to go by, the pair enjoy a good relationship.
That is in stark contrast to two of the series’ main characters in Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff and his opposite number Christian Horner in a title race which became increasingly ugly.
The feistiness looks to continue and, of their spat, Brown adds: “It’s not personally my style because I think it’s unfortunate [that] people started playing to the camera and that then started to modify the outcome of races and people’s behaviours. So, I don’t think that was healthy.
“Seeing rivalries are great but, when they tip over to then altering how the sport is managed or governed, that’s a step too far.”
The previous set-up of Michael Masi directing the races, dealing with track safety and also being the liaison for the teams was, argues Brown “a recipe for disaster”. He also has sympathy with Masi for his removal from the job.
McLaren’s American CEO is confident such a repeat will be avoided in the future but still wants a series of changes to the sport, one notably being to reduce the power that teams have in the whole decision-making process.
“I don’t think the governance is in the right place,” he explains. “I think teams have too much control. They should have influence but less control.
“I still don’t like the A/B team situation. It gives an easier life to B teams – they don’t necessarily have to earn it in the same way – and it gives A teams a bit of an unfair advantage at times as I believe the A/B team relationships are abused far too often.”
As for McLaren’s part in the racing, his primary aim is to close the gap to the quickest car on the grid while still trying to eke out the occasional race win. As for whether they will be the ones to break up the established order of Mercedes and Red Bull, he is less sure.
“Ferrari looked very strong,” he says of pre-season testing. “Ferrari has all the resources of Red Bull and Mercedes, they just lost their way the last couple of years.”
In McLaren’s case, the long-term goal is to build up to being frontrunners in 2024. For now, Brown says simply, “it’s a rebuilding phase and it’s going well”.
