Zak Brown on McLaren's culture: “I felt we were Darth Vader”

McLaren CEO got candid at ABX Miami about the team's cultural transformation

At the Autosport Business Exchange in Miami on Friday — part of race week at the Formula 1 Crypto.com Miami Grand Prix — McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown sat down with Formula 1 Correspondent and Presenter Lawrence Barretto for an intimate on-stage conversation that covered a lot of ground. But it was one analogy that cut through everything else.

"Our factory is amazing, it kind of looks like Star Wars. I felt we were Darth Vader,” Brown told Barretto, describing McLaren's culture in its earlier years. “We were dark, we weren't very warm, and it was like, let's go over to the Luke Skywalker side — being warm, and welcome, and inclusive."

It's a disarmingly candid admission from the CEO of one of Formula 1's most storied teams, and one that says more than it might seem at first. For years, McLaren's identity was built around clinical excellence. The factory, the culture, the brand, all of it projected precision and dominance over warmth.

Zak Brown, McLaren 2018

Photo by: Sutton Images

Brown is describing a team that, by his own admission, made people feel like outsiders. In a sport that has historically struggled with accessibility, diversity, and representation, calling yourself Darth Vader feels a bit like an accountability moment. Though Brown did detail how McLaren is working to change that.

McLaren is the only team on the Formula 1 grid fielding two entries in F1 Academy, the sport's all-women single-seater series. Ella Lloyd races under the McLaren F1 Academy entry operated by Rodin Motorsport, while Ella Stevens pilots the McLaren Oxagon F1 Academy entry, also run by Rodin Motorsport. Both are members of the McLaren Driver Development Program. Brown joked on stage that the coincidence wasn't lost on him.

“All our drivers happen to be named Ella — not necessarily by design!,” he said.

The F1 Academy commitment is the most visible expression of a broader strategy. Brown walked through the evolution of McLaren's scholar program, which started as 60 Scholars — launched to mark the team's 60th birthday — taking 60 women between the ages of 18 and 23 through a development program. That initiative has since grown into a partnership with Cisco and Google, rebranded as Next, with a mandate that stretches beyond drivers into engineering, marketing, and business.

Brown said McLaren aims to have 40% of its workforce come from underrepresented groups by the end of the decade. Not long ago, he said, that figure sat at around 10%.

"Drivers, engineers, marketers — letting people know that everyone is welcome at McLaren,” Brown said. “Of course, the racing drivers are the most famous aspect of that, but we're open doors for everyone."