Formula 1

Zak Brown: “Morale is great, people are working hard, we’re excited”

1 Mins read
Credit: Craig Robertson

Even after three years of unreliability and struggle, McLaren Renault F1 Team’s boss Zak Brown claims that the drive to return to former glory is as strong as ever.

Brown believes that McLaren is unique in that, for many of the employees, it has been their life dream to work for such a highly-esteemed team. This is what helps to keep morale and productivity high.

Speaking to Racer, Brown commented that:

The unbelievable thing about this place is, when you walk the halls, this is a team that has won 20 world championships and everyone is very proud.

I’ve never been to a place where for so many people their life is McLaren or they wanted to work at McLaren their whole life.”

Brown doesn’t think other large corporations have the same levels of dedication from their employees, but likens the passion of McLaren employees to that of the Scuderia Ferrari outfit, with both teams having illustrious histories in Formula One.

I’m not sure many companies have that level of enthusiasm from their employees,” he said. “Take Fortune 500 Company X, you probably don’t walk into Coca-Cola and someone says, ‘I’ve wanted to work for Coca-Cola my whole life. No disrespect to Coca-Cola, but McLaren is like that, Ferrari would be like that – big passion.”

According to Brown, the pieces seem to be falling into place for the team, with an apparent host of changes coming for the new year. One thing that will stay the same is the driver line-up, with Fernando Alonso and Stoffel Vandoorne maintaining their positions for 2018.

“Morale is great, people are working hard, we’re excited. We’ve got a new livery coming, we’ve got a new garage coming, we’ve got a new engine coming, we’ve got the two drivers we wanted…

Everyone’s working well together. Eric [Boullier] is happy with everything that he has. I asked him the other day ‘Anything else you need?’ ‘Nope, I got what I need.’

So everyone is excited and the anticipation is building. I wish Australia was tomorrow.

Desire to get back to our winning ways is off the chart. It’s really made everyone more hungry and I think that’s a good place for the organization to be.

A really hungry McLaren, that’s a good thing.

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