McLaren CEO Zak Brown had a lot on his mind on Monday 24 July 2022 as he returned to Woking from the French Grand Prix in Le Castellet.

Formula 1 was in the thick of the European season in its first year of its new technical regulations, and McLaren wasn’t doing well.

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The historic British team had hoped for good things under the new rules, but after finishing fourth with 275 points in the previous season, it was languishing fifth with just 89 points more than halfway into the 2022 campaign, way off its trajectory.

Brown, whose management had already rescued the team from financial oblivion, was realising that the rot in the once-great McLaren ran much deeper than he first thought.

Daniel Ricciardo was the canary in the coalmine.

Ricciardo had been signed to McLaren on a three-year deal starting in 2021 to lead it back to greatness, but his tenure had flopped, a lukewarm first season giving way to a thoroughly ordinary second campaign.

His troubles were largely down to a driving style that suited neither the prevalent regulations nor the peculiar way McLaren’s cars liked to be steered.

But undeniable is that McLaren also didn’t give him a regularly competitive car.

The 2022 French Grand Prix could’ve been the race that stemmed the bleeding. The team had prepared a swingeing upgrade package it hopes would reinvigorate its season.

But the upgrades failed. Lando Norris was fifth on the grid but was almost 1.2 seconds off the pace, while Ricciardo qualified 11th.

They finished seventh and ninth respectively, both roughly a minute behind winner Max Verstappen.

The result was deeply troubling for Brown, but what happened next perturbed him more deeply.

“The response wasn’t the response I was expecting,” he told F1’s Beyond the Grid podcast.

“Technically I can’t solve that problem, but I can look at the people I’m expecting to solve that problem and go, ‘Did you guys not just see what happened on Sunday?’

“It was just like business as usual on Monday.

“In 2022 we had the headlines of our driver challenges with Daniel, but I saw underneath that I didn’t like the direction the team was going and the leadership around what we do today: just incremental gains, never being satisfied, striving for perfection — never getting perfection, because you can always do better, but still chasing it — that kind of incremental teamwork mindset.”

Awkward Hamilton radio exchange | 01:13

McLaren hadn’t won a constructors championship since 1998, and though it had claimed two drivers titles since then, the team had been rotting for almost a decade. A combination of mismanagement and arrogance had been corrosive to the team’s foundations, and a pandemic-fuelled financial crisis had brought it to the brink of collapse.

Brown, an American motorsport marketing mogul by trade, had rebuilt the team’s financial capacity, ensuring McLaren’s long-term viability, but that’s never enough in Formula 1.

Competitive momentum, even for the sport’s biggest teams, is hard to recapture once it’s completely evaporated.

Williams stands as a testament to this rule. It’s the third most successful team in F1 history by constructors titles, but a long decline since its last in 1997 has proved intractable and enduring.

McLaren was staring into the abyss.

That was 24 July 2022.

Brown, alarmed by his critical realisation, imagined a restructure that would finally set up McLaren for success.

Perhaps the most important change was the elevation of Andrea Stella to team principal for 2023.

Within months he’d used his wide-ranging remit to make more changes. Technical director James Key was sacked, and the design office was divided into three components, each of which reported to Stella as a sort of technical team principal. Other executive roles were reorganised to better focus the team on getting the most from its resources.

By the middle of the season the team was back on the podium. In 2024 it won the constructors championship.

This year the first-to-last comeback was complete, with Norris leading the team to its first drivers-constructors championship double since 1998, a drought spanning 27 years.

“It comes back to the people,” Brown continued. “[Starting with] 1000 people, we made three or four changes, a couple of structural changes — it was the same 996 people that gave us the car that was ninth quickest on the grid in the first race [in 2023] in Bahrain that gave us a car that was running at the front by the end of the year.

“That’s the power of people and leadership and teamwork and alignment.”

One of those people changed out was Ricciardo.

Verstappen snaps back at reporter | 00:49

DRIVERS FIRST

With a year still to run on his contract, Ricciardo was paid off for 2023, his sacking made official during the mid-season break.

It had become clear the eight-time race winner didn’t gel with this generation of car, and with the clock ticking on McLaren’s recovery, he was deemed too heavy to carry.

“My job … is to make the tough decisions,” Brown told Fox Sports at the time. “Because we didn’t really see progress happening, it was like, ‘Well I think we just need to make a change for both of our sakes’.

“It’s probably the toughest thing I’ve had in my time in motorsports. It wasn’t pleasant, not fun.”

But the decision was made easier by Norris having grown in stature in his fourth campaign. He regularly beat Ricciardo over their two years together and was turning in increasingly consistent and impressive performances.

In an era of the so-called franchise driver in Formula 1, McLaren had found its north star in the Englishman. It supplanted the need for a big-money Ricciardo-style racer and instead freed up the team to think about its future with broader horizons.

Convincing Norris of his place in that future was critical to the success of the rebuild, and the Briton duly signed long-term contract extensions in 2022 and 2024, the last of which will keep him in Woking until at least the end of 2027.

“He has been a fundamental part of the leadership,” Stella told Beyond the Grid. “The commitment he made to McLaren when we did not have much to offer, and yet he committed to McLaren — he kind of trusted that we would turn the place around — is something that sent a strong message to everyone, sent a strong message to the entire team, a message of belief, and it’s a message for which we are definitely grateful.”

That broader horizon stretched all the way to Alpine, from which McLaren pinched Oscar Piastri from under the nose of the lackadaisical Renault-owned team.

Frosty scenes in podium room | 02:14

Piastri was the opposite of a Ricciardo figure in that he was totally inexperienced and lacked a profile.

But he started pushing Norris to be better almost immediately.

“He’s been pushing me an insane amount, which is a good thing,” Norris said just halfway through Piastri’s first season. “It’s raised the level of what we do as a team.

“He’s been good since day one in the car and makes my life tough sometimes. I don’t always like it, but it’s a good thing at the end of the day, and it makes me a better driver too.”

Piastri needed less than one season with the team before being offered a long-term deal, and he recommitted at the beginning of this year to hold his place until at least the end of 2028.

“It’s the same sort of message [as Norris] that Oscar offered when he said, ‘I’m commit to McLaren’ when in fact we didn’t have much to offer, again, in 2023,” Stella said. “The same kind of commitment to the team, the same sort of all-in for the team, full support to the team, did come from Oscar as well.”

Having both drivers locked down on long-term deals has done more than boost team morale and signal that the ship has completed its turn.

It’s driven both to bigger and better performances, particularly this season, as the realisation dawned that the better McLaren driver would have a shot at claiming their maiden championship.

“Over the past three years I’ve learnt things every weekend from what Lando does, and it’s nice to know that it goes both ways,” Piastri said in Abu Dhabi.

“There’s plenty more years to come of intense weekends and tight battles. I think that’s made both of us better drivers and in some ways contributed to the success that both of us have had this year.”

But Piastri’s development has surprised the team. He always seemed destined to be among the sport’s top tier, but he’s arrived as a frontrunning force in just his third year, two seasons earlier than most expected this level of performance.

For McLaren it’s been a blessing and a curse.

Piastri’s audacious opening move | 00:40

WINNING THE McLAREN WAY

“The best way to win the constructors is to finish first and second in the [drivers] championship, and the best way to win the drivers championship is to have two drivers going for the drivers championship,” Brown continued.

It’s this philosophy — dating back to the Ron Dennis era of McLaren that saw Ferrari’s Kimi Räikkönen pip Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso to the 2007 championship — that has guided the team’s approach to managing its driver rivalry.

The ideology had its doubters, not only because of the 2007 example but also because of the sport’s long history witnessing teammates turn toxic when the drivers title is up for grabs.

But the team was sure it could avoid a blow-up if it was sufficiently proactive.

The strategy can be summarised in three parts.

The first was to encourage constantly open dialogue. No question was too stupid, no statement too presumptive. Both drivers played their cards face up.

The second was that McLaren would intervene in situations it deemed unfair, reserving the right to level the playing field.

The third and most important was not to crash.

At times pedantic, at other times excruciating and sometimes highly controversial, McLaren micromanaged its way through every on-track flashpoint in the hope it could stave off.

Sometimes it caused its own secondary dramas. The Piastri side of the fence had several reasons to feel aggrieved, the Australian having more often than not been on the receiving end of internal justice.

Hungary, Italy and Singapore were all sore points. Qatar was devastating, particularly for the role Norris’s place on track might have played in the decision not to pit.

But no wound was allowed to fester into something poisonous.

“We’re not perfect, but we’re racers, and they know that,” Brown continued.

“I think the reason why you see such a great relationship between Lando and Oscar is they know they have equal opportunity to win the world championship.”

McLaren is the chief beneficiary, and in more ways than one.

Not only did it romp to the constructors title with a record-equalling six rounds remaining, but the team became the sum of the best parts of Piastri and Norris rather than simply the bits left over from some ugly internal battle.

“I think it is a testament to the way we go racing [that there was no boilover],” Piastri said. “Obviously it’s not easy fighting for both the constructors championship and the drivers championship with two very evenly matched drivers, but ultimately that’s a problem we knew we were going to have.

“I think there’s a lot of good things that come from that. Yes, there’s difficult moments and tension at times, but I think both Lando and I have become better drivers from pushing each other to the limit.

“Sometimes that’s been uncomfortable for everyone, but ultimately it’s been a good thing.

“I think, at the end of the day, they gave us both as good a chance as the team could have to fairly fight for a world championship, and that’s all you can ask for.”

Piastri upbeat despite title loss | 02:36

CAN THE MODEL SURVIVE A WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP?

McLaren can say its papaya rules experiment has been a success, having taken home both championships, even if it often made things more difficult for itself through the season.

It might even feel like it can finally put the debate over team orders in Italy to bed — had Piastri been allowed to finish second rather than hand the place to Norris, Verstappen would have won the championship by one point on Sunday.

Chalk that up as a win for the team’s gut instinct.

But next year things will be different.

McLaren is no longer managing two hungry young drivers looking to make their mark.

It’ll be fielding one driver in his fourth Formula 1 season and another who’s the reigning world champion.

The power dynamic has irrevocably changed.

Piastri downplayed concerns that Norris could start next season as a sort of de facto number one owing to his new status.

“I don’t think that will change anything,” Piastri insisted. “For me, he’s obviously had a great season this year and a deserving champion, but he’s still Lando Norris. It’s not like he’s become Superman. so, I don’t think things will change with that.

“I’m expecting full fairness from the team and equality going forward. I don’t have any concerns that that will change at all.”

But even if there’s no formal change to the understanding of the papaya rules, it’s hard not to think things will look different in 2026.

Every driver is adept at pushing the limits in all situations. Both Piastri and Norris have learnt a lot about the teams’ limits when it comes to managing the fight between them.

Piastri in particular will have kept receipts for the various incidents in which he came off second best.

The biggest one might be whatever agreement he came to with McLaren ahead of Abu Dhabi to help Norris’s title bid in certain circumstances.

And that’s without considering what new precedents will be set next year as the competition between Piastri and Norris escalates.

The 2025 drivers-constructors title double signalled the completion of a comeback journey that was set on its final course in 2022.

But there’s always limited time for laurel-resting in Formula 1.

McLaren must continue adapting if it’s to turn the Norris-Piastri era into the dynasty they deserve to lead.

That challenge starts now.