inally going grand prix racing this weekend in Austria cannot come soon enough for McLaren. This is a team riding out the blows of the coronavirus, of losing and gaining a driver and making tough financial decisions, but one where spirits remain high. “We have all been in lockdown for so long, we want to go racing and we are ready to go racing,” says their chief executive, Zak Brown. “All the teams and drivers are in uncharted territory, so we are going to have to be on high alert. But we are raring to go.” The Woking-based Formula One team hope to continue their resurgence and sense that in emerging from their nadir of the past seven years, perhaps their very nature has changed. Last season McLaren got closer to returning to winning ways. This year the intent is to repeat their excellent fourth place of last year, to prove strength in depth as a cohesive unit. McLaren were teed up nicely for the new season when Covid-19 shut it down and new challenges had to be addressed. Ferrari’s swoop for Carlos Sainz meant they had to react fast and Daniel Ricciardo was secured from Renault to partner Lando Norris in 2021. That rapid response showed the F1 team have lost none of their ambition. “McLaren has always had race winners and world champions,” says Brown. “From Senna to Hamilton, to Häkkinen to Prost, the list goes on and on, and now Daniel and Lando will be the most exciting combination of two drivers on and off the track. We have a proven multi-grand-prix-winning driver capable today of winning the world championship and Lando Norris, who we believe is a future world champion.” The pandemic also precipitated some decisions that were harder to make. With the financial pinch being felt and looking towards the agreed budget caps set to be imposed in 2021, the team made 1,200 redundancies across the car-making and racing business. Around 70 job losses are expected from the race team, a figure anticipated given the expected budget cuts, but it will happen perhaps sooner than was planned. This week, with a £150m loan from the Bahrain National Bank secured, McLaren are still considering selling a minority share in the team to raise further funds. Brown is bullish that they will emerge in a far more robust position. Expectations, inevitably for a team with such an imposing history, are always high. This month it is the 50th anniversary of Bruce McLaren’s death. The team he created with only six people in 1966, that included his wife, survived and thrived to become a Formula One grandee. Brown has been in charge since 2017 and assumed direct control of the F1 team in 2018, taking over from Ron Dennis, who had steered the team to such prodigious success. That raised eyebrows as Brown, a former professional driver, made his name in business, founding the motor sport marketing company JMI. It took the 48-year-old Californian two years, he says, to arrest and reverse a lack of leadership, stability and change a somewhat toxic culture. “We are now working really well as a team,” he says. “People are motivated and have clarity on their roles and responsibilities. We don’t have politics in the team and it is coming together.” Altering the internal politics of the team was key. “It wasn’t any one person, it was the environment,” he adds. “People felt there would be retribution if they spoke up, a fear culture. Now if we make a mistake, we make a mistake as a team and say: ‘Let’s understand it, let’s fix it.’” Last season the changes paid off. Hiring two new drivers in Britain’s Norris and Spain’s Sainz made it seem as if it was a new chapter. Sainz made the podium in Brazil, the team’s first in five years, and they returned 24 finishes, 54 points clear of their nearest rival Renault. Norris epitomises the new-found ebullience at McLaren. The 20-year-old embraces his sport and social media with the joyous abandon of his generation and is entirely unafraid to go wheel to wheel with the world champion, Lewis Hamilton. This is the human element that Brown considers central to McLaren’s revival. “I am massively invested in this personally,” he says. “I have been in racing my entire life. There is nothing I want to do more than win.” The structural and cultural reconstruction at McLaren has surprised many and represents a significant break with the past. “I see comments now that we are a fun team and a likeable team,” adds Brown, as the spectre of Dennis turns ashen. “Even during our periods of dominance likeable was not a word you associated with McLaren. Feared, dominant, great, respectful, yes. But likeable? That is a positive attribute now at McLaren.” Dennis would have observed that being a winner is better than being liked, of course. Yet that target remains elusive. The spending gap to the big three is still unbridgeable, but this year some of Brown’s new appointments will enjoy their first full season with the team. They include Andreas Seidl as the team principal and James Key as the technical director. They are only the vanguard of what may be seen asNew McLaren. “Team members that were here when we were dominating say they have never enjoyed being at McLaren more than today,” says Brown. “The last five years have maybe been healthy for us. It brought back people’s energy to want to get back to the front. You come here after hours and weekends, people are still working. McLaren is now a lifestyle more than a job for so many people.”