Zak Brown reveals he removed McLaren’s ‘arrogance’ problem to build a winning F1 team

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McLaren won the F1 drivers’ and constructors’ titles in 2025, but Zak Brown feels their success would not have been possible without removing a “problem” upon his arrival.

Marketing guru Brown joined McLaren back in November 2016 to be the executive director of the Woking crew’s parent technology group. Brown later became the CEO of the McLaren F1 team in April 2018 and has overseen their return to the top of the sport from the bottom.

McLaren were only ninth in the F1 constructors’ standings in 2017, before improving to sixth in 2018, fourth in 2019 and third in 2020. The papaya team also fell back to fifth in 2022, but they turned a corner in 2023 after Brown named Andrea Stella as McLaren’s team principal.

The 2023 Austrian Grand Prix, especially, marked the start of McLaren’s rise to back-to-back constructors’ titles in 2024 and 2025, as well as Lando Norris winning the 2025 drivers’ title. McLaren emerged as consistent podium contenders after fielding updates in Austria in 2023.

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Zak Brown had to remove McLaren’s ‘arrogance’ to blame Honda for their problems

But the biggest “problem” that Brown immediately identified upon joining McLaren was the team’s “arrogance” that their Honda engine from 2015 to 2017 was the only reason for their woe. Infamously, Fernando Alonso branded Honda’s engine a “GP2 engine” in Japan in 2015.

READ MORE: All you need to know about McLaren F1 Team from team principal to engine

McLaren switched to Renault engines in 2018, which then proved to Brown that the team’s chassis was just as much to blame for their problems. McLaren later switched to Mercedes engines in 2021, and they will continue to use the Silver Arrows’ power units through 2030.

Brown told The Smokeless Word podcast: “I didn’t know how bad it was until I got there. I was a bit shocked, because there was an arrogance we had that it was all Honda’s fault, our engine provider. Certainly, we had a big issue on the power unit front.

“But that was far from our only issue. There was an element of arrogance in the organisation that it was like, ‘Well, we’re great. It’s just their problem’.

“We swapped the engines out, OK, we went from ninth to sixth with Renault. So, that kind of went, ‘Alright, that’s ninth to sixth. But whose problem is it that you need to go from sixth to first?’ I was like, ‘We’ve got to own that’. So, I needed to get that out of the system.

“It was in the system. Once we got that going, and got the positive momentum going, the results started to come, then you just reverse the momentum, and the snowball gets bigger.

“It’s not been a straight journey to the front, because we then bump into Covid. And then, of course, 2023 was a mess. And when I joined, I knew I had to fix the problem, but I knew I hadn’t created the problem.”

McLaren have won 20 of the past 48 Grands Prix after winning just one from the previous 223

McLaren did not win a Grand Prix from 2013 to 2020, as the Woking squad paid the price for Honda’s early struggles with the 1.6L V6 turbo-hybrid engine regulations introduced in 2014 and the team’s car. Honda got on top of the engine rules after joining Red Bull’s fold in 2017.

Daniel Ricciardo won the 2021 Italian Grand Prix in a one-two with Norris to secure McLaren their first win since the 2012 Brazilian Grand Prix. But that result at Monza fell into their laps after Red Bull’s Max Verstappen took Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton out in a controversial crash.

It was not until Norris earned his maiden F1 win in the 2024 Miami Grand Prix that McLaren won again, and mostly on merit after he benefited from the timing of a safety car. McLaren’s first win entirely on merit since the 2012 Brazilian GP was in the 2024 Hungarian Grand Prix.

McLaren won a total of 20 Grands Prix from the 48 staged over the 2024 and 2025 seasons, with Norris taking 11 and Oscar Piastri taking nine. Norris and Piastri both won seven of the 24 Grands Prix held during the 2025 season, while Verstappen won the most with his eight.