As McLaren Racing aims for another Formula 1 Drivers’ World Championship title in 2025 – Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri engage in a season-long duel ahead of the Las Vegas Grand Prix – CEO Zak Brown is pulling back the curtain on his own rise to the top of global motorsport. His new autobiography, Seven tenths of a secondExplores the pressure to make decisions, the business acumen and the relentless competitive drive that helped revitalize one of racing’s most storied teams.
Brown’s career trajectory is as unconventional as it is impressive. Instead of reaching the top echelon as a driver, he rose through the ranks using his marketing instincts and unwavering love of racing. After joining McLaren in 2016 as managing director of the McLaren Technology Group, he was later appointed CEO of McLaren Racing, where he helped transform the team from a dormant powerhouse into a modern Formula 1 juggernaut.
His leadership culminated in back-to-back constructors’ championships in 2024 and 2025, powered by the balanced duo of Norris and Piastri, one of the strongest driver duos in the sport.
“The name of the book, Seven Tenths, is coming back to Abu Dhabi in 2024,” Brown tells our Daily Sparkz Talks podcast. “It took us all year, 1,400 people, lots of Grands Prix, you can do all this preparation, and yet it came down to our final pit stop. Had we been seven tenths of a second slower, Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz would have come into our DRS line and probably overtaken us and cost us the championship. I’d like to think Lando would have brought him back, but I’m glad we didn’t have to find out!”
Moments like this pit stop – the razor-thin boundaries between triumph and defeat – form the backbone of Brown’s story: “I’ve been born for 53 years, been at McLaren for nine years, and it all came down to seven tenths of a second. And that’s what it really means.” everything Matters – in business and in life. And it could be a big decision, a small decision, who would have thought after all these decisions, all these Grands Prix, all these pit stops that seven tenths of a second would be the difference between victory and defeat in the world championship.”
This philosophy, he explains, guides his leadership: energy, focus and urgency: “Fortunately, and I like to think I’ve always been someone who has had a lot of energy, I tell people to do everything as best they can – go, go, go! Because it might only come down to seven-tenths of a second.”
Brown’s knack for closing deals began long before he came to McLaren. Early in his racing career, he sought sponsorship only to be left behind. When his driving ambitions ended, he channeled his commercial creativity into building Just Marketing International, a pioneering motorsport-focused agency that revolutionized sponsorship acquisition worldwide. This success laid the foundation for his role in transforming McLaren into a championship-winning force in Formula One’s modern era.
But for all the glamor of Formula 1 – the global travel, the luxury markets the sport touches and the world’s most advanced high-performance machinery – Brown’s approach remains disarmingly grounded. He insists that perfection is an illusion.
“You can demand perfection, but you can never get perfection, right?” Brown explains. “Once the new front wing is out, it might be better than the old one, but you can still improve it, right? So you’re constantly striving for perfection. It’s like that Wile E. Coyote cartoon where he has a carrot in front of him and he just keeps chasing it, but you can’t get any closer to it.”
Instead, Brown attributes McLaren’s resurgence to culture, clarity and collaboration – principles that translate beyond the paddock to any high-stakes business environment: “I think it’s all teamwork. It’s transparency. It’s tough love, it’s fairness and the recognition that we’re not going to get it perfect.”
For Daily Sparkz readers, Brown’s story is not only a behind-the-scenes look at the luxury world’s most technologically advanced sport, but also a study in leadership at the highest level. As Zak himself says, this is a business book and not just another racing tome.
Seven tenths of a second offers rare insights from one of motorsport’s most influential figures and shows how a mix of passion, precision, innovation and relentless drive helped restore McLaren to its place among the elite.
Images: McLaren Racing
