Statistically speaking, our drivers can catch Max Verstappen: McLaren CEO

Under Zak Brown's leadership, Fl team has emerged from its years of struggle

- Ravi Velloor

Without question, 2024 has been Zak Brown's best year since becoming McLaren Racing's chief executive officer in 2018.

McLaren's win at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix in early September lifted the team past Red Bull in the race for the Formula One constructors' championship. The hero of that race was Oscar Piastri, the 23-year-old Australian it lured away from Alpine.

Meanwhile, in the tussle for driver of the year, his protege, Lando Norris, is breathing down the neck of Red Bull's durable ace Max Verstappen, the man who dominated in 2022 and 2023 but hasn't won since June.

Racing aficionados are now savouring the possibility of a battle akin to 2021's Verstappen versus Lewis Hamilton clash, which was decided on the final lap of the year.

Norris, who will be 25 years old in November, finished a solid fourth in the Azerbaijan race, held in national capital Baku.

Zakary Challen Brown, the man behind McLaren Racing's turnaround, is a former racer himself who went for his first Grand Prix at age 10 and was hooked thereafter on racing. He bought his first go-kart three years later, using money gathered by selling a pair of watches he won as a prize on the Wheel Of Fortune game show.

"We're gonna try this year. We are closing the gap," Brown, 52, told me in a long conversation held on Sept 19 at the team's hotel in Singapore, Conrad Centennial. "I don't see why both our drivers won't start next season with a great shot at winning the championship. Both our drivers are statistically speaking capable of catching Max Verstappen this year. Lando, being the closer of the two, we are giving him all our support to see if he can do it."

Raised in a family of modest means, the California-born, British resident is estimated to be worth more than US$100 million (S$130 million).