F1 News

Brown believes the removal of politics within McLaren has helped team improve

Brown believes the removal of "politics within McLaren" has helped team improve

16-01-2020 12:44
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McLaren's 2019 F1 season was successful. For the first time in years, the Woking-based team made significant improvements in more or less every department. They climbed up to fourth and even had driver Carlos Sainz finish sixth in the F1 world championship. 

McLaren have welcomed new personnel into the team after CEO Zak Brown conducted a review of the company. He believes part of the improves are a direct result of removing the bad politics within the team structure. 

"Then [we] took the politics out of the team. I think when you have a lack of leadership and direction, then things can become political. So I think we’ve taken that out of the organisation and with that came a better-developed racecar. We got James Key onboard, Andrea Stella has stepped up. So it’s not even just about the new people that have come in, it’s been those people stepping up and being empowered, having clear mandates on what is required out of them. That’s kind of the leadership direction," Zak Brown is quoted by RaceFans.net.

Praising the drivers

Lando Norris and Sainz joined together to form a successful driver relationship. Such was the success, McLaren became the first team to fully retain and sign both drivers for the 2020 F1 season. Boss Brown goes on to highlight how well these drivers have performed over the year and how the momentum gained must be continued as they move forward. 

"Then enter two new exciting, very fast drivers that work really well together. All those things and many more that are just starting to kind of come together and create momentum. And I think this is, as all business is, it’s a momentum game.  If you look at Mercedes, look at when Red Bull came in, we needed to kind of reverse this backwards momentum to forward momentum. And now we just need to build on it," Brown added.