Zak Brown (USA) McLaren Executive Director. 19.03.2023. Formula 1 World Championship, Rd 2, Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Race Day.
McLaren CEO Zak Brown has been criticised by former Ferrari and Williams team manager Peter Windsor for the decision to remove Honda and Daniel Ricciardo during his time at the helm.
Brown replaced the long-standing Ron Dennis late in 2016, with the American instantly electing to alter his predecessor’s historical naming arrangement of McLaren’s Formula 1 cars.
However, Brown’s biggest decision came the following year when he decided to call time on the British outfit’s engine deal with Honda after three unreliable and uncompetitive years.
McLaren partnered with Renault for two seasons before returning to Mercedes in 2021, while Honda remained in F1 and powered Red Bull and Max Verstappen to title glory.
With McLaren struggling early in the 2023 season, Windsor, now an experienced F1 journalist, has questioned several of the calls Brown has committed to during his time in the hot seat at Woking.
“He got rid of Ron Dennis’s MP nomenclature, which upset Ron a bit. He’s got ‘MCL’ now,” Windsor began on his YouTube channel. “I think that was quite a big thing.
“It was a bigger thing than we realised at the time because Ron has taken that quite personally, because Ron likes to think MP4/1 was the start of the real McLaren.
“Then, when he went in, he got rid of [the] Honda engines pretty quickly, which were free to McLaren, and replaced them with Mercedes, which he had to buy, and I think the number is £23million that he suddenly had to go from what they weren’t paying to what they suddenly had to pay as a Mercedes customer team.
“I said at the time [that] I [was] shocked that he’s done that, because there’s nothing wrong with the Honda engine and the Honda program that really good management of the Honda engine program couldn’t put right, and absolutely for sure Red Bull will know how to do that with Adrian [Newey], Christian Horner and some very intelligent, good management people.
“I [was] shocked that Zak didn’t think that he could do that with what he had at McLaren because he’s, in theory, a good manager as well.
“So he got rid of Honda. And Honda went on to win World Championships and he’s a Mercedes customer team.
“You have to say, looking back now, it was a pretty dodgy decision,” he remarked.
Daniel Ricciardo (AUS) McLaren on the grid. 04.09.2022. Formula 1 World Championship, Rd 14, Dutch Grand Prix, Zandvoort, Netherlands, Race Day.
While he has praised Brown for opting to hand Lando Norris his F1 debut in 2019, Windsor asserts that axing Ricciardo before the expiry of his contract last year was another wrongful move.
Despite scoring McLaren’s sole victory since 2012 at the Italian Grand Prix in 2021, the ex-Red Bull racer struggled massively throughout his two seasons with the team and has now been replaced by Oscar Piastri, who scored his maiden F1 points at his home race last time out.
Although Windsor has no doubts about Piastri’s talent, the 71-year-old assesses that the young Australian’s arrival alongside Norris has the potential to upset the dynamic at McLaren.
“Hiring Lando Norris was a really good thing,” he added.
“I think hiring Daniel was a good thing and he had a really harmonious team there and now he’s hired Oscar to replace Daniel, which I think is a dubious call again.
“Not because of Piastri’s talent, I think there’s no doubt about his talent, [but] I’m not sure you want a guy that talented and young alongside Lando Norris, that’s all.
“So whether he’s now getting the best from Lando, I don’t know.”
Keyword: Brown slammed for axing Honda, Ricciardo at McLaren