Zak Brown

The man heading McLaren's F1 team talks about his incredible collection of road and racing cars - and karts

- JAMES TAYLOR

HAVING A FAVOURITE COLLECTION OF model cars as a youngster is, I'd wager, par for the course for most people reading this magazine. Retaining some of that collection in a half-forgotten box somewhere as an adult? Also pretty common. Owning the full-size, real-life version of most of the model cars in that box? Not so much. When that collection includes racewinning F1 cars, Indy cars, endurance racers and touring cars, together with some all-time-great road cars, this is a particularly unusual case study.

Zak Brown's career - or careers, plural - is a case study far from the norm too. The 52-year-old CEO of McLaren Racing has also been a racing driver, built a global marketing company from scratch, become a media mogul and a co-owner of a front-running race team - all before taking the reins at McLaren's F1 operation in 2016. But he's always been a fan, first and foremost: of cars, and above all, motorsport.

'I always used to collect model cars - still do, in fact; they're all over my desk,' he explains. 'So I've always been a collector, but I never thought I'd be fortunate enough to be in a position to be able to afford anything other than in 1/24 scale. But as Richard, my best mate and business partner, pointed out when he found a box of mine in his house, "Now you own half the cars that you used to collect as models."

That's Richard Dean, who co-founded race team United Autosports with Brown in 2010. Starting with an Audi R8 GT3 car, a unit and a truck, it's since become a considerable operation in its own right and has won races and titles in the LMP2 class in the World Endurance Championship and at Le Mans. The racing car contingent of Brown's collection is kept at United's main HQ at Wakefield. As you might expect of a motorsport superfan, his collection concentrates more on race than road cars, with around 40 historic competition cars.