Seven tenths of a second, p.13
Seven Tenths of a Second, page 13
I’m on the call and I tap a few things into Google. It’s not difficult. Straight away, it comes up with stories about how UniCredit, the Italian banking giant, is planning to axe 3,000 roles. And there are plenty more where that comes from.
So I mention those things on the call and there’s just no answer coming back because I’ve called their bluff. When I hear bullshit, my response is usually to go on the attack with facts. I get that employment laws might be different in Italy, but to use it as an excuse about why you can’t work within a cost cap is ridiculous. No one likes it when employees lose their jobs, but the reality is that we are actually trying to protect the sport and the industry.
Maybe the big teams have got used to making declaratory statements and no one challenging them, but I challenge them and I challenge hard. I challenge with facts. It goes on for weeks. I’m not saying there is yelling and screaming, but sometimes it gets close to that.
Perhaps there’s some element of cynicism about me taking a leading role in these arguments because McLaren is not exactly in the midst of its finest hour at this time. Maybe some of them are thinking, ‘Why is the new guy taking on the big teams?’
But I know this is my window. So I put myself out there. And I’m sure there are some people rolling their eyes and thinking, ‘Here’s fucking Zak again.’ But I can smell blood in the water because there is a divide.
There are the big three or four teams that don’t want a cost cap, or certainly don’t want it to be imposed at the level that is being suggested. But I also know there are five teams who do want it. I believe in what I’m fighting for.
Every time we meet to debate it, the big teams try and creep the cost cap back up by stealth, by excluding something from what counts as part of the agreed spending. And I am just as relentless in calling them out on that.
I think Formula 1 is in favour of the cost cap, but they are also acutely aware of trying to keep all the teams happy, so they can’t be seen to be partisan. They try and play the mediator and bring it into the middle but, in the end, I think we reduce the cost cap to about $50 million less than it was going to be before the pandemic struck.
I’m not trying to win an unfair competitive advantage for McLaren. I am trying to level the playing field. I feel like I am fighting for everyone in the sport. I am trying to unwind the advantage that a few teams have gained by having a substantially larger budget than others and, ultimately, we get it done.
And look at the sport now. Look at how it is. Four teams won races in 2024. Seven different drivers won races. I don’t recall that happening for a long time. Three teams were competing for the constructors’ title. In the 2025 season, we’ve already had four different winning drivers.
The sport has never been healthier in every aspect. And I think the cost cap is the number-one reason why that has happened. The cost cap emerged from the crisis of Covid, and I’ve always believed that if you handle a crisis well, not only do you build trust, but good comes out of it.
Covid enables us to reset the sport’s economics. It enables us to take a look at ourselves. It teaches us that there is a better way of doing things. And Formula 1 is better off for it now; in every way, the sport is remarkably healthy.
Chapter 14
Stick or Twist
You have got to plan. I’ve always been a very thoughtful, organized planner. I’m not sure that’s always been visible because of my personality. I’m high-energy. But I don’t spin my wheels. I don’t waste energy. I’m always trying to put power down.
Mike Tyson says everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth, and I agree with that. You don’t know when you are going to get punched or how much it is going to hurt. But if you have a plan, if you have the right people around you, it improves your chances of rolling with that punch.
It’s like having a race plan but you don’t know that it’s going to rain. So when it rains, you improvise. If you have a plan, it becomes easier to deviate from it, easier to improvise, than if you have no plan at all.
If you hit a problem, it’s like taking a diversion when you’re driving. You get to a point in the journey where the road’s closed. So you do something else to get to your destination. You just have to take a couple more left turns than you were originally intending to.
And if you have the right people around you and you know where you’re trying to get to, then you’re able to adapt quickly. I think what makes a good CEO and a good leader is being able to read the map and identify the new route you need to take. Maybe it involves bringing other people in. Maybe it involves changing the plan. You just have to be prepared.
Everything is slowed down when you are in a race car. It is amazing what you can see, hear and feel at 200mph. Some people don’t look past the front of the bonnet when they’re driving, but when you are driving at high speeds in a race car, you have to be prepared for unexpected things to happen.
Maybe someone in front of you makes a mistake. You have to be able to anticipate bad things happening. Or at least plan for bad things happening. I am always waiting for bad things to happen in business. Maybe it comes back to my fear of failure.
I use a DEFCON system in the office, which my chief people officer doesn’t like because he says, ‘Zak, that’s like nuclear war.’ The US government uses it as shorthand for ‘defense readiness condition’, and that’s my intention, too. It’s another name for having a plan.
We have various DEFCON levels. The lowest state is that you are sitting down doing nothing. The different stages are like a fast walk, a jog, a run and a full-out sprint. You should never be in the most basic state. That’s not how you should work in business. You always need to be up on your toes.
There’s no sitting around. You’re always ready. And then, depending on the play, you kind of dial it up from four to one, where one is the highest level. So I’ve got my DEFCON system and my timeout system and it is all about maintaining a state of readiness. Always be on the offence. Always be ready.
I use the timeout system to underline that we need to do something different here, we’ve got to pick up the pace, and the DEFCON system as a way to communicate and create urgency.
And so when we have challenges in the office or at the racetrack, when we need to pick up the pace, I bring them out. If a timeout’s required, then that timeout might lead to an urgent situation.
There’s no point being at DEFCON 1 the whole time. That’s like being a yeller and a screamer the whole time. It loses its impact. Then, everything is an emergency all the time. It is about adapting your pace.
There is a time after Covid when I feel as though, inside my head, I’m constantly running on DEFCON 1 and there are only a few people I can share it with.
In 2020, things are starting to improve on the track and we’re back on the podium, albeit irregularly. I feel like we’ve got some really good energy with the team. We’ve got the cost cap in place, we’ve got Lando Norris and Carlos Sainz in the car, our Renault engine is an upgrade on what we had before and we are going in the right direction.
Off the track, we’re a couple of months away from going bust. I always know in the back of my mind that we have total commitment from Mumtalakat and that they will never let that happen, but we have massive financial challenges.
Around the time I arrive at McLaren, we are losing around $125 million a year. We are quickly reducing our losses but we are still in a parlous position and the net is closing in.
The cost cap has only just come in. We have been in this spending spiral where we work on a basis of how much we can afford to lose, and now we can’t afford to lose what we are losing. Eventually, that kind of philosophy puts you out of business.
When I start, we have around £30 million in sponsorship. Today we have over £300 million. When I start, performance on track is terrible, so we are getting very little in prize money and sponsors are running away from us.
So we put together a business case that says we need maybe as much as £185 million to get us back to the front of the grid. The big debate on the board goes like this: you have our current shareholders, who are awesome, and they want to play offence. Their argument is that they would rather sell some of the company and give the money to the team. We have a couple of shareholders who want to shut the team down, and some who say, ‘Let’s live within our means.’
And what I am desperately trying to explain to that last group of shareholders is that that’s just a slow spiral down to death. If you don’t give us enough money, then we’re not going to get results, our prize money comes down, we’re not going to get sponsors and we are going to die a slow death.
There are times when it almost becomes too much. Outside my very tight leadership team, no one really knows how close we are to the abyss. People know we are in trouble, sure, but no one has any idea how much trouble.
And my general view is: ‘Why scare the troops?’ My chairman, Paul Walsh, and Mumtalakat give me the belief that we’re going to make it through, so why broadcast it to the wider company when they can’t do anything to affect the result?
So I’m living a dual life. I’m two businessmen at the same time. One half of me is putting on a bold front in public, exuding energy and positivity about the race team and its prospects.
That half of me is working furiously on getting a deal done with Daniel Ricciardo – which we can’t afford – to replace Carlos Sainz for the 2021 season, because Carlos is going to Ferrari and I think replacing him with Daniel will advance us another step on the track.
Mumtalakat and the Bahrainis do not blink. They are fantastic and they support us all the way. At the same time there are the shareholders who want to shut the team down.
So we’re trying to do the deal with Ricciardo, which will be seen as a great coup, and we are also having meetings with lawyers, where we are being told we are a couple of months away from not making payroll. We’re talking about how to make sure we are not trading insolvent. That’s how bad it is. But we are still paying every bill.
I’ll be with the race team, where everyone is excited about getting Ricciardo, and I’m projecting all this optimism and bravado. And then I’ll be going straight from there to a meeting where I’m being told we might be out of business before the 2021 season even starts.
It is an incredibly stressful time. I am lucky that my chairman, Paul, is amazing through all of it. He is unflappable, which gives me a lot of reassurance. He is very much ‘don’t worry, we got this’. And I need that because I’m not letting anyone else see that I am sweating here. I am very nervous.
It’s one of many, many times in my life when I’m grateful for Paul’s guidance. I’ve known him for twenty-five years as a friend and a mentor. We have a deep relationship and there’s no way I’d be where I am if it wasn’t for his trust. With most executives I’ve met, I usually, eventually, find some sort of blind spot, which we all have. I haven’t found one with Paul.
He is very direct, very honest, afraid of nothing, very tough, very loyal, manages up extremely well, the way he runs the board, manages down extremely well, too. He has a tremendous amount of gravitas, which makes him intimidating in a way that you don’t want to mess him around.
I’m not sure he knows he’s intimidating, but when he walks into a room, he has presence. He just brings the A-game out of everyone. Because if you try and bullshit him or you don’t know your topic and you try and pretend you do, he’ll eat you alive.
And so he gets the best out of you; it’s like being in the military when the top guy comes around and you stand up a little bit taller. So Paul is someone that helps me immensely. When times are tough, he is a bit of a shield for me.
We also know that the automotive side of the company has been bleeding a lot more money than the race team, a situation made worse by a global shortage of microchips that leaves us struggling to deliver orders.
It’s part of a wider picture in the car industry. Covid shuts down production and then manufacturers across the board, McLaren, Volkswagen, Tesla, are unable to cope with the surge in demand when society is freed from its pandemic restrictions. Everything is piling up.
Stress and struggling to sleep are my two worst qualities. I don’t sleep well. I stress. It comes back to this fear of failure. And at this point, the fear of failure is almost overwhelming. I am living a full DEFCON 1 moment.
I’m trying to project energy, momentum, excitement and belief, but I know the company is on the brink of Armageddon. The clock is ticking, ticking, ticking. It’s like that Doomsday clock, getting closer and closer to midnight.
The task is to get the board to align around selling part of the team to get the money to save the team. Gradually, the general view becomes that we would rather own 70 per cent of a team that can win rather than 100 per cent of a team that is going to die a slow death. From day one, Sheikh Mohammed has always been a huge proponent of playing offence to get back to the front.
We find some investors. Sheikh Mohammed and I meet them in London for dinner and we start to move forward. At the end of 2020, we announce that we have sold a minority stake in McLaren Racing to a group led by MSP Sports Capital with its strategic partners UBS O’Connor, LLC and The Najafi Companies. Some of the board members change and we have total unity around McLaren’s racing objectives moving forward.
I am pleased to say that’s remained a constant feature of our board ever since. Including, most recently, when we announce CYVN Holdings has completed an acquisition of McLaren Automotive, our fantastic sister brand who we work so closely with, as well as a non-controlling stake in McLaren Racing. Much like Mumtalakat, CYVN has an absolute love for motorsports, they understand our racing DNA, which is key to driving focus and alignment on our objectives.
Back in 2020, I tell everyone I am committed to the team and am here for the long term. We release a statement that only hints at the extent of the issues that have been troubling us. But I know that it is an incredibly important moment for us. We say it’s a ‘key moment’. That’s an understatement.
A few months later, in April 2021, we sell the McLaren Technology Centre, which is on the outskirts of Woking, Surrey, to an investment firm called GNL for £170 million and they lease the site back to us. That is a huge step forward, too.
I feel like I can start to breathe again. I always have an inner belief that we’ll get the money and that the shareholders will ultimately step up. I am highly stressed, but I always feel we will figure it out, and we do.
It’s a hugely challenging time, but now that it’s in the rear-view mirror, it’s something I’m very proud of. When I start at McLaren, we’re in trouble on the track and we’re in trouble off the track. We aren’t winning many points but we are losing a ton of money.
Then we start to get a bit of momentum on the track, we get through Covid, we reset the sport, we survive, we bring in investors and we put ourselves on the road to becoming world champions.
It has been massively character-building for everyone because we’ve earned this the hard way. And some of the teams we have been racing against have never had financial issues. They have never had to fight in the way we have had to fight. They are never worse than first, second or third. The cost cap is an inconvenience to them.
That’s not the way it is for us. And because we suffer through it, it tastes even sweeter now that we have come out the other side.
Chapter 15
Rebirth
We’re midway through the 2022 season and we’ve got a problem. A different problem to the prospect of going bust, but a problem, nonetheless. We’ve started to make progress, but progress has stalled and I’m very worried.
There have been good things preceding this. There’s a three-season spell between 2019 and 2021 where performance starts to improve and we’re not the laughing stock of the paddock any more. We seem to be on a steady upward trajectory.
We have begun building a new in-house wind tunnel. We’ve been using Toyota’s facility in Cologne and it’s become a symbol of how our priorities have blurred in the years before I take over.
Having our own wind tunnel is a big step forward. We install a new race simulator, too. Infrastructure has been neglected. Not any more. We also agree a deal to use Mercedes engines from 2021. That is a step forward, too.
We have an excellent leadership team in 2019. Andrea Stella is our racing director and we have Pete Prodromou, the chief technical officer, Gil de Ferran, the sporting director, and Pat Fry, the engineering director.
Our good results and forward progress in 2019–21 are largely down to them. Because of Covid, there is very little difference between the 2020 car and the 2021 car. The design is frozen, effectively. Our progress is a huge tribute to the leadership they provide.
Daniel Ricciardo wins the Italian Grand Prix at Monza in September 2021, our first win since Jenson Button triumphed at the Brazilian Grand Prix nine years earlier, but Daniel’s signing doesn’t really work out. Daniel’s talented and his win in Monza shows how good he can be, but he is consistently outperformed by Lando Norris. Daniel leaves the team at the end of 2022.
We handle that well. We are honourable and transparent. We honour the contract, even though we don’t put him in the race car. He is great to work with, and the team remains strong. We still call him a friend and I’m proud of that.
Sometime before then, I’m starting to have concerns about the leadership of the team. I’m not seeing the pace and tenacity that I would like to see. Andreas Seidl is appointed team principal in 2019 and understandably wants to make some changes. Pat Fry leaves, Gil de Ferran leaves, and Pete Prodromou is put into a new position.
By 2022 I’m not loving what I’m seeing. The 2022 car is average at best and we are not where we need to be.
I feel we’re losing the mentality of the 24/7 workaholic approach of a performance-driven culture. At the same time I’m seeing a bit of arrogance creeping in, which I don’t like. It’s not my style.
So I mention those things on the call and there’s just no answer coming back because I’ve called their bluff. When I hear bullshit, my response is usually to go on the attack with facts. I get that employment laws might be different in Italy, but to use it as an excuse about why you can’t work within a cost cap is ridiculous. No one likes it when employees lose their jobs, but the reality is that we are actually trying to protect the sport and the industry.
Maybe the big teams have got used to making declaratory statements and no one challenging them, but I challenge them and I challenge hard. I challenge with facts. It goes on for weeks. I’m not saying there is yelling and screaming, but sometimes it gets close to that.
Perhaps there’s some element of cynicism about me taking a leading role in these arguments because McLaren is not exactly in the midst of its finest hour at this time. Maybe some of them are thinking, ‘Why is the new guy taking on the big teams?’
But I know this is my window. So I put myself out there. And I’m sure there are some people rolling their eyes and thinking, ‘Here’s fucking Zak again.’ But I can smell blood in the water because there is a divide.
There are the big three or four teams that don’t want a cost cap, or certainly don’t want it to be imposed at the level that is being suggested. But I also know there are five teams who do want it. I believe in what I’m fighting for.
Every time we meet to debate it, the big teams try and creep the cost cap back up by stealth, by excluding something from what counts as part of the agreed spending. And I am just as relentless in calling them out on that.
I think Formula 1 is in favour of the cost cap, but they are also acutely aware of trying to keep all the teams happy, so they can’t be seen to be partisan. They try and play the mediator and bring it into the middle but, in the end, I think we reduce the cost cap to about $50 million less than it was going to be before the pandemic struck.
I’m not trying to win an unfair competitive advantage for McLaren. I am trying to level the playing field. I feel like I am fighting for everyone in the sport. I am trying to unwind the advantage that a few teams have gained by having a substantially larger budget than others and, ultimately, we get it done.
And look at the sport now. Look at how it is. Four teams won races in 2024. Seven different drivers won races. I don’t recall that happening for a long time. Three teams were competing for the constructors’ title. In the 2025 season, we’ve already had four different winning drivers.
The sport has never been healthier in every aspect. And I think the cost cap is the number-one reason why that has happened. The cost cap emerged from the crisis of Covid, and I’ve always believed that if you handle a crisis well, not only do you build trust, but good comes out of it.
Covid enables us to reset the sport’s economics. It enables us to take a look at ourselves. It teaches us that there is a better way of doing things. And Formula 1 is better off for it now; in every way, the sport is remarkably healthy.
Chapter 14
Stick or Twist
You have got to plan. I’ve always been a very thoughtful, organized planner. I’m not sure that’s always been visible because of my personality. I’m high-energy. But I don’t spin my wheels. I don’t waste energy. I’m always trying to put power down.
Mike Tyson says everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth, and I agree with that. You don’t know when you are going to get punched or how much it is going to hurt. But if you have a plan, if you have the right people around you, it improves your chances of rolling with that punch.
It’s like having a race plan but you don’t know that it’s going to rain. So when it rains, you improvise. If you have a plan, it becomes easier to deviate from it, easier to improvise, than if you have no plan at all.
If you hit a problem, it’s like taking a diversion when you’re driving. You get to a point in the journey where the road’s closed. So you do something else to get to your destination. You just have to take a couple more left turns than you were originally intending to.
And if you have the right people around you and you know where you’re trying to get to, then you’re able to adapt quickly. I think what makes a good CEO and a good leader is being able to read the map and identify the new route you need to take. Maybe it involves bringing other people in. Maybe it involves changing the plan. You just have to be prepared.
Everything is slowed down when you are in a race car. It is amazing what you can see, hear and feel at 200mph. Some people don’t look past the front of the bonnet when they’re driving, but when you are driving at high speeds in a race car, you have to be prepared for unexpected things to happen.
Maybe someone in front of you makes a mistake. You have to be able to anticipate bad things happening. Or at least plan for bad things happening. I am always waiting for bad things to happen in business. Maybe it comes back to my fear of failure.
I use a DEFCON system in the office, which my chief people officer doesn’t like because he says, ‘Zak, that’s like nuclear war.’ The US government uses it as shorthand for ‘defense readiness condition’, and that’s my intention, too. It’s another name for having a plan.
We have various DEFCON levels. The lowest state is that you are sitting down doing nothing. The different stages are like a fast walk, a jog, a run and a full-out sprint. You should never be in the most basic state. That’s not how you should work in business. You always need to be up on your toes.
There’s no sitting around. You’re always ready. And then, depending on the play, you kind of dial it up from four to one, where one is the highest level. So I’ve got my DEFCON system and my timeout system and it is all about maintaining a state of readiness. Always be on the offence. Always be ready.
I use the timeout system to underline that we need to do something different here, we’ve got to pick up the pace, and the DEFCON system as a way to communicate and create urgency.
And so when we have challenges in the office or at the racetrack, when we need to pick up the pace, I bring them out. If a timeout’s required, then that timeout might lead to an urgent situation.
There’s no point being at DEFCON 1 the whole time. That’s like being a yeller and a screamer the whole time. It loses its impact. Then, everything is an emergency all the time. It is about adapting your pace.
There is a time after Covid when I feel as though, inside my head, I’m constantly running on DEFCON 1 and there are only a few people I can share it with.
In 2020, things are starting to improve on the track and we’re back on the podium, albeit irregularly. I feel like we’ve got some really good energy with the team. We’ve got the cost cap in place, we’ve got Lando Norris and Carlos Sainz in the car, our Renault engine is an upgrade on what we had before and we are going in the right direction.
Off the track, we’re a couple of months away from going bust. I always know in the back of my mind that we have total commitment from Mumtalakat and that they will never let that happen, but we have massive financial challenges.
Around the time I arrive at McLaren, we are losing around $125 million a year. We are quickly reducing our losses but we are still in a parlous position and the net is closing in.
The cost cap has only just come in. We have been in this spending spiral where we work on a basis of how much we can afford to lose, and now we can’t afford to lose what we are losing. Eventually, that kind of philosophy puts you out of business.
When I start, we have around £30 million in sponsorship. Today we have over £300 million. When I start, performance on track is terrible, so we are getting very little in prize money and sponsors are running away from us.
So we put together a business case that says we need maybe as much as £185 million to get us back to the front of the grid. The big debate on the board goes like this: you have our current shareholders, who are awesome, and they want to play offence. Their argument is that they would rather sell some of the company and give the money to the team. We have a couple of shareholders who want to shut the team down, and some who say, ‘Let’s live within our means.’
And what I am desperately trying to explain to that last group of shareholders is that that’s just a slow spiral down to death. If you don’t give us enough money, then we’re not going to get results, our prize money comes down, we’re not going to get sponsors and we are going to die a slow death.
There are times when it almost becomes too much. Outside my very tight leadership team, no one really knows how close we are to the abyss. People know we are in trouble, sure, but no one has any idea how much trouble.
And my general view is: ‘Why scare the troops?’ My chairman, Paul Walsh, and Mumtalakat give me the belief that we’re going to make it through, so why broadcast it to the wider company when they can’t do anything to affect the result?
So I’m living a dual life. I’m two businessmen at the same time. One half of me is putting on a bold front in public, exuding energy and positivity about the race team and its prospects.
That half of me is working furiously on getting a deal done with Daniel Ricciardo – which we can’t afford – to replace Carlos Sainz for the 2021 season, because Carlos is going to Ferrari and I think replacing him with Daniel will advance us another step on the track.
Mumtalakat and the Bahrainis do not blink. They are fantastic and they support us all the way. At the same time there are the shareholders who want to shut the team down.
So we’re trying to do the deal with Ricciardo, which will be seen as a great coup, and we are also having meetings with lawyers, where we are being told we are a couple of months away from not making payroll. We’re talking about how to make sure we are not trading insolvent. That’s how bad it is. But we are still paying every bill.
I’ll be with the race team, where everyone is excited about getting Ricciardo, and I’m projecting all this optimism and bravado. And then I’ll be going straight from there to a meeting where I’m being told we might be out of business before the 2021 season even starts.
It is an incredibly stressful time. I am lucky that my chairman, Paul, is amazing through all of it. He is unflappable, which gives me a lot of reassurance. He is very much ‘don’t worry, we got this’. And I need that because I’m not letting anyone else see that I am sweating here. I am very nervous.
It’s one of many, many times in my life when I’m grateful for Paul’s guidance. I’ve known him for twenty-five years as a friend and a mentor. We have a deep relationship and there’s no way I’d be where I am if it wasn’t for his trust. With most executives I’ve met, I usually, eventually, find some sort of blind spot, which we all have. I haven’t found one with Paul.
He is very direct, very honest, afraid of nothing, very tough, very loyal, manages up extremely well, the way he runs the board, manages down extremely well, too. He has a tremendous amount of gravitas, which makes him intimidating in a way that you don’t want to mess him around.
I’m not sure he knows he’s intimidating, but when he walks into a room, he has presence. He just brings the A-game out of everyone. Because if you try and bullshit him or you don’t know your topic and you try and pretend you do, he’ll eat you alive.
And so he gets the best out of you; it’s like being in the military when the top guy comes around and you stand up a little bit taller. So Paul is someone that helps me immensely. When times are tough, he is a bit of a shield for me.
We also know that the automotive side of the company has been bleeding a lot more money than the race team, a situation made worse by a global shortage of microchips that leaves us struggling to deliver orders.
It’s part of a wider picture in the car industry. Covid shuts down production and then manufacturers across the board, McLaren, Volkswagen, Tesla, are unable to cope with the surge in demand when society is freed from its pandemic restrictions. Everything is piling up.
Stress and struggling to sleep are my two worst qualities. I don’t sleep well. I stress. It comes back to this fear of failure. And at this point, the fear of failure is almost overwhelming. I am living a full DEFCON 1 moment.
I’m trying to project energy, momentum, excitement and belief, but I know the company is on the brink of Armageddon. The clock is ticking, ticking, ticking. It’s like that Doomsday clock, getting closer and closer to midnight.
The task is to get the board to align around selling part of the team to get the money to save the team. Gradually, the general view becomes that we would rather own 70 per cent of a team that can win rather than 100 per cent of a team that is going to die a slow death. From day one, Sheikh Mohammed has always been a huge proponent of playing offence to get back to the front.
We find some investors. Sheikh Mohammed and I meet them in London for dinner and we start to move forward. At the end of 2020, we announce that we have sold a minority stake in McLaren Racing to a group led by MSP Sports Capital with its strategic partners UBS O’Connor, LLC and The Najafi Companies. Some of the board members change and we have total unity around McLaren’s racing objectives moving forward.
I am pleased to say that’s remained a constant feature of our board ever since. Including, most recently, when we announce CYVN Holdings has completed an acquisition of McLaren Automotive, our fantastic sister brand who we work so closely with, as well as a non-controlling stake in McLaren Racing. Much like Mumtalakat, CYVN has an absolute love for motorsports, they understand our racing DNA, which is key to driving focus and alignment on our objectives.
Back in 2020, I tell everyone I am committed to the team and am here for the long term. We release a statement that only hints at the extent of the issues that have been troubling us. But I know that it is an incredibly important moment for us. We say it’s a ‘key moment’. That’s an understatement.
A few months later, in April 2021, we sell the McLaren Technology Centre, which is on the outskirts of Woking, Surrey, to an investment firm called GNL for £170 million and they lease the site back to us. That is a huge step forward, too.
I feel like I can start to breathe again. I always have an inner belief that we’ll get the money and that the shareholders will ultimately step up. I am highly stressed, but I always feel we will figure it out, and we do.
It’s a hugely challenging time, but now that it’s in the rear-view mirror, it’s something I’m very proud of. When I start at McLaren, we’re in trouble on the track and we’re in trouble off the track. We aren’t winning many points but we are losing a ton of money.
Then we start to get a bit of momentum on the track, we get through Covid, we reset the sport, we survive, we bring in investors and we put ourselves on the road to becoming world champions.
It has been massively character-building for everyone because we’ve earned this the hard way. And some of the teams we have been racing against have never had financial issues. They have never had to fight in the way we have had to fight. They are never worse than first, second or third. The cost cap is an inconvenience to them.
That’s not the way it is for us. And because we suffer through it, it tastes even sweeter now that we have come out the other side.
Chapter 15
Rebirth
We’re midway through the 2022 season and we’ve got a problem. A different problem to the prospect of going bust, but a problem, nonetheless. We’ve started to make progress, but progress has stalled and I’m very worried.
There have been good things preceding this. There’s a three-season spell between 2019 and 2021 where performance starts to improve and we’re not the laughing stock of the paddock any more. We seem to be on a steady upward trajectory.
We have begun building a new in-house wind tunnel. We’ve been using Toyota’s facility in Cologne and it’s become a symbol of how our priorities have blurred in the years before I take over.
Having our own wind tunnel is a big step forward. We install a new race simulator, too. Infrastructure has been neglected. Not any more. We also agree a deal to use Mercedes engines from 2021. That is a step forward, too.
We have an excellent leadership team in 2019. Andrea Stella is our racing director and we have Pete Prodromou, the chief technical officer, Gil de Ferran, the sporting director, and Pat Fry, the engineering director.
Our good results and forward progress in 2019–21 are largely down to them. Because of Covid, there is very little difference between the 2020 car and the 2021 car. The design is frozen, effectively. Our progress is a huge tribute to the leadership they provide.
Daniel Ricciardo wins the Italian Grand Prix at Monza in September 2021, our first win since Jenson Button triumphed at the Brazilian Grand Prix nine years earlier, but Daniel’s signing doesn’t really work out. Daniel’s talented and his win in Monza shows how good he can be, but he is consistently outperformed by Lando Norris. Daniel leaves the team at the end of 2022.
We handle that well. We are honourable and transparent. We honour the contract, even though we don’t put him in the race car. He is great to work with, and the team remains strong. We still call him a friend and I’m proud of that.
Sometime before then, I’m starting to have concerns about the leadership of the team. I’m not seeing the pace and tenacity that I would like to see. Andreas Seidl is appointed team principal in 2019 and understandably wants to make some changes. Pat Fry leaves, Gil de Ferran leaves, and Pete Prodromou is put into a new position.
By 2022 I’m not loving what I’m seeing. The 2022 car is average at best and we are not where we need to be.
I feel we’re losing the mentality of the 24/7 workaholic approach of a performance-driven culture. At the same time I’m seeing a bit of arrogance creeping in, which I don’t like. It’s not my style.
