Drew Houston + Zak Brown | @McLaren F1 Team | Technology and Insights to Drive Performance
I thought we'd start at the very beginning. How did you end up in racing in the world of motorsports to begin with? Ooh, it's a long story. I'll try and make it short. Originally from Los Angeles and went to my first Grand Prix in 1981 as a ten -year -old and was fascinated by the cars, the sound. It's Probably the most ten year olds would be. And at that point I fell in love with motor racing. Never had
any idea I was going to get into the sport. Fast forward a little bit. Got on Wheel of Fortune teen week. Won a bunch of his and her watches. Sold them at a pawn shop and then went and bought a goat cart. So that was the start of the racing career. I raced professionally from '91 to 2000. And during that time I had to do all my own sponsorships. So I learned how to work with companies on how they
can use motor racing to build their business that then turned into a great business, sold it, and then got the opportunity to either join Formula One, the sanctioning body, or McLaren, and McLaren's always been my favorite team. So I jumped on board at the end of 2016, and here we are eight seasons later, leading the world championship. - And then - Going back to when you were, or just like as a kid, was it, was it Wheel of Fortune, or was there a specific moment when you knew that racing would be more than just a hobby? - It was 1987, 'cause in high school, one of my good buddies, family, was in racing. So we went to the 1987 Long Beach Grand
Prix. I've been following racing since. I've met Mario Andretti, one of my And I asked him, how do you get started in racing? And he said, go carts. And there happened to be an ad in there. So when I sold the watches, I went and went to
the cart racing school and then bought a cart. So it was that moment onwards that I thought I wanted to try and be a Formula One driver and race about everything around the world, but Formula One cars. So now I feel like I've got the second best job in the world, which is getting on the podium, but not in a race suit. And And having had a career behind the wheel yourself, how does that shape the way you run the team today and then working with drivers like Lando and Oscar? When you're racing cars, you're kind of the CEO of the racing team and what I mean by that is as a racing driver, you need to learn how to have a great team around you. You need to learn how to be a great communicator. Here's what I need. A great
listener. When the engineers are telling you what you need to be doing. Tremendous amount of trust and while all the drivers get the majority of the glory, there's a thousand people that are ultimately putting this race car on the track. And then of course, as you know, as being a CEO, founder, risk versus reward. You gotta take some risk, but it better be with the reward and it better not be a risk that can kind of put you out of business, so to speak. So I found there to be a lot of
similarities. And then working with the drivers, it's a highly emotional game, as all sports are. And so understanding the drivers in the kind of the heat of the battle, how to talk to them, when to talk to them, what to say, when to put your arm around them, when to kick them. And kind of knowing when's the right time. So
I think having once raced helps me understand what a great racing team looks like because I drove for some great racing teams, and I drove for some not so great racing teams so I also know what bad looks like. And then it's coming from motorsport, but then you also did the stint and a lot of experience in business and marketing. How does that experience influence how you run the team? Very much take a kind of a business approach to all aspects of the team. Of course, having these wonderful partners on our racing car, such as Dropbox. We can't go racing without you, so that's a part of the business I really enjoy. I'm a little bit less tech than the other team bosses, from like an aero standpoint. I was never very good at math and science, and so the magic they work,
I can't contribute much there, but how to run the business. And I feel my job is I work for the racing team, that'll work for me. So my job is to get them what they need to excel at their job, whether that's resources or focus or other talent. So I kind of feel like I work very much for the team and my job is to get them what they need so they can be the best at what they do. And then you've been really successful at building these long -term partnerships. And so what's the key these relationships because, you know, you're racing on the grid, but then also the team's off the grid for sponsors and partners. So what's what's the secret?
I think long -term thinking is number one. You know, I've been around a lot of partnerships over the years and short -term wins are rarely long -term wins and so I play the long game in our partnerships. We're very transparent, you know, we're not perfect. So I think transparency and problem solving together that actually
builds relationships every once in a while when something goes wrong, you know, people, that builds trust. And then we're laser focused on what our partners are trying to get out of a relationship with McLaren. So we very much come at it in this, I think comes back more from my background. What are the drop boxes of the world, where are you trying to take your business? And if we focus on helping you build your business, then we know you'll be with us for the long term, which is what we want, our great partners for the long term. - And then you're also an avid
collector of everything motorsport. Extensive car collection I've heard includes a Monaco Grand Prix winning McLaren MP4 /6. Like within this collection, is there a car that's your favorite or that old? - It would definitely be, I'm definitely a car collector. I think starting from a young age, I used to collect the 143rd model,
then got a little bit more cash and got up to the 124th model. I'm now unfortunate after I sold my company to be able to get some of the bigger versions. I think the one for me would be Ayrton Senna's MP46. That was 1991, that particular chassis he won Monaco in. So if I think about what's the pinnacle motor sports for me, it's McLaren, it's Eriton Senna, it's Monaco Grand Prix, and winning the championship in that particular chassis did all of those, so that kind of ticks all the boxes. So I was a big Eriton Senna fan, a Mario Andretti, Mika Hakkinen, but I'm a huge fan of the sport and I think that's something that helps when we do marketing to the fans. I remember the impression racing made on me. When I met a driver I saw
a car from 10 years old onwards and so I think we're in the sport and entertainment business and so part of my job is to take this really cool racing car and a really cool racing drivers and let our fans get as engaged with our racing team as possible. And then McLaren has such a rich history in F1. So many iconic moments through the years And so how do you find the right balance between like honoring that legacy and heritage and tradition while also pushing the team forward with new marketing, new brand alternatives expanding the business? Yeah, I think it's doing both and then sometimes they come together. So we've got this great, rich history, the second most successful team in the history of Formula One right behind Ferrari, 20 world championships, we've had some of the most iconic racing drivers, and then of course we compete in the Indianapolis, we've won Le Mans, so we're definitely in the racing business. So we never forget our past and it helps us
drive to the future. And then when we bring the two together, we did, for instance, in Singapore, a special livery that was a nod to our MP4 era, and we modernized it. So that was talking to our kind of avid historical fans who were like, wow, I remember that. And then our new more trend, call it your Netflix fans, who were like, well, what's that all about? So we wanted to learn about our history, but we kind of take a modern take on it. So a lot of the times we bring the two together. - And then F1's seen explosive growth and is continuing to grow.
I mean, global dealerships gonna be over a billion this season, billion people. What do you think's continuing to attract people to sport? - I think it's very much an inclusive sport now. It used to be a very exclusive sport. And that worked because people want to know what's kind of behind the velvet rope, if you'd like. But now,
when Liberty acquired Formula One in 2016, I think what they saw was this huge sport that people were clamoring to get into. But we weren't very inviting. and I think Netflix, I think, played a big role in kind of opening up. Here's how the sport works on the track, but also off the track. And I think fans are attracted to Formula One, some for the technology, some for the drivers, some where we race around the world, some about the politics in pit lane, some about its big business. So I think there's a lot of different storylines to our sport where
Most other sports, it's kind of concentrated on the field of play, but our field of play can be just as exciting off the track, and so I think people see that and what the sport where it's grown is big in North America, women, youth, and diversity, which if you look at where Formula One was pre -2016, then you looked at where do we need to grow. It was in all those areas, and that's where we're growing faster than any other segment. So I don't see any reason why the sport, especially with how competitive it is, isn't going to just continue to grow. And then you've talked about how technology as this big accelerator can free us up. Love to hear more about the challenges you face and how you've harnessed technology to get an advantage or what you're most excited But we're definitely a technology -led sport. Some interesting data. We pull down one and a
half terabytes of data a weekend. We have over 300 sensors on this race car. There's nothing that we don't know what it's doing. We run 50 million simulations over the course of a race week. So it's a blend of leading -edge technology,
which humans need to ultimately run, So it's a perfect blend of both and we're a sport that is leads on the cutting edge of technology That's why we have great technology partners is they're integrated into our racing team They're helping us run the racing team whether it's develop the car or operate our team more efficiently back at base So it's a critical element and I think in technology We work with the world's greatest technology companies and they can help us lead the way on what's coming down the road three years, five years from now, and so we've developed some technologies on our Formula One car that have been cutting edge, dating back to the carbon fiber tub, which was designed in the early 80s by ourselves for performance, safety, and light weighting, and we were the first automotive company to have all carbon fiber tubs in all of our vehicles, so you the seat belt in the rear of your mirror were developed at Indianapolis Motor Speedway a hundred years ago. So a lot of the innovations that happen in this race car, you'll ultimately see in the road cars and other industries. - And then with all that data coming in from the car, the engineers, mission control, partners, it must feel like endless.
So how do you guys manage the complexity and just the influx? It's a good question. It's one thing to get one and a half terabytes of data, but you can't sift through all that. So then that's where your technology partners come in, and we're looking for certain things. We're looking for anomalies on tire wear. So we're working with our technology partners to not only gather that information, but then help us decipher it. Because a lot of the times we're making literally split second decisions, we'll know that in order to get the tires ready for a pit stop we need 18 seconds. We know that we have to give a driver two seconds notice to come into
the pits and it's going to be a 20 so sometimes if a say a safety car comes out 24 seconds the drivers out we literally have two seconds to make the decision before we might make the right or wrong decision and we've made plenty of right decisions and we've also made plenty of wrong decisions and so Technology is going to help us make decisions that much quicker where we can then focus on other areas. So it's something that's constantly developing and data is a great thing as long as you're looking at the right data. And then the McLaren team is constantly on the move due to an incredibly busy and demanding race schedule. So how do you keep your teams connected and in lockstep when everybody's working in such a distributed environment. Like what pressures do you feel to keep the team staying in sync and connected to what's going on in the team? - So that's also where technology comes in. We've been having connected cars for 30 years. So connected cars is kind of a
new thing for us. We've been racing around the world, so we'll have what's effectively our mission control, if you kind of think of NASA. Back at the factory in Woking Surrey, no matter where we're racing, whether it's Austin or Australia or Singapore. So a lot of the racing activities take place there and then go out to the racetrack where we then have a group of engineers at the track and on pit wall. The communication is both verbal radio data.
We have about 60 people back at the factory and over 100 people at the racetrack and about 1 ,000 in total and everyone's kind of focused on their area of expertise and then the decisions come with those people that have the most amount of knowledge. You don't have time for everything to kind of roll up to the the racing director or the team principal to make decisions and the things that we're looking at are reliability, weather, tire wear, any damage to the car and then all those elements we're also looking at from our competitor point of view and then trying to see what historically has happened if it starts to rain, what do certain drivers do. So it's quite complex and our report card gets graded in front of hundreds of millions of people, instantaneous. So it's definitely high pressure. - So F1's like a test bed for technological advancements, McLaren's one of the most decorated teams in the sport. So how's McLaren driven innovation in F1? - People, people and obviously technology, but you need to have people that embrace technology or want to explore or comfortable being uncomfortable because a lot of these are new technologies that have not been seen before. And so it takes the right mindset of individual to be in a Formula One team, to kind of embrace all this technology and kind of be comfortable with entering new chartered territories.
And then with AI taking the world by storm, I mean teams have more access to data and knowledge than ever before, but there's still a need for like human intuition, judgment to make these critical decisions and so how have these recent advancements in AI had an impact on the team and where do you see that going? So it's early days which is exciting and I think it's something that we're embracing and we need to continue to kind of lead the way. It's making us much more efficient in our decision making so we can just redeploy that kind of human horsepower into other areas So for us, it's very much additive. It allows us to put more power down if you'd like. We're using it across running the racing team or marketing or fan engagement or operational efficiency back at the factory. So we're using it on all different aspects. Still ultimately need to make the right decision. But I think AI helps you get to the right decision in a quicker basis. And what's the data driving
so many of these decisions for the McLaren team? How do you approach how do you approach security to handle you know making sure only the right people have the right access the right information and what are the risks that you face if security is critical because as we all know there's a lot of bad actors around the world. We actually had an incident so it can happen back about to 25 years ago, it was actually over the radio, a fan broke into our radio communications and told Mika Hakkinen to pit, and he did, and the pit crew wasn't ready, and luckily we were running first and second, so when Mika pitted he fell to second, but we told David Coulthard, "Hey, let him back by and this happens." So you have, you know, everything from bad actors to people that actually, I don't think they were probably trying to do anything in the grandstand other than goof around. But, you know, big consequences for us, our sponsors, the revenue, a championship. So we need to, you know, our IP is very precious to us. So our
security is everything from cyber, to file sharing, to visual. So security is a big element. And I think The bad actors are pretty sophisticated these days. So I think security is something that you can never take your foot off the throttle and you're always going to have to be kind of one step ahead of the bad guy. So security is very important to us across our business. And then F1 is
one of the most competitive and fast -paced sports in the world with like seconds covering the whole grid and then tiny fractions of seconds of making the difference up front. So how do you ensure your team stays ahead of the competition? - So are the best or the worst, if you think about all the various industries, is 2%. So that's the difference between being the best and being the worst. So there, the
margin of error is minimal. We play in milliseconds, intensive of seconds. And if you take the car that started on pole first place, the beginning of the year, and you left it untouched, it would be last by the end of the year. So that's the pace of development of Formula One. So literally, if you're standing still
or walking slowly, you're going backwards. So it's a constant development race. We change about 80 % of our car over the course of the year. There's over 60 ,000 components on a Formula One car, and it's all about the smallest incremental gains. So you have to have people and a team of a mindset of kind of, there is no such thing as perfect. Everything can be improved upon. We can put something on the car, a new front wing, it works great, but we're constantly trying to make it better next race. So it's all about being better tomorrow than we were today, better than
we were yesterday, and constantly learning by mistakes. You know, mistakes or opportunities to learn from, I always say in the factory mistakes are okay, just don't make the same one twice, but there is nothing on this car that can't be improved over time and so getting into a mindset and then having great data and technology so you have correlation because things start in CFD, which is effectively a virtual wind tunnel, then it goes in the wind tunnel, then it and simulation, then you produce it and it goes on the race car. And so you got to make sure that all those elements are connected. And what CFD says is happening, gets replicated when it gets to the wind tunnel. Most of the time it does, but everyone will try to get in the wind tunnel and you'll find something. You go, you know what, got to go back to CFD. We are one of probably the only team this year that
every time we've put a development on the car, it's worked where some of our other competitors, they put a development on the car, they went, "Nah, not sure it's work," and they've gone back. And that happens, that's happened to us too, but right now we're on a roll and long may it continue. - Yeah. And to talk more about culture, I mean, F1's a sport where there's a critical individual performance part of it, but then you're all this cooperation and you succeed as a team. So, How do you build a culture that can navigate that kind of competition, but also cooperation and reach peak performance? Transparency, trust with your teammates, kind of a no -blame culture. You know,
at the end of the day, 1 ,000 people working on this car, it could be anyone if they have a failing at what they're doing that can stop a race. It could be a small mechanical problem, It can be a wheel doesn't go on and a pit stop whatever the case may be and so You know always kind of I love baseball. You're always backing each other up So there's a lot of redundancies built into what we do mistakes still still happen things still Break fortunately very rarely these days the reliability these cars are amazing So it's about everyone working together Trusting communicating and when I joined that's not how You know the team wasn't in great shape and so there was a blame culture and there were People seeing ghosts on the factory floor and so we were able to get people all working together and realize we're all in this together, so we all need to support each other because One person can be great at their job, but if not if everyone's not great at their job It doesn't matter you have a great front end of the car But if the rear is not working we're all gonna in this result together and we've got a great culture going and a great hard work ethic and then I try and you know we're 24 races around the world lots of travel try and make sure that we give our team and their families the resources and the support they need whether it's coming to races whether it's a brand new state of the art gym that we just put in our facility taking care of people so they can work at their most optimum performance. And then McLaren's well known for its social media presence and following and collaborations with global brands, very energetic fan base. So what do you get what do you guys what is it about the papaya team that sets apart sets it apart from competitors? I think we recognize our fans are our most important customer.
Without fans countries don't want to hold races, media rights partners wouldn't wouldn't join us so we very much focus on our fans because that's kind of the start of our ecosystem and again we're in the sport and entertainment business and so I think our commercial team Louise Lou who heads up our CMO has a wonderful eye for fan engagement and so we're very focused on the fan and we want them to feel part of our team a real passion so our papaya fans are absolutely awesome and it's something that we spend a lot of time and resources on that matters to us and you know great fans you know everything else kind of starts to take care of itself. And what do you guys do behind the scenes because there's there's both all this coming real time off the track all this media that's basically real time but then you also have all this rich archive content. So how do you and the marketing teams collaborate to deliver like engaging, fresh channels? - So we listen to our fans, you know, I think that's one of the great things about today's digital world, you know, back when I was growing up watching Formula One, you turn on the TV and it's just projected to you. And then eventually they do research that six months later they'd figure out what worked or didn't work. Now, mostly good, sometimes bad. You're getting feedback, you know, while the race is going on and obviously everything's very measurable now in today's digital world. So we know what our fans like and we talk to different fans in different segments. We have our avid fans,
we have what we call our trend fans, our newer fans and so as we get to understand what our fans want, we're able, and this is where AI can also come into play, segment our kind of offerings if you'd like, because how you view Formula One and what you want to see out of McLaren might be different than what I want to see than what, you know, my wife or your wife want want to see or our kids or whatever the case may be. So we're able to customize those experiences and be able to deliver what our fans want. We did this We're in Monaco, a Senna livery, and you know, Ayrton Senna, who we spoke about at the top of the hour. You know, just an iconic racing driver, but also some of the newer fans don't really know much about him. Fortunately, Netflix is coming out with a new movie about Senna later this year, and so we kind of did a modern take, which was a nod to our historic fans, but also introducing our new fans to who this legendary Eritz and Senna is and so it was a perfect blend and then of course you do the merchandise and competitions and that it was a huge success. McLaren's been on an incredible journey over the last 12 months now leading the constructors championship for the first time in a decade that said there have been a lot of ups and downs before that so how did you lift the team morale during last season struggles and and how are you keeping everyone grounded going into the home stretch? It both were a challenge. When we started at the beginning of '23,
I felt we were going to have some issues, so I made a few management changes at the highest level, new team principal, new technical director, new head of arrow, I should say technical directors. We went to a little bit of a structure change, because our data told us we were going to be bad at the start of 23, we were just very transparent and honest with the team. At the same time, once we made those changes, the development started really kind of skyrocketing, so we were able to share that with the team, so it was this weird dynamic that we were having a terrible time on the track getting hammered by everybody, but yet back at the factory we knew our development rate was looking really good so everyone just kind of hung in there and I gave a lot of credit to Andrea Stella, our team principal, he listens very well, he leads by example, he communicates, he builds trust so everyone was was rallied together you know managing partners who want to be with us because you know we're McLaren and winning races and fans you know you it's like any great sports team when you're not performing You hear about it, you know, you don't want to be a team no one talks about they're kind of cheering for you or booing for you No different than the New York Yankees or Dallas Cowboys And so that was difficult, but then once we got momentum we've built that now The hard part is not so much for us But keeping everyone's feet on the ground around us because I have a lot of people saying are you've you've already got the Constructors sewn up.
That's like No, no, no, no, no, no. So I think we're really grounded as a racing team. It's everyone else around us that is obviously excited. Happy where we are. I think things are looking good, but we need to keep doing what we're doing. I think the minute it's nice being the hunter, that's a little more uncomfortable being the hunted. And now we're the ones being hunted, but we just gotta keep doing what we're doing. - And then going into the season, did you and the team Have you had a
shot at the Constructors' Championship or was there kind of a pleasant surprise about the gains you've been able to achieve or was there like a single turning point where you're like, "Wait, this is..." Yeah, Miami was the big turning point when Landau won. No, I don't think we came into this season thinking we were going to be competing for the World Championship. I think we thought we would be competing for a race win or two and we're five race wins in probably had a couple other race wins that didn't go our way for a variety of reasons. I thought we would be
where we are now in 2025 because there's a lot of technology we invested in and some new people that I thought we needed to have fully up and running to really put forward a championship chase and all credit to the team we got here a year earlier Without everything being in place in time for the development of the car, so I think we're just going to get stronger and stronger from here. That sounds pretty good for next season. I'm excited. So you took the reins of CEO back in 2018 and looking back, what's the biggest challenge you faced and how did you overcome it? Probably the start of '23 because we were bad. We were the ninth, tenth place worst team. We didn't have any points for the first four or five races. And then when we got our first points in Australia, there was kind of a big crash on the restart. So we would have got some points. But that started to give us a
little bit of momentum. So that was pretty brutal because we had been since 17 on a nice trajectory forward. So it was the first time we'd had a dip. So, that was probably the toughest because we had all this momentum and then it just evaporated overnight. But I'm thankful for it because I think we're a better racing team now for having kind of gone through that trauma. It's brought us closer together. It kind of comes back to what we were talking about earlier. Problems
happen. It's all about how you deal with them and transparent that builds trust and loyalty and ultimately teamwork. So I think we're a stronger team for it. - And then looking at your time at McLaren or looking ahead, do you have a personal goal? And then is there kind of an ultimate dream state for the team? - 100%. Win the World Championship, drivers and the constructors. Gotta win Monaco. And then of course we
have an IndyCar team. So I'd love to win the Indy 500, which we've won twice before. We're the only team to have won the Triple Crown, which includes the 24 hours of Le Mans, and it looks like we'll be going back to Le Mans sooner rather than later. So if I could write it all down on a piece of paper, when the Formula One World Championship, Driver Championship, Monaco, Le Mans, and the Indy 500, then I'm good. - That sounds like a pretty good to -do list. - It's a good to -do list. They got a lot of work to do to get there. - I'm sure you're already thinking ahead towards March and the first race in Melbourne next season. So what have you,
what from this season have you learned that you're gonna take with you to next season? - Well, we're constantly evolving the race car. The rules are pretty much the same for next year, but I've seen next year's design and the technical team are not standing still. They're not just let's go for small upgrades. We're gonna have some stuff on the race car next year, which should take another step We just got to keep our foot on the throttle because we've got great competitors. It's unbelievably
close. And you can see how quickly we went from the back to the front, which means really anybody else can do that. I hope they don't, but they could. So we just got to keep developing. We've got two wonderful drivers under long -term contract. I think that's been a huge benefit that we have two drivers that are threats to win races every weekend. - And I'm sure that Lando and Oscar's first wins are, must be highlights of the season, but is there anything else that sticks in your mind as particularly memorable? - Running one two at Silverstone was pretty awesome 'cause we were dominating, ended up being disappointing because I think we got our, made some mistakes there and ultimately lost the win. And I think that was
a race that was there for a 1 -2. So that was both a bit of a high and not a-- it's amazing that we're complaining about seconds and thirds or second and fourth wherever we finished. So that was a luxury problem to have. Hungry was quite exciting when Oscar won. That was the first time we had these two drivers that are both number one drivers capable of winning races, duking it out. So that was a bit uncomfortable, but ultimately finished 1 -2, so I went according to plan. So lots of highs, only a few lows so far, so we've got to keep focused.
Yeah, so what's the feeling like on the ground, the vibe within the team? Everyone's excited. I can't remember ever where you have four teams and eight drivers that can come into a race weekend capable of winning. To show up to a Grand Prix and kind of not know where you're going to be means we could be first, we could also be eighth because these four teams are neck and neck. So we have some developments on the car coming as does everyone else but we finished strong here last year, finished second, led the race. Vegas Lando had one of his rare Accidents, Oscar drove a great race, Qatar, we won the sprint race, Mexico will be strong, so I'm excited to win in some more races this year. - And how do you think about your relationship with other like team principals and CEOs of teams? I mean, obviously you're competing pretty fiercely on off the track in a number of ways, but there's a lot that you have in common too. - A lot we have in common, but We're definitely very competitive
with each other. So there are some I get along with quite well, but you've got to keep in common arms length relationship. And then there's some that I get along with less well that I have less in common with. But I mean, they're all great operators, right? It's the top of motor sports and sport. There's sometimes you work together when you're getting into rules and regulations, you know, there's something that we'll have in common with other teams and those other teams that we're fighting with pretty hard so and then that changes from time to time depending on what the situation is so at the end of the day you got to look after yourself.
2024-10-28 09:52
