Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff. This is the story. Each week
Speaker 1: on Wednesdays, we bring you an in depth interview with
Speaker 1: someone who has a front row seat to the most
Speaker 1: fascinating things happening in tech today. A conversation with the
Speaker 1: person who has the front row seat to end all
Speaker 1: front row seats, Zach Brown, CEO of McLaren Racing. If
Speaker 1: you've ever tuned into the Netflix show Drive to Survive,
Speaker 1: you may be familiar with Brown, but for the uninitiated,
Speaker 1: he's the man with the ultimate responsibility for McLaren's F
Speaker 1: one team, the strategic force behind the on track magic
Speaker 1: of the drivers Lando Norris and Osco Piastre, and the
Speaker 1: feats of engineering that are McLaren F one race cars,
Speaker 1: currently the fastest on the track. I met with Zach
Speaker 1: Brown at the team's headquarters outside of London, and what
Speaker 1: I encountered was pretty different from your usual corporate office.
Speaker 1: A place surrounded by green fields, a lake and sweeping
Speaker 1: sci fi glass structures the McLaren Technology Center.
Speaker 2: The best way to describe it is it looks like
Speaker 2: Star Wars.
Speaker 1: This is Zach Brown.
Speaker 3: The building was designed by Sir Norman Foster now Lord Foster,
Speaker 3: who also went on to do the Apple building, which
Speaker 3: I think was inspired by their visit here, except those
Speaker 3: are substantially larger.
Speaker 1: The doughnuts in Kupertino.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and more expensive for sure.
Speaker 3: You drive past the beautiful lake and then you come in.
Speaker 3: You enter what we call the boulevard.
Speaker 1: The boulevard, that's what they call the room filled with
Speaker 1: trophies and iconic McLaren vehicles from the archives of Formula
Speaker 1: one's second oldest team. History and innovation exist in parallel here,
Speaker 1: including recent history.
Speaker 2: This is the moment that McLaren dreamed of.
Speaker 1: Lando Norris Winds the Abby Dabbi Dran Prix McLaren World
Speaker 1: champions of twenty twenty four. They win the Constructors. As
Speaker 1: soon as you walk into the McLaren Technology Center, you're
Speaker 1: confronted with a car that one Formula One's Constructor's Championship
Speaker 1: last year. That's one of the two world championship titles
Speaker 1: in the sport, and a prize McLaren had last won
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety eight, more than twenty five years ago.
Speaker 1: Since he joined McLaren in twenty sixteen, Zach Brown has
Speaker 1: transformed the team into a powerhouse of effective teamwork and
Speaker 1: motor racing technology. For him, the two are intrinsically connected.
Speaker 1: I sat down with Zach to understand how if you're
Speaker 1: a kind of casual F one fan and you're watching
Speaker 1: Drive to Survive, it feels like most of the action
Speaker 1: takes place on track, right, But what do you not
Speaker 1: understand about the sport if you don't understand what happens
Speaker 1: here at the technology center.
Speaker 3: The technology in these Formula One cars is amazing. Most
Speaker 3: people maybe don't have full appreciation of how much technology
Speaker 3: or in these race cars, and how much technology there
Speaker 3: is running the race cars, and how much technology there
Speaker 3: is in designing and building the racing cars.
Speaker 2: Who are definitely cutting edge in every area.
Speaker 3: We have a thousand people to put two race cars
Speaker 3: on the track.
Speaker 2: That always blows.
Speaker 3: People's mind a way is how large these teams are.
Speaker 3: Everything is bespoke and then during a race weekend, the
Speaker 3: race is actually run from both at the racetrack but
Speaker 3: also back here in mission control. So if you think
Speaker 3: of NASA, you have those that are in the rocket,
Speaker 3: but then you've got on the ground the mission is
Speaker 3: being run, and that same thing takes place here in
Speaker 3: a Formula One team.
Speaker 1: So there's life communication from here to the racetrack during.
Speaker 3: Each absolutely simulation communication data will have probably sixty people
Speaker 3: here at a race weekend as if they were at
Speaker 3: the racetrack. So if it's three o'clock in the morning
Speaker 3: here because we're racing in China, then it's three o'clock
Speaker 3: in the morning here and feed everyone Accordingly.
Speaker 1: You're notorious for answering at your emails that at all hours,
Speaker 1: so I guess that partly explained.
Speaker 2: So we're a twenty four to seven business, that's for sure.
Speaker 1: Back in the beginning of twenty twenty three, you guys
Speaker 1: were lagging and then you had this extraordinary win in
Speaker 1: the Constructors Championship twenty twenty four and first place. Now
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty five, What were some of the work
Speaker 1: that happened here that allowed that extraordinary sporting turnaround?
Speaker 3: It was people primarily. I mean, we did have some
Speaker 3: new technologies that came online or wind tunnel I finally
Speaker 3: got up and running. We'd been renting one out of
Speaker 3: the country, which was suboptimal logistically and things of that nature.
Speaker 3: But the biggest thing was people. I put in Andrea
Speaker 3: Stella in charge of the racing team. He then reorganized
Speaker 3: it with the same people that gave us the racing
Speaker 3: car at the beginning of twenty two, pretty much the
Speaker 3: same group that gave as a World Championship car twelve
Speaker 3: months later. So it shows what a difference great leadership
Speaker 3: can make. And he just set out clear goals, objectives,
Speaker 3: got the morale and the culture. Everyone row in the
Speaker 3: same direction, and it was just amazing what a team
Speaker 3: effort it was.
Speaker 1: When you win a race, how much is the driver
Speaker 1: and how much is the car?
Speaker 2: Well, it has to be both at this level.
Speaker 3: But a great driver can't drive around a car that's
Speaker 3: not capable of winning. So I guess you'd say car first.
Speaker 3: But four teams all have cars that can win. So
Speaker 3: the difference between those eight drivers, if you'd like, is
Speaker 3: old driver. So you definitely need both, but you can't
Speaker 3: make up for a race car that's not up for it.
Speaker 3: So that's what everyone focuses on. Here is our job
Speaker 3: to get the two best drivers in the business first
Speaker 3: and foremost.
Speaker 2: We need to gem a car capable of winning.
Speaker 1: How much time has the driver spend here quite.
Speaker 3: A bit their simulation marketing days, so I would say
Speaker 3: they're in three days before a Grand Prix and three
Speaker 3: days after a Grand Prix, because you spend as much
Speaker 3: time debriefing as you do preparing for a race weekend.
Speaker 1: And you had this kind of life changing experience. Was
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty seven when you met.
Speaker 2: Mario ANDRETI to tell that story.
Speaker 3: I went to Long Beach Grand Prix, which is the
Speaker 3: second time I had gone, and at that point I
Speaker 3: wanted to.
Speaker 2: Pursue a career in racing.
Speaker 3: And I got the chance to meet Mario and I
Speaker 3: asked him how you get started in racing? That was
Speaker 3: the one and only question I was brave enough to
Speaker 3: ask him, and he said karting, And there happened to
Speaker 3: be an ad in the race program for Jim hole
Speaker 3: Cart Racing School, and went and bought a goat kart
Speaker 3: and that was the start of the racing.
Speaker 2: Was Mario's a little bit of advice there?
Speaker 1: Fine? If we had a guest on the show recently
Speaker 1: who'd been on the Voice and I had use their
Speaker 1: proceeds to fund their first reporting trip to Syria. But
Speaker 1: you also had a game show enabled Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: I was on Wheel of Fortune teen week when I
Speaker 3: was thirteen and won the first two rounds, which were
Speaker 3: a bunch of watches and went on to sell those
Speaker 3: at a pawnshop. And so after I got my little
Speaker 3: bit of advice for Mario, I cashed in my winnings,
Speaker 3: got a go kart and the rest is history.
Speaker 1: And when did you first get involved with Formula one
Speaker 1: itself on the professional side?
Speaker 3: My first ever sponsorship was with McLaren twenty years ago.
Speaker 1: And how have you seen the sport change, in particular
Speaker 1: driven by technology in those twenty years technology.
Speaker 3: It's the most technically advanced sport in the world. The
Speaker 3: data that we're pulling off these cars is amazing. The
Speaker 3: way we're using over three hundred centers on the race.
Speaker 1: Car and where are they on the car?
Speaker 2: Everywhere?
Speaker 3: There's nothing about the race car we don't know. We
Speaker 3: pulled down one and a half terabytes of data a weekend.
Speaker 3: We run about fifty million simulations. There's seventy five thousand
Speaker 3: parts on a Formula one car and you change about
Speaker 3: eighty percent of the non homoligated part of the racecar
Speaker 3: over the course of the years.
Speaker 2: So we live in a literally in a prototype world.
Speaker 1: You mentioned NASA and Mission Control earlier that it's not
Speaker 1: far off, it's.
Speaker 3: Not far off at all, but they're not necessarily trying
Speaker 3: to get to the moon faster.
Speaker 2: We're trying to get to the moon faster every weekend.
Speaker 1: And I know you like to bring in sort of
Speaker 1: outside council from you know, the likes of Michael Jordan
Speaker 1: and you know, incredible athletes. On the tech side, I
Speaker 1: mean you mentioned the Apple guys came here and were
Speaker 1: inspired by the office. You have partnerships with companies like
Speaker 1: Dell who have their you know, the name on the car.
Speaker 1: How do you maintain McLaren's edge on the tech side with.
Speaker 3: Our partners, and we have some of the most unbelievable
Speaker 3: technology companies in the world, Google, Dell, Cisco, the list
Speaker 3: go on of you know, the leaders in their industry.
Speaker 3: So we work very closely with them. That's one of
Speaker 3: the things that when we look for partners long ago,
Speaker 3: it was a sticker on a race car. Now it's
Speaker 3: all about collaboration, work together, developing technologies together, storytelling around
Speaker 3: how we use their technology, and we want to use
Speaker 3: their technology because they're best in class to make us
Speaker 3: go faster.
Speaker 2: So we have a lot of great technology.
Speaker 1: Partners and you'll see over turn Racing who is in
Speaker 1: charge of the development of the car.
Speaker 2: Here a variety of people.
Speaker 3: I mean, ultimately the technical team reports into Andrea Stella.
Speaker 3: We have technical directors three or four that are the
Speaker 3: best in their disciplines, chief designer, manufacturing, aerodynamics, vehicle performance.
Speaker 3: So they all come together at a very senior level
Speaker 3: to build the racing car. So it's those respective groups
Speaker 3: that about seven hundred and fifty people that are actually
Speaker 3: responsible for, in one way or another, touching the race car.
Speaker 1: When we come back, Zach Brown tells us just how
Speaker 1: influential F one regulations are on the final design of
Speaker 1: the race cars. Welcome back. I had the opportunity to
Speaker 1: sit down with Zach Brown at the McLaren Technology Center
Speaker 1: and pick his brain about the strategy behind running an
Speaker 1: F one team. So of course I had to ask
Speaker 1: Brown about McLaren's team principal Andrea Stella, a highly regarded
Speaker 1: F one engineer whose promotion may have been a turning
Speaker 1: point for McLaren Racing.
Speaker 3: I wanted him to run the racing team last time around,
Speaker 3: but he felt he wasn't ready. And he's a gentleman
Speaker 3: who doesn't lead with his ego. He leads with what
Speaker 3: he thinks he's capable of and where he thinks he
Speaker 3: can achieve. And I guess you would say we disagreed
Speaker 3: because I thought he was ready four years ago.
Speaker 2: He didn't think he was ready till two years ago.
Speaker 3: We'll never know, but what's clear is he's been ready
Speaker 3: since he accepted and he's done a fantastic job.
Speaker 1: When people look back at this time and write the
Speaker 1: case study on twenty twenty four and hopefully twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: what will they focus on in terms of what the
Speaker 1: changes that Andrews Seller brought to the team were.
Speaker 3: Getting everything to come together. Everything feeds performance on the
Speaker 3: racing car. So Andrea is responsible for the technical side
Speaker 3: of the business. But you need to have a great
Speaker 3: communications department so you have huge fan base. We have
Speaker 3: a cost cap now, so living within a fiscal challenges,
Speaker 3: you need to spend wisely, So your finance department plays
Speaker 3: a massive role. So that's the people that don't touch
Speaker 3: the race car. But it all feeds into the race car.
Speaker 3: So you need to get every department being the best
Speaker 3: they can be, and then it's collaboration. It's team work.
Speaker 3: Getting a thousand people all row in the same direction.
Speaker 1: You mentioned the cost cap. One of the fascinating things
Speaker 1: about this sport is how many restrictions and regulations there are.
Speaker 1: I mean there's this sort of phrase that constraint drives creativity.
Speaker 1: But can you explain how the rules from the governing
Speaker 1: body impact the car do you see on the track
Speaker 1: and how technology what the interplay of technology is to
Speaker 1: make sure that the car, the message of the track
Speaker 1: is the best that can be made within the restrictions
Speaker 1: imposed by the governing body.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you've got very sophisticated rules on specification of the car.
Speaker 3: I think the engineer's interpret if it says you unless
Speaker 3: it says you can't do it, then they get into
Speaker 3: a mindset of well then you can do it. So
Speaker 3: I think that's where the creativity comes in, this interpretation
Speaker 3: of the rules. And then from a business point of view,
Speaker 3: we have very few rules compared to other sports. Technically
Speaker 3: we probably have the most sophisticated set of rules, but
Speaker 3: from a business standpoint we almost have no rules. So,
Speaker 3: in one aspect is wild while west compared to other
Speaker 3: sports that have very specific dos and don'ts around players
Speaker 3: and managers and things of that nature.
Speaker 1: How much do these rules drive the vehicleusy on the track?
Speaker 3: Completely one hundred percent. I mean you got to be
Speaker 3: within the rules, and the tests and regulations around the
Speaker 3: legality of the cars is immense. Last race you saw
Speaker 3: the two Ferraris and a Alping disqualified.
Speaker 2: That wouldn't have been up to anything they shouldn't have been.
Speaker 2: But you run the margin of.
Speaker 3: Error so close that if you get a little bit
Speaker 3: wrong that one car was a little underweight and one had.
Speaker 2: A little bit too much skidware.
Speaker 3: So it is very difficult because you're trying to get
Speaker 3: to the absolute limit and not go over, and you're
Speaker 3: talking about less than a kilo underweight on something that's
Speaker 3: eight hundred kilos. But kilo is a p handful of milliseconds.
Speaker 3: Ten kilos is three tenths of a second. Entire grid
Speaker 3: is covered by a second, so you don't want to
Speaker 3: leave any weight on the table. But if you cut
Speaker 3: it too close you get disqualified. So the rules definitely
Speaker 3: drive what the race cars look like.
Speaker 1: The other fascinating thing is that the number of hours
Speaker 1: the car is allowed to actually be on the track
Speaker 1: is surprisingly very low. Can you also talk about that
Speaker 1: and how why that makes the work that happens here
Speaker 1: the technology set, It is important.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so there's a big testing restriction. We only get
Speaker 3: three test days to start the year, and you've got
Speaker 3: two drivers, so it's very little testing. And you used
Speaker 3: to have unlimited testing. So you're effectively what you would
Speaker 3: have tested on track fifteen to twenty years ago with
Speaker 3: as much testing as you wanted. That's now shifted to
Speaker 3: CFD wind tunnel simulation in that order.
Speaker 1: Can you explain each of those concepts, simulation and wind
Speaker 1: tunnel on how they apply?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean CfDS all computer generated and so it's
Speaker 3: a bunch of mathematical equations and aerodynamic flow things.
Speaker 2: Of that nature.
Speaker 3: So it's effectively designing a race car on a computer
Speaker 3: and then testing it if you'd like. That'll give you data,
Speaker 3: so that's fully in the computer, fully in the computer.
Speaker 3: Then you'll turn that into a half scale or so
Speaker 3: model of the real race car. You'll stick that in
Speaker 3: the wind tunnel where are not allowed through regulation have
Speaker 3: a full scale wind tunnel, so it's it's scaled.
Speaker 2: Does that mean smaller? Correct?
Speaker 3: And then you have restrictions around how often you can
Speaker 3: run the wind tunnel, so you need to make sure
Speaker 3: you're confident that what's coming out of CFD is going.
Speaker 2: To work, otherwise you're wasting wind tunnel time.
Speaker 1: And how do they monitor how much you use the
Speaker 1: wind tunnel.
Speaker 3: It's all all logged into the FIA, who's our governing body,
Speaker 3: so they know how many runs.
Speaker 2: We're doing and for how long.
Speaker 3: You then run the wind tunnel to see if what
Speaker 3: you've seen in the computer it you know, you kind
Speaker 3: of see in miniature size real life. Then you input
Speaker 3: all that data into the simulator. You let the driver
Speaker 3: then go drive it and see if they actually can
Speaker 3: see the performance that you think you've found in the
Speaker 3: in the wind tunnel, and then if you're confident you have,
Speaker 3: then you go ahead and manufacture the bits for the
Speaker 3: race car. You put it on the race car and
Speaker 3: hope the race car feeds back in the same way
Speaker 3: your simulation has.
Speaker 1: And what about AI. I mean, we're kind of in
Speaker 1: this amazing moment where kind of engineering and design and
Speaker 1: like everything seems to be being changed by generative AI.
Speaker 1: Is that I guess simulation is AI essentially, But I
Speaker 1: mean in a five year view, how much you're thinking
Speaker 1: about how these longer term technological trends.
Speaker 3: May Yeah, we have a team that's dedicated to emerging technologies.
Speaker 3: We're using AI now, I think you'll never replace the
Speaker 3: human because there's something that's called kind of race or
Speaker 3: instinct which is needing to really understand the full environment.
Speaker 3: I think AI can feed you data and information quicker
Speaker 3: to make more informed, less cluttered decisions. But I don't
Speaker 3: see a day where AI tells you when depit.
Speaker 2: I can see there being a.
Speaker 3: Day when AI tells you what historically has happened and
Speaker 3: therefore give you some data to make a more educated,
Speaker 3: quicker decision on We're using AI around marketing, We're using
Speaker 3: AI around tire data, so we are leaning in and
Speaker 3: it's a culture where people embrace new technologies. I'm personally
Speaker 3: someone who gets stuck with what I've been used to
Speaker 3: in a bit of a creature, a habit, and what
Speaker 3: you need are in a Formula one team or people
Speaker 3: that are excited to try something that they've never tried before.
Speaker 1: You had a choice back in twenty sixteen right whether
Speaker 1: to join McLaren or f one itself for it, and
Speaker 1: you chose McLaren.
Speaker 2: Obviously I wanted to go racing.
Speaker 3: I felt that the Formula one opportunity is awesome as
Speaker 3: it was was a little bit of what I'd been
Speaker 3: doing for twenty years, just on a bigger scale, where
Speaker 3: McLaren offered me the opportunity not only to continue what
Speaker 3: I was doing from a commercial standpoint, which I very
Speaker 3: much enjoy, but when the lights go out near on pitwall,
Speaker 3: you're racing, and that was something that I felt I
Speaker 3: had missed from when i'd hung up from driving.
Speaker 1: When you arrived, you said you found this place in disarray.
Speaker 1: How did that become clear to you?
Speaker 2: I think it was clear to everyone our results.
Speaker 3: We were ninth in the championship, We had very few sponsors,
Speaker 3: we were losing a lot of money. Fans were disgruntled,
Speaker 3: employees were disgruntled drivers who were disgruntled. So it wasn't
Speaker 3: a happy environment. I think was well documented. We had
Speaker 3: challenges at the shareholder level. They had a dispute. So
Speaker 3: I think when you've got the very top leadership not aligned,
Speaker 3: then that's going to have a trickle down impact on
Speaker 3: the organization. And I think it lacked focus, lacked leadership,
Speaker 3: and so things started unravel in a very competitive sport.
Speaker 3: So fortunately, through changing the leadership team, getting great people
Speaker 3: around me, reversing the downward trajectory and the negative momentum
Speaker 3: that we had, went about rebuilding the team, and here
Speaker 3: we are nine years later, world champions.
Speaker 1: But the first question for you was not about technology
Speaker 1: or engineering or even about driver recruitment. It was about
Speaker 1: how you work together to the team.
Speaker 2: All about people.
Speaker 3: And we see it in all sports, right You see
Speaker 3: some mega teams with all the all stars and the
Speaker 3: big names not get it done because they don't work
Speaker 3: well together. And then you see the underdogs, which are
Speaker 3: always a great story, you know, kind of overachieve and
Speaker 3: that's because they came together as a team.
Speaker 1: We were a student of management philosophy or of leadership
Speaker 1: or I mean, where did you was the Zach Brown school?
Speaker 3: Just having my my own successful business, which was easier
Speaker 3: in some senses because I built the culture from one
Speaker 3: employee at a time versus coming into an environment where
Speaker 3: it had its own culture and it wasn't a good
Speaker 3: place and it was a thousand people. So I think
Speaker 3: it's easier to build than to change. But then I've
Speaker 3: been around successful people. I've been fortunate as a racing
Speaker 3: driver to be around a lot of successful racing team
Speaker 3: and not successful racing team. So I think I'm always
Speaker 3: pay attention, ask a lot of questions, and think I
Speaker 3: went about it just from understanding what good looks like,
Speaker 3: what bad looks like. And it's pretty obvious if you
Speaker 3: paying attention in your care.
Speaker 1: So you came in and you had to turn around
Speaker 1: job on your hands, and you succeeded. But then beginning
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three, all of a sudden, it was on
Speaker 1: your watch and things weren't going well. How did that
Speaker 1: challenge compare to the challenge of coming into place.
Speaker 2: That was worse or a bigger challenge?
Speaker 3: Because when I came in, I didn't create the situation
Speaker 3: we were in.
Speaker 2: I knew it was my job to fix it. I
Speaker 2: made some changes.
Speaker 3: Top three people that were running the racing team are
Speaker 3: no longer here, and so I did identify it.
Speaker 2: I saw it coming.
Speaker 3: I had some pretty brutal conversations over the summer break.
Speaker 3: I spotted in June that I didn't like what I
Speaker 3: was seeing, and there's about six month lag, and.
Speaker 2: So fortunately at least had comfort.
Speaker 3: I knew why we got into the challenge we were
Speaker 3: in and what I thought we.
Speaker 2: Needed to do to get out of it.
Speaker 1: What does it mean for you as a leader? To
Speaker 1: pull it off.
Speaker 2: Very proud of everything that the team is done. We've
Speaker 2: earned this the hard way.
Speaker 3: Some of our competitors have never had financial challenges, so
Speaker 3: they've had the luxury have been able to focus purely
Speaker 3: on performance. We needed to focus on economics to be
Speaker 3: able to pay for the performance. So I think I
Speaker 3: wouldn't have it any other way.
Speaker 1: After the break, we revisit the down to the Wide
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four Constructors Championship victory with Zach Brown. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to tech stuff. Let's dive into my conversation with
Speaker 1: the CEO of McLaren Racing, Zach Brown. I was looking
Speaker 1: on Twitter this morning and back in twenty twenty three
Speaker 1: there was this sack Zach hashtag, which is hard to
Speaker 1: imagine now. And likewise, back at the beginning twenty four,
Speaker 1: there was a hashtag Lando nowins, So I can.
Speaker 2: Imagine a new hashtag for those people. It's not appropriate.
Speaker 1: Not for a family friendly, but it must have. You
Speaker 1: must have been able to put your arm around him
Speaker 1: in a unique way, having dealt without yourself just the
Speaker 1: year before.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, I
Speaker 3: think we'd had a couple of chances to win that
Speaker 3: we didn't seize the moment. But coming back to you
Speaker 3: know where he started as a car or driver, I
Speaker 3: think he had some comfort in knowing that he wasn't
Speaker 3: winning because the car wasn't yet ready on many occasions,
Speaker 3: and I think he's now proven that won't give him
Speaker 3: a car that's capable winning to go out and win.
Speaker 3: So I think it was frustrating because any Grand Prix
Speaker 3: driver wants to win, But I think it didn't dent
Speaker 3: his confidence because he knew he wasn't the reason we
Speaker 3: weren't winning. It was that we needed that last little
Speaker 3: bit out of our race car, which we now have found.
Speaker 1: Going back to started last season, there is a big
Speaker 1: scandal around Christian Horner, your your counterpartner a red Bull,
Speaker 1: and in the first episode Drives Survive, it looked like
Speaker 1: you in a sense smelt blood or when he was
Speaker 1: when he was in the middle of that media fire store.
Speaker 1: I mean, did you have a sense in that moment,
Speaker 1: knowing how important a functional team is as you do,
Speaker 1: there might be an opportunity that you hadn't expected.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean our sport maybe more so than other sports.
Speaker 3: But I want to profess to be an expert on
Speaker 3: another sports, So forgive me if I have this wrong
Speaker 3: other sports, but there is a destabilized the competition aspect
Speaker 3: to this sport, and so I'm sure that happens in
Speaker 3: other sports, but here you're fighting for employees, drivers, sponsors.
Speaker 3: Media is play a big role in our sport. So
Speaker 3: if you can create some tension in other teams or destabilize,
Speaker 3: that helps slow the competition down while you're trying to
Speaker 3: speed yourself up.
Speaker 1: How much does drives change the sport.
Speaker 3: It's helped grow it immensely. It's created a tremendous amount awareness.
Speaker 3: It's shown people that what goes on in the sport,
Speaker 3: especially off the track. I think people didn't understand that.
Speaker 3: I think are sport's unique in that aspect where you
Speaker 3: watch the other majority of the sports, and it's it's
Speaker 3: pretty much exclusively concentrated on the field of play, where
Speaker 3: our sport off the field is every bit as fascinating
Speaker 3: is on the track. And I think that's what Netflix
Speaker 3: helped capture.
Speaker 1: On the Constructors, I mean, some people were saying to you,
Speaker 1: you know you got this in the bag, Zac, but
Speaker 1: you didn't. You didn't agree with them, And indeed, I
Speaker 1: mean that that couldn't have been.
Speaker 3: Been closer, couldn't have been Yeah, Atlando not one. We
Speaker 3: went in one of the constructors, so we never felt
Speaker 3: we had it in the bag. And you can see
Speaker 3: how quickly this sport moves. We thought Red Bull would
Speaker 3: win every race based on the start of the year,
Speaker 3: and then they finished third in the championship. So I
Speaker 3: think we're too experienced and been around the block too
Speaker 3: much to fall for thinking you have anything in the
Speaker 3: bag and the sport, I mean, ultimately we came down
Speaker 3: to maybe seven tenths. You know, you have the DRS,
Speaker 3: which if you're within a second, which is pretty hard
Speaker 3: to defend, especially around Abu Dhabi, and Lando had a
Speaker 3: very small lead over Carlos signs he comes in in
Speaker 3: the Ferrari does a two point two second pit stop,
Speaker 3: so the pressure's on us and we do a two
Speaker 3: second pit stop. Howd we done a two point seven
Speaker 3: second pit stop, which is not a bad pit stop?
Speaker 2: Then Lando comes.
Speaker 3: Out, Carlos and his DRS probably bassism and then you
Speaker 3: don't know if Lando would have been able to get
Speaker 3: him back.
Speaker 1: And did you have complete conviction in your team that
Speaker 1: in the clutch moment they'll pull it off.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but you never know, driver can overshoot the pitch
Speaker 3: you have a wheel gun failure. I mean it's two
Speaker 3: point seven second pit stops not a bad pit stop,
Speaker 3: and had a lot of confidence, but yeah, of course
Speaker 3: you've also got nerves very much at the same time.
Speaker 1: So now it's a twenty twenty five season. How do
Speaker 1: you describe McLaren stops the season?
Speaker 2: Almost perfect?
Speaker 3: First and second in China and first and I think
Speaker 3: it was ninth in Australia. But we're running first and
Speaker 3: second quite a dominant performance.
Speaker 2: But China was hard, hard work.
Speaker 3: So Australia while the conditions were tricky and managing both
Speaker 3: drivers when we came up on traffic, things of that nature,
Speaker 3: just racing smart.
Speaker 2: But China we had to work hard.
Speaker 3: Saturday wasn't a great day in the sense of landing
Speaker 3: and have a great sprint race. Lewis Hamilton and the
Speaker 3: Ferrari checked out, so I think we went into Sunday
Speaker 3: thinking this is gonna be hard work and it definitely was.
Speaker 1: And George Russell came out and said McLaren have the
Speaker 1: can't to win every single race this season. I was
Speaker 1: struck by that comment. It's a strange comment for a
Speaker 1: rival driver to say, that's.
Speaker 2: Part of the head games and the politics that go on.
Speaker 3: That's a way to put pressure on the team kind
Speaker 3: of if you don't win all twenty four then you've
Speaker 3: done something wrong and it's a disaster. So that's nothing
Speaker 3: more than some of the stuff we spoke about earlier,
Speaker 3: where people put pressure on people in different ways to
Speaker 3: try and to stabilize it them. So coming out with
Speaker 3: what appears to be a nice compliment is actually a
Speaker 3: way to apply pressure.
Speaker 1: But nonetheless, you may be right.
Speaker 2: I don't actue've we won't win twenty four races this year.
Speaker 1: The performance the car is obviously extraordinary. There was a
Speaker 1: headline Athletic a couple of days ago McLaren's perfect F
Speaker 1: one problem dual title contenders and a fast car difficult
Speaker 1: to tame. But I guess the premise was, you're an
Speaker 1: amazing position. We have two drivers who you know who
Speaker 1: could win. What this idea that the car is fast
Speaker 1: but difficult to tame? What does that mean?
Speaker 3: You know, anytime you get a car on the limit,
Speaker 3: it's going to eventually do something that.
Speaker 2: You know exceeds its limit.
Speaker 3: To the perfect race car, you can still get it
Speaker 3: to be tricky to drive when you try and go
Speaker 3: eleven tenths. So I think the drivers you know, over
Speaker 3: over one lap to extract maximum performance out of the car,
Speaker 3: it can be a bit tricky, a bit on edge,
Speaker 3: but that's what race cars do and they're.
Speaker 2: On the limit.
Speaker 1: So this is this is another flavor of what you
Speaker 1: described earlier with the one key low on the correct
Speaker 1: You're always looking for these fine margins and if you
Speaker 1: get wrong, you can destabilize you. It can be too
Speaker 1: hard to drive, it can be and breach the regulation.
Speaker 1: So it's that constant. So that must be very anxiety
Speaker 1: And do you see it.
Speaker 2: Is it's a stressful, stressful being on pitwall.
Speaker 1: How do you deal with that?
Speaker 2: Just stay calm. It's nice to being on pitwall next
Speaker 2: to Andrea.
Speaker 3: He's very calm and not lett any emotion run in
Speaker 3: to your decision making process. Passion, I think is very important.
Speaker 3: I think there's a fine line between passion and emotion.
Speaker 3: But emotion gets you to make emotional decisions, which is
Speaker 3: not the most productive way to go racing.
Speaker 1: And how are you going to manage the challenge of
Speaker 1: having two such driver?
Speaker 2: Keep doing what we're doing. They get along great.
Speaker 3: I think everyone's encouraging all of us that we're going
Speaker 3: to have some drama ahead of us, so we very
Speaker 3: well might, but we haven't yet great communication with the drivers.
Speaker 3: They know the rules of the road, they're free to race.
Speaker 3: They just need to race each other respectfully. And I
Speaker 3: think everyone else is waiting for the bomb.
Speaker 2: To go off, but we're not. We're quite happy.
Speaker 3: And they have both drivers signed up long term, so
Speaker 3: they know they're going to be teammates for a long time.
Speaker 2: They get along really, really well.
Speaker 3: Of course they want to beat each other, but I
Speaker 3: think you can race fairly and squarely.
Speaker 1: Of course you're good friends Over at Red Bull have
Speaker 1: had another rookie starts this season. Is that something you
Speaker 1: keep a close eye only more focus internally? I mean,
Speaker 1: how much does how much time do you spend monitoring
Speaker 1: the vicissitudes of the competition?
Speaker 3: Decent amount, but at the end of the day, there's
Speaker 3: not much you can do about it. So it's more
Speaker 3: about observing and learning. But you can get obsessed with
Speaker 3: your competitors and then you're spending more time on them
Speaker 3: than yourselves.
Speaker 1: Being here, you can't help but think about legacy. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just part of this building. And I'm wondering, do
Speaker 1: you think about your legacy at McClaren what you would
Speaker 1: like it to be.
Speaker 3: No, No, I think there'll be a time and place
Speaker 3: for that, But right now I'm very head down and
Speaker 3: I feel like it's early early days.
Speaker 2: Ah So now, don't really think about that, but I'm
Speaker 2: sure there will at some point.
Speaker 1: But this season, the game is clear.
Speaker 2: One drivers and constructors. That's the that's the goal.
Speaker 1: Zich Brown, thank you, thank you very much. That's it
Speaker 1: for this week for tech Stuff. I'm as Voloshin. This
Speaker 1: episode was produced by Eliza Dennis and Adriana Tapier. It
Speaker 1: was executive produced by me, Karen Price and Kate Osborne
Speaker 1: for Caneidis Cote and Katria Novel for iHeart Podcasts. The
Speaker 1: engineer was Basil Oxtaby Murdoch wrote our theme song. Join
Speaker 1: us this Friday for tech Stuff's weekend tech Cara Price
Speaker 1: and I will catch you up on the headlines and
Speaker 1: chat with the Washington Posts Garrett da Vinc about the
Speaker 1: current landscape in AI. Please rate, review, and reach out
Speaker 1: to us at tech Stuff podcast at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: We look forward to hearing from you