GoKawiilWhen 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.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
KATIE DRUMMOND: Welcome, Zak.
ZAK BROWN: Thank you for having me on.
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.
We're going to get into the specifics of it all. You're going to teach me more about auto racing. I want to learn, I want to understand this world. I think our listeners do too. But first I want to start with your personal story, because it's a fascinating one in terms of how you got to where you are now. I understand it started with watches, and it started with Wheel of Fortune. So take us back many, many years to the origin story of Zak.
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.
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