Zak Brown: Rebuilding McLaren, Leading Formula 1 and the Power of Winning Culture

Hi everybody and welcome to In Good Company. I'm Nikola Tangen, the CEO of the Norwegian Wealth Fund, and today I'm speaking with Zack Brown, the CEO of McLaren Racing, one of the most remarkable turnarounds Formula One has ever seen. Well, I would argue is one of the most remarkable turnarounds I've ever seen anywhere. Zack has transformed McLaren from a struggling mid-pack team into a champion leader and you are currently dominating the F1 season. Well done, so let's just dive straight in.

Why are you winning everything this year? People. If I had to give, uh, of course it's not a simple answer and it's never quite as simple as one thing, but it's our our people and specifically our our culture. Um, what we've been able to do here, uh, you know, if I take a step back where the uh second most successful uh Formula One team of all time, second most historic next to uh Ferrari, which is good company.

And uh we certainly have won a lot of races and world championships over the years, but uh we really started to struggle, you know, 10, 15 years ago and and lost our way for a variety of reasons, but probably the biggest impact being we lost our way as a as a team. uh teamwork and that culture. And so of course we've had great investment. We've got great drivers. We have new wind tunnels, all the things that people are are the tools that they need to be able to get back to the front.

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