On a flight from Mexico City to London last month, McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown tuned into a new docuseries, Game 7, which explores the tension surrounding decisive moments in sports. Brown felt like he could relate. Much like the 1994 New York Rangers, who led their Stanley Cup Finals series over the Vancouver Canucks 3-1 before losing two straight games to Vancouver to force a win-or-go-home Game 7, McLaren’s lead in the F1 constructors standings had just been narrowed, via a victory for Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz Jr. He sent Rangers captain Mark Messier, also an executive producer on the anthology show, a note.
“It’s like everything I’m feeling,” he told Messier.
The 2024 Formula One season has delivered fans some very welcome elements; namely, drama and intrigue. Prior to this year, driver Max Verstappen and his Red Bull Racing team ran roughshod over the F1 standings. But with two races to go in ‘24, McLaren and Ferrari are contending for the constructor title. Verstappen is still in position to win his fourth straight F1 championship, but Lando Norris from McLaren and Charles LeClerc from Ferrari have put pressure on the Red Bull superstar.
Brown, the American who’s been in charge of U.K.-based McLaren since 2018, spoke with TIME about this chase for the F1 title, the keys to his sport’s continued growth in the United States, and his biggest mistake.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
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The McLaren F1 team is in the running for its first Formula 1 constructors’ championship since 1998. What’s that like?
A combination of awesome, exhilarating, nerve-wracking, stressful, all the things that you think would be. Huge excitement, a lot of nervousness, fear, you run the gamut. I’m kind of living on the edge of my seat. That’s why sport is always going to be one of the most engaging forms of entertainment for people around the world.
Are you sleeping all right, or is your mind racing with all this stuff?
Mind racing,…
