For McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown, success can be measured in milliseconds

Listen to the episode or read the transcript below.

Transcript:

Zak Brown: I find so many similarities between being a racing driver and a CEO. Engineers are telling you what you need to do. You need to have a tremendous amount of trust.

Diane Brady: Hi, everyone. Welcome to LeadershipNext. The podcast about the people…

Kristin Stoller: …and trends…

Brady: …that are shaping the future of business. I’m Diane Brady.

Stoller: And I’m Kristin Stoller.

Brady: This week, Kristin, we have a treat for me, the Formula 1 fan. Zak Brown, CEO of McLaren Racing.

Stoller: Yes, Zak has been on this incredible turnaround story. I mean, they won last year for the first time in 26 years.

Brady: And they’ve just won again, twice in a row. Now, we spoke to Zak before they secured their second—it’s called the Formula 1 Constructors’ Championships title, which is incredible, but he knew it was coming. They’ve had a banner year, and this is not only the team to watch, but they have incredible personalities. And Zak himself, I think, is somebody who seemed to be a great leader. So he just came out with a book as well.

Stoller: He did, it is Seven Tenths of a Second, which Diane you learned what that is, please share.

Brady: It’s the difference, essentially, between success and failure.

Stoller: And that’s, I think, how he leads his teams. He’s one of the rare U.S. CEOs. He came in, said the culture at McLaren Racing was just very toxic. Instituted a “no blame” culture, which I think is a really good call. And he has such interesting stories.

Brady: He’s got Hollywood stories. He’s got stories about managing these personalities, and he’s got a lot of thoughts about the future of the sport itself, which I think is fascinating.

Stoller: And I’ve got to toss in my little favorite spoiler, which is that before we did this interview, our executive producer on the video team, Lydia Randall, told us to ask about his tattoos, and I think everyone should stay tuned. See if we get a tattoo, see if he got another tattoo, we’ll see.

Brady: And some of those good celeb stories. There’s lots more to come. We’ll be right back after the break.

Brady: As technology and AI continue to reshape industries, hiring for technical skills remains important. But fostering creativity, curiosity, and empathy are also essential for organizations to remain competitive and resilient. We’re here with Jason Girzadas, the CEO of Deloitte US and the sponsor of this podcast. Jason, always good to see you. Thanks for joining us.

Jason Girzadas: Thank you for having me, Diane.

Brady: So Jason, how can organizations balance the development of human skills and technical skills to drive innovation?

Girzadas: It is a tech-driven world, but still human skills matter. And I think it comes down to being intentional for leading organizations to still invest and have very directed strategies around building human skills. Curiosity, imagination, how-to-team. These are still critical ingredients to creating differentiation and competitive advantage. You know, at Deloitte, we’ve committed to building those skills and have, over time, evolved our programming.

Stoller: Jason could you say, at Deloitte, what role does apprenticeship play in fostering a culture of continuous learning and development?

Girzadas: It’s interesting. There was some time when people thought that apprenticeship and mentorship could maybe be digitized or entirely done remotely. And I think what we’ve learned is that that’s not the case. That apprenticeship and mentorship need to continue to be a formal part of our culture, a part of our learning environment.

Stoller: Absolutely. Well, great insights, Jason. Thank you so much for sharing them with us.

Brady: Well, Zak, thank you so much for joining us.

Brown: My pleasure to be here.

Stoller: Yes, I’m gonna dive right in. So when you took over at McLaren, the team was underperforming, both financially and on the track. What would you say was the single riskiest decision that you made that absolutely could have failed, that you think was responsible for the turnaround?

Brown: Oh, good question. I mean, ultimately, people. So I guess I could have picked the wrong people.

Stoller: It seems like you didn’t.

Brown: But now I got the right people. I got the right people. I’ve got great people at McLaren. I think, yeah, as you mentioned, when I started, we were at the back of the pack. We were losing tons of money, and employee morale was down. Other than that, everything was great, but what we did have was a great brand, and even though it was totally underperforming, it’s a brand that’s like the New York Yankees, or pick a sport where people are still attracted to the historic nature of the team. So I knew I had that to work with, and I also knew we had a lot of great people that were just underperforming as a team. So I changed all my leadership team, kind of one a time. Some were internal promotions. Some were some people I’d worked with before. Others were strangers that we had hunted and got the right mix of people that push each other very hard, very transparently, very collaborative, but very challenging. There’s no kind of “yes people” on the team and ultimately the momentum reversed, got everyone working well together, being great in their respective lines of business. And now we’re kind of firing on all cylinders, to use a racing pun.

Stoller: There you go. As many racing puns as we can get into this. Let’s do it.

Brady: You know, having written books myself, I feel it’s important to promote every book and promote reading. So Seven Tenths of a Second, the book that you’ve just written that’s coming out soon. Talk a little bit about why, now, you wanted to write a book, what that experience was like.

Brown: I’m not sure I can answer that question, because I’m not sure why I did it. No, I was approached, so it wasn’t something that I seeked out. But I thought, actually, we’ve got some pretty cool stories over the years that I think should be hopefully entertaining for people to read, and all about leadership. You know, starting off at a very young age at school to where we are today, everything I’ve kind of learned

Brady: Valley boy—I think there’s so much, and we’ll get into it. You’ve got some great people, from Gene Simmons to Jackie Stewart, Bernie Ecclestone, lots of great names in there. But one thing that I wanted to focus on a little bit, is, you’ve had a storied racing career, but you’re also one of the first Americans to take a leadership role in Formula 1. Can you give me a sense—what was it like? Because it’s a brand that’s still relatively new to the U.S. We’ve got a Netflix series. But what was it like when you first got in there as an American? Is it culturally quite different?

Brown: It definitely was, but that was more when I was racing. You know, now I’ve been in Europe and England for so long, but when I first moved over, you know, everyone wants to kind of beat each other, it’s a pretty nasty environment. It’s not very welcoming. And then if you’re an American, you’re definitely on the outside looking in. So that was very tough and, as you know from the book, Richard Dean, a Brit, kind of took me under his wing. And I think without Richard supporting me, I would have kind of never stayed in England. So he kind of taught me the ropes of racing and introduced me to everyone. And it was, it was difficult. Now I’m definitely kind of part of the furniture, but I do kind of feel like I represent America in F1 to a certain extent, and I like that, because I’m obviously proud of my roots, and it’s such a cool sport, and because it’s a global sport, it’s got a very—the Italians and the Brits and the French and so to make sure America is represented, because it’s not from a driver point of view, and I’m the only American team boss to my knowledge, thinking out loud as I say that, but that’s the case, so I think it’s kind of cool to kind of help represent America in Formula 1.

Stoller: How do you think you draw in that American audience that, like Diane said, is used to NASCAR. How do you adapt what you do?

Brown: I think sports have come a long way. I think about the first time I was introduced to Formula 1 was 1981 at the Long Beach Grand Prix. I met my first racing driver, Eddie Cheever, who was an American Formula 1 driver. I remember the cars. I just remember the whole experience, and that has stuck with me to this day. I remember what grandstand I was in, and so that impact that it’s left on me is the impact that I hope that myself and our drivers and McLaren leave on the other 10 year old Zak Browns that might be coming to a Formula 1 race for the first time and getting their experience. And I think what happened when Liberty acquired the sport, we’re a very exclusive sport, “look, don’t touch,” and Liberty brought a new way of thinking. And so when Netflix came out, two of the top teams didn’t participate year one because we don’t show anyone behind the scenes what’s going on, and that kind of bit them, because all their sponsors and fans are like, What are you doing? This thing’s the world’s greatest show. Why aren’t you in it? It was politics and money and all sorts of stuff. That was kind of old school thinking. And so I think Netflix and Liberty turned our sport from an exclusive sport to an inclusive sport. It’s always been an awesome sport, I’ve loved it forever, but people didn’t necessarily understand or they couldn’t feel engaged with it. And now, in this modern-day era where everything used to be about awareness, but now it’s all about engagement, I think we figured out how to let people in the tent and how to engage with the sport. Some want to engage with the drivers. Some want to engage with the team, some of the technology, some of the politics. So there’s so many different ways to enjoy Formula 1. And we’re a very fan-first racing team. We’re all about our fans, starting with going back to our iconic Papaya, that’s because that’s what the fans said they wanted. And I remember one of the old school, if you’d like, people saying to me, we only did that because that’s what the fans want. And I was like, that’s kind of a trick question. That’s exactly why we did it, what the fans want. And we’re in the sport and entertainment business, and that’s what our fans want, so let’s give our fans what they want and the sports just totally evolved from there.

Brady: You know, one of the things we have a lot of leaders come in and talk about is the need for servant leadership, followership. The adrenaline, both of how you lead, the nature of the sport—I mean, you’ve got drivers that compete with each other, not just for the team. How important is that sort of adrenaline, aggression, speed as a way of managing, as a way of getting things done?

Brown: I think it’s critical to what we do.

Brady: We don’t talk about it that much for people in leadership roles.

Brown: Yeah, there’s obviously the racing car, and we’re constantly developing the racing car, but we’re fighting for talent. We’re fighting for drivers, we’re fighting for engineers, we’re fighting for sponsors, we’re fighting for fans. Everything’s a competition in Formula 1. And part of winning is getting there first, whether that’s on the track or off the track. And so I think that competitive nature—I love doing deals and the competition. And our competition is amazing. You know, as I say, the worst team in Formula 1 is really good. So the competition bar is very high. There’s only 10 teams, soon to be 11 teams. And that competition, I hate to lose. We hate to lose, and so that keeps us very motivated.

Stoller: So I think you’re dealing with a lot of big personalities, day in and day out, not just your team, the people you hired, but also the drivers. And Diane hinted, I think that dynamic between the drivers is so interesting, where they’re both teammates and competitors. How do you, as a boss, manage that?

Brady: Insights on Oscar and Lando?

Brown: Yeah. So I think we’re very fortunate to have Lando and Oscar. Not only are they two of the fastest racing drivers in the world, they’re two of the nicest guys in the world, but they’re also killers when they put their helmet on. So, total transparency, treating them equally, fairly, giving them equal opportunity to race each other. And most of the time, competitors on the same team—it ends up in tears. We’ve got seven races to go. So far, so  good, but we’re on top of it. It’s the elephant in the room. We talk about it. We don’t shy away from it. People say, are you nervous? No, it’s a challenge, but it’s actually a fun challenge, and we’re determined to get it right. And so far, you know, they’ve had some on track incidents, but they put their hand up, you know, hey, I got it wrong, or this happened. And so, you know, we want to put them in a position where hopefully we can get the Constructors’ wrapped up here shortly. We’re in a pretty good spot, but we just want to give them an equal opportunity and let the best driver win. I think if you look at some of the other drivers on the grid, as awesome as they may be, they maybe wouldn’t have that same chemistry with the team. So when we’re selecting our drivers and our people…

Brady: …you do a chemistry test?

Brown: 100%

Brady: Well, speaking of Hollywood, I’d be remiss not to mention one of my favorite people to interview, which is Gene Simmons, who is a friend of yours. Okay, so Kiss. What have you learned from Gene Simmons? I know your dad was a musician, but give me a little bit of lessons from him.

Brown: He’s unbelievable with fans. I mean, he’s a very distinctive individual, but I’ve spent a good amount of time with him, and he’s all about brand. If you think about how long that brand has been going—he’s all about licensing, marketing, you know, their image. They have a certain image. And he’s extremely warm to people. When you walk through an airport with him, you can tell when someone recognizes him. He’ll go up to them. He kind of sends off an aura of, I’m very approachable. I’ve never seen him be rude to anyone.

Brady: Very worthy of Kennedy Center Honors. I was kind of pleased when I saw that.

Brown: And what’s interesting is that people that don’t know him might have a certain image of him, but he’s literally a rock star. So there is that,  I got to kind of be a rock star, but he’s an unbelievable business person. One of the things he said to me was, never show up late to a meeting. So if you have a meeting with him, he’s always five minutes early. He speaks seven different languages. He is very intelligent. He knows exactly what he’s doing, and when he kind of gets into the shock and awe, that’s very deliberate. And he’s a rock star, and he can do things that some of us can’t do, because that’s part of his brand and image. So I’ve got a lot of time for him. He’s great with kids. Loves his racing. And he keeps things simple, he stays on brand and message and repeat, repeat, repeat, and yeah, he’s an interesting guy.

Stoller: Well, speaking of behind the scenes stories, you had teased when we first started, some of these exciting stories that are in your book. What is your favorite one, or one you want to share with us that you think is super unusual?

Brown: Definitely a handful of them. Probably my favorite one is Mickey Mantle. You know, I’m a huge baseball guy. I got that from my mom. My mom is from Brooklyn, and a big Yankees fan, and I wanted to be a baseball player before racing. But in order to be on the high school baseball team, you kind of need to go to high school. So that kind of killed the baseball player, but that was my first love, and kind of, actually, still is. I went to the Yankee game last night.

Stoller: You’ve got a Mets fan over here, but I will forgive you for saying that.

Brown: I’m actually a Cardinals guy.

Stoller: Oh, okay.

Brown: And so I read in the TV Guide, that’s how long ago that was, that Mickey Mantle played golf at Preston Trails Country Club in Texas. So I just started calling Preston Trails Country Club. I’m 12,13 years old. I know nothing about golf. I have no appreciation for how grumpy you would be if you were called off of it. Two weeks go by and finally they go, hold on. Oh my god, I’m gonna talk to Mickey Mantle. Takes about 15 minutes, they called him off the golf course. They must have thought it was his son or someone, based on the pitch of my voice. Picks up the phone, it’s Mickey Mantle, and he chewed me out like there was no tomorrow, and hung up the phone. So I go in my room and I’m crying my eyes out. My mom comes in, I tell her the story. She disappears for 30 minutes, comes back in and says, pack your bags, we’re going to Dallas tomorrow to hang out with Mickey Mantle. She called him back, explained to him…

Brady: Said, you’re a jerk, maybe?

Brown: Yeah, I don’t know exactly what she said, but it was probably along those lines. He thought it was a prank call. He said, bring your kid here, I’ll spend half a day with him. Which was a really cool story.

Brady: There’s a life lesson in that. We’re talking about Netflix shows, and you get a lot of fandom now that’s increased. Do you want to glean anything from that?

Brown; Yeah, it was young, well-intentioned stalking. It probably was in the stalking category, I haven’t really thought about it that way. I viewed it more as the start of my sales career—find out some piece of data and figure out how to get in there.

Brady: You do mention, I think it’s something that you mentioned, about almost—you don’t have to go to get an MBA to do what you do. There’s this school of life. There’s experience. I am curious if you think there’s just a formative experience as well you’ve had as a leader. And we don’t have to go back to when you were a kid, I think you’ve got lots of stories—you know, Jackie Stewart comes to mind, I’m Scottish, 10 points for him. What are some of the other experiences you think that have shaped you that are lessons you now want to convey to the next crop coming up?

Brown: Probably all of the mistakes.

Brady: Give us one of your biggest.

Brown: I’ve made a lot of mistakes over the years. I used to be terrified of making that difficult phone call. But what I figured out early on is you’re gonna have to make it eventually, and the longer you wait, the bigger the fire.

Brady: You’re fired, kind of thing?

Brown: No, I’ve never been fired. Oh, no, that’s not true. I’ve got…

Brady: No, but telling other people they’re fired.

Brown: My first employee, I was kind of tormented for a week in my own mind. Having difficult conversations. You know, I had a sponsor, which I wrote about. It was a client, and it was non-exclusive, and I landed a bigger deal with a competitor, which was totally cool, but I didn’t want to make the phone call and give him a heads up, and I kind of hoped they just maybe won’t find out. And it took them about two minutes, because I was like, Oh yeah, competitors follow competitors’ press announcements, and the CMO, rightfully so, lit me up. And he was spot on. He’s like, You didn’t call me because these guys are probably spending more money with you, and you were too chicken. And it was like, yeah, that’s pretty much exactly what happened. So you’ve got to just—if you’ve got to have a difficult conversation, just be real, be honest, pick up the phone, have the difficult conversation. Because the fire doesn’t put itself out, and the fire just gets bigger. So, I think—you know, who likes to have difficult conversations? But I think as you mature as a business person, you realize, hey, that’s part of business, and people are actually respectful of picking up the phone and going, Hey, you may not love what I’m about ready to tell you, but… and then at least people go, You know what? They shot me straight. So I think hiding early on from difficult conversations, because no one likes to have them, but you need to have them.

Stoller: Well, speaking of difficult conversations, you’ve talked before about how you instituted this no blame culture, which I think is really great, because that’s a trap a lot of people fall into. But what do you do when you have someone who is underperforming, be it a driver, a team member…

Brown: …blame….

Stoller: What’s your threshold for making that decision?

Brown: So I always say around the factory, mistakes are okay, just don’t make the same one twice. So everyone kind of gets a free pass. You know, as long as it was an honest mistake, they were trying. You know, I’ve made 1,000 mistakes, and I’ve learned from all of those. So I’m okay with mistakes, just learn from them. So don’t make stupid mistakes, you know, don’t hide from things. Then, you know, put your hand up. We all get things wrong. And I remember when we started to make progress on that at McLaren, this would have been five, six years ago. You bring different rear wings and configurations to the race track, and this was in the Russia race, and we brought the wrong rear wing, and someone put their hand up on Friday, and we were terrible on Friday, and went, I think we brought the wrong rear wing. And we got the right rear wing there on Saturday, and we went on and I think we qualified seventh, finished fifth. It was a good race. I think the older culture, and I don’t mean that from an age standpoint, but—let’s just not raise our hand. We’ll all kind of know, and we’ll kind of blame everyone else, and we’ll figure it out on Monday. But the fact that someone put up their hand gave us a chance to fix it, and it was the difference between having a terrible weekend and a good weekend. And so I applaud that. Now, if you bring the wrong wing again… okay, well, what’s going on here? So I think that’s about—and then mentoring people, understanding when a mistake happens, why did it happen? Niki Lauda, three time world champion, I remember when he won one of his big awards, he said, I learned way more from losing than I did winning. So losing is okay, making mistakes is okay. Just learn from it, because it makes you smarter. When we won…

Brady: Zak Brown says losing is okay. I’m just kidding.

Brown: Yeah, I don’t like it, but it does happen. But I remember, you know, Spain this year, we’ve had a lot of one twos this year, and in our debrief, we start with, what could we have done better? So even though we finished first and second, we didn’t go, it was a perfect weekend. Because it wasn’t. There were seven, eight items in there that could have gone wrong. So that’s where we start. And in racing, probably in life, there’s no such thing as the perfect race car, the perfect lap, the perfect weekend, but you’re chasing perfection. So as long as you can get everyone going, God, they always seem to be critical. We just finished first and second, and we’re starting this meeting talking about the seven things we did wrong. Well, don’t take it personally. We’re just trying to improve. So if you can get everyone in that mindset, then you’re constantly driving forward.

Brady: Now I know, obviously, technology can always improve, but it’s such a big component of the sport, and I’m sure you’re always looking at what the competitors are doing in terms of what comes forward. Are there particular opportunities? Because I often wonder, at what point do you max out, which probably you never do, but what the next iteration of car will be? Is it AI? Is AI making a big difference? Is it the materials? What do you watch for?

Brown: It’s kind of all of the above. You know, in our sport, 2% separates the best from the worst. So we’re working on the smallest marginal gain. So it’s very rarely that—and it’s a little bit there, a little bit there, a little bit there. So we’re always trying. As soon as something’s done, you can always improve on it. You can make it lighter, more durable, faster, more downforce, whatever the case may be. So sometimes you strike gold and you develop. Other times you get stuck. And it doesn’t mean that you’ve perfected it, and that’s why you can’t make it better. You’re just you’ve done a really good job, but you can always make it a little bit better. And so we’re in the business of milliseconds. It’s amazing the amount of work we put into…

Brady: That’s the name of your book, right?

Brown: Well, that’s Seven Tenths of a Second. We’re talking milliseconds, that’s forever. And well, where that comes from, and it’s amazing, is 24 races last year, we won the Constructors’ Championships, the first time in 26 years, and had the last pit stop in seven tenths of a second slower than Carlos Sainz in the Ferrari would have been in our DRS. It’s pretty hard to defend against DRS. Probably would have passed Lando, whether Lando would have gotten back or not, we’ll never know, because, fortunately, we don’t need to find out. But after 24 races and hundreds of millions of dollars spent, and 1300, 1400 people working on race cars, it came down to a two second pit stop. Had it been a 2.7 second pit stop, Carlos is in our DRS when Lando comes out of the pits, and maybe we don’t win the championship, because had we not won the race, we would have lost the championship. So it’s amazing how seven tenths… I would not want to be in the pit lane. I would not want to be in that race car.

Stoller: I’m curious about your mindset about where to invest, because, you know, there’s the current cost cap. So I’m curious about whether, you know—do you have this choice of investing in race car performance versus investment in the brand, fan engagement, Netflix series, all these other things you have going on? Other series besides F1? How do you balance that? And has the balance shifted over time?

Brown: It has. In the cost cap, certain items are not in. So things like brand and marketing. So it’s intended to be more pure sporting, to balance the playing field, which, last year there were seven different winners, multiple races, four different teams. That’s kind of unheard of. So the cost cap has definitely worked. So within the cost cap, we have to figure out where best to spend efficiently. Because before, when there wasn’t a cost cap, you could spend your way out of problems. Now, if you’re going to develop four front wings, you don’t want to develop five to get to four. You want to do four, because that fifth one is a waste of money. In the good old days, you develop 10 front wings to find the four that you wanted, and you just do the other six away. But everything drives performance on the race car. So you know, we have to have great fans. So that’s our brand team, because without fans, there’s no McLaren Formula 1. Then you got your commercial team that needs to monetize the fans with your sponsors. Without sponsors, we can’t afford to go racing. It’s all about culture and people, so you have to have an awesome HR department. Now you’ve got to work with your finance department on how you’re going to spend the resources that you have, and then you have the racing team itself. So when you kind of look at this circle of life inside McLaren, you have to be firing on all cylinders, because if you don’t have a fan base, you’re not going to find sponsors, which means you’re not going to be able to pay for drivers, etc, etc. So everyone in our organization understands that they’re putting performance on the race car, whether they’re directly putting performance on the race car or indirectly putting performance on the race car.

Brady: You know, I want to just capture what it’s like being behind the wheel, because you’ve had—first of all, I’m sure you miss it…

Brown: …I do miss it…

Brady: But what was it like, even that moment when you got into the car, and just give us some sense of just the rush, because there aren’t many sports like F1 that are just so visceral.

Brown: Everything’s happening very quickly, so it teaches you decision making. I find so many similarities between being a racing driver and a CEO. So if you think about what a racing driver does, it’s a lot of instinct, it’s a lot of data, it’s a lot of trust in your engineers. It’s being a great listener. It’s being a great communicator. Because there’s times you’ve got to tell your engineers what you need, and then there’s a lot of times the engineers are telling you what you need to do. You need to have a tremendous amount of trust. It’s kind of life or death in the race car. So you need to trust everyone around your team. You need to understand risk versus reward. So all of those things I just mentioned that apply to a racing driver also apply to being a CEO. Jackie Stewart, one of the things he always said to me is he loved hiring people out of the military for his office. And he said, I like people in the military because they know how to take orders, and they know how to give orders. And I very much as a leader, there’s time to lead, but also good leaders follow. And I view myself that I work for the racing team, the racing team doesn’t work for me. So my job is to empower people, give them the tools, the resources, the guidance that they need. But the minute I’m designing a race car, we’re going to be in trouble.

Stoller: Well, speaking of risks, as a leader, I have heard that you went so far to have tattoos on your body…tell me about  this, and will you get a tattoo of Leadership Next?

Brown: I am done with tattoos. So the story behind the tattoos were Daniel Ricciardo had quite a few tattoos, and sky had a

Brady: They’re not visible for those listening.

Brown: Daniel won us our, my first race, our first race in quite some time. I thought, all right, we all kind of don’t want to be buried with something that’s like, I regret the ex girlfriend or whatever the case may be. And I was like, No, I’m never going to not want to remember my first race. So I did that. And then when Lando won his first race, I had Max and McGuire at each race. One was Miami, one was Monza. So I’ve kind of turned what was a Daniel tattoo into a father-son thing.

Brady: Just like hieroglyphics, you could end up with a lot of tattoos.

Brown: Yeah, no, I’m done, because they do hurt. I remember when I went in and I said to the tattoo artist, I was like, does it hurt? And she was like, Oh, yeah. And I was like, What’s it feel like?It feels like a cat clawing you. And I was like…

Stoller: That seems not that bad, though.

Brown: Well, I’m terrified of needles, but actually it’s all mental. I can’t even do blood drives. Needles freak me out.

Brady: I love that. Listen, I do want to ask, you get asked a lot of questions, and there’s a lot of attention spotlight on this sport. What questions do you think you don’t get asked enough, or you wish you were asked more often? Just even just the genesis of this book. I mean, tell me more about what you think is under-appreciated about the sport?

Brown: I think, and it kind of is what it is—we’ve got awesome fans. We have some less awesome fans, and I appreciate how passionate everyone is about the sport, but the sport is so complicated, and there’s so much data, and there’s so much I wish we could talk about, but maybe a frustrating thing, if you’d like, is when people make comments and they’re really uninformed. And I don’t mind the booing and cheering, but we’ve all seen on social media how crazy some people get. And you sit there and you go, that’s a father or a son or a mother or a daughter. And like, I can’t, but, I mean, you should see, yeah, some of the stuff that you know we all get that’s insane. I’d love to be able to respond, but you’re never going to win that conversation. But I wish we could take more time and explain, here’s what happened and why. But there’s just not enough hours in the day, and then there’s going to be people that don’t get it, don’t want to get it, but that would be nice, if we could explain, here’s why we made that decision, and, oh, by the way, we do get it wrong. So no, we’ve never put up our hand and said we’ve done it perfectly, but we are human, and we are trying, and we’re great people towards our drivers and our team and we’ve got a strong—a lot of people are very appreciative of us letting our two drivers race. A lot of teams wouldn’t do that. And so that would be something I wish that we could talk about a little bit more, but I think that would take all day.

Stoller: Yeah, I wish we had all day too.

Brady: I do too, but just very quick. What brings you the most joy? Let’s end on an up note, and you cannot say winning.

Brown: It’s the team atmosphere which, whether we’re winning or losing, the culture that everyone has created at McLaren is awesome. So when we have a bad weekend, like we did in Baku, we deal with it. We definitely feel it. But, you know, Andrea, our team principal, we have a phrase, don’t eat the poison biscuits. Because we’re all trying to do politics with other teams and, you know, and so the bond that we have in our racing team, that feels really special.

Brady: Thanks for joining us.

Brown: Thank you for having me.

Brady:LeadershipNext is produced and edited by Hélène Estèves.

Stoller: Our executive producer is Lydia Randall.

Brady: Our head of video is Adam Banicki.

Stoller: Our theme is by Jason Snell.

Leadership Next episodes are produced by Fortune‘s editorial team. The views and opinions expressed by podcasters and guests are solely their own and do not reflect the opinions of Deloitte or its personnel. Nor does Deloitte advocate or endorse any individuals or entities featured on the episodes.