Formula One, renowned for its high-speed, technically advanced races, is undergoing significant changes. The video explores the behind-the-scenes efforts at McLaren HQ, tracing the team's attempt to regain its former glory in the sport. McLaren is celebrating its 60th anniversary and strives to become a championship-winning team once again through leadership changes, technical advancements, and strategic partnerships.

Since joining McLaren as CEO in 2016, Zak Brown has worked to revitalize the team, facing the challenges of regaining sponsorship and improving performance. The introduction of a cost cap by Liberty Media, the sport's new owners, aims to make racing more competitive and financially sustainable. Moreover, there is a focus on expanding the Formula One audience globally, despite some controversies. McLaren's operations involve extensive technical work from building new cars to strategic branding and partnerships.

Main takeaways from the video:

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Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. pinnacle [ˈpɪnəkl] - (noun) - The highest point of development or achievement. - Synonyms: (apex, peak, summit)

It's known as the pinnacle of motorsport.

2. revolution [ˌrɛvəˈluːʃən] - (noun) - A dramatic and wide-reaching change in conditions, attitudes, or operations. - Synonyms: (transformation, change, shift)

Formula One is undergoing a kind of revolution.

3. morale [məˈræl] - (noun) - The confidence, enthusiasm, and discipline of a person or group at a particular time. - Synonyms: (spirit, mood, attitude)

morale was very poor.

4. sponsorship [ˈspɑːnsərˌʃɪp] - (noun) - Financial support received from a sponsor. - Synonyms: (patronage, backing, funding)

We had very little in the way of sponsorship.

5. franchise [ˈfrænˌtʃaɪz] - (noun) - The authorization or license to sell a company's goods or services in a particular area; a professional sports team. - Synonyms: (license, permit, warrant)

You see the value of these franchise now growing rapidly.

6. entice [ɪnˈtaɪs] - (verb) - To attract or tempt by offering pleasure or advantages. - Synonyms: (lure, attract, tempt)

...designed to make racing more competitive and to entice new manufacturers and investors.

7. emissions [ɪˈmɪʃənz] - (noun) - The production and discharge of something, especially gas or radiation. - Synonyms: (discharge, release, emanation)

Rules on net zero exhaust emissions come into play.

8. protest [ˈproʊtɛst] - (verb) - To express an objection to what someone has said or done. - Synonyms: (object, challenge, complain)

If someone's got something, you decide whether you protest it or you copy it.

9. aerodynamics [ˌɛroʊdaɪˈnæmɪks] - (noun) - The study of the properties of moving air, and especially of the interaction between the air and solid bodies moving through it. - Synonyms: (fluid dynamics, airflow, aviation science)

To develop the aerodynamics of the car.

10. relentless [rɪˈlɛntləs] - (adjective) - Unyieldingly severe, strict, or harsh; unending in pursuit. - Synonyms: (persistent, continuous, unremitting)

It is relentless all the time.

The business of Formula 1 - inside McLaren HQ - FT Scoreboard

It's known as the pinnacle of motorsport. The fastest, the most technically advanced, with a long, glamorous, but sometimes controversial and checkered history. And more than 70 years since the first race, Formula one is undergoing a kind of revolution. New rules, new tech, new teams, and a surge in popularity. But what does it take to build an F1 team? To find out, we're leaving the drivers on the track to go behind the scenes at McLaren HQ. They're celebrating their 60th anniversary and trying to rebuild into a championship-winning team.

This is Zak Brown, a former racing driver who then founded the world's biggest motorsports marketing agency. When he joined McLaren as CEO in late 2016, the car and the business were both struggling to compete. morale was very poor. Everything was really poor. You know, when I entered, it was our worst year in the history of McLaren, finishing 9th in the championship. We had very little in the way of sponsorship. We had really lost our way. We were a struggling Formula One team.

McLaren's glory days were in the eighties and nineties, with drivers like Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna. It hasn't won the constructors championship since 1998 and the drivers championship since 2008. With Lewis Hamilton, winning brings glory, more prize money and bigger commercial deals. In 2022, McLaren finished a disappointing fifth out of the current list of ten teams and parted ways with Daniel Ricciardo after the driver team combination failed to live up to its promise.

But Brown says they've come a long way. I now fast forward. We have a car with some of the best partners in the world, the Googles, Coca Colas, Dells, Cisco, Goldman Sachs. We're back to winning races. At this point. It's only been one close call in one other race, but we're getting back towards the front. In 2017, Liberty Media became F1's new owners in an $8 billion deal. Under the American media group, revenues have increased $1.8 billion in the first nine months of 2022, versus $1.5 billion in the same period in 2019, the year before the pandemic hit, they've introduced a number of changes designed to make racing more competitive and to entice new manufacturers and investors. These changes included cost cap for spending on the car, which was reduced to $135 million this year.

I think a cost cap was critical. All these Formula One teams were losing a lot of money, and it was kind of a game of who can afford to lose the most. You see the value of these franchise now growing rapidly, as they should be on par with the NFLs and the Premier League teams, given the size and stature of our sport.

In F1, the drivers attract a lot of the hype. McLaren will be relying on 23-year-old British Belgian racing driver Lando Norris and rookie Australian Oscar Piastri. But what about the rest of their 700 strong team? In the race bay, mechanics are building the new car. Teams keep their tech top secret, so we're told not to film under the show.

I'm Jono Brooks, director of Formula One build here at McLaren. Our race really starts as soon as the checkered flag falls at the previous race. The cars get back here as quickly as possible. We do everything that we need to do to the cars, upgrade them, swap parts out, reliability fixes, and then we get the cars back out to the race team, where they get built up at the track.

Hi, I'm Spencer Ford, head of metallic machining and additive manufacturing in the machine shop. They make all the metal components for the cars, so we have a mix of five axis machines and also multitasking lathes. And we use a variety of those to make the parts in the most appropriate, fastest way we can. Parts for the bodywork, suspension, gearbox, from the smallest washer to the largest suspension component. In this clean room, the team is producing carbon fibre components used in the chassis, wings and gearboxes.

My name is Rossford. I am the director of composites manufacturing at McLaren Racing. Anything produced out of carbon fibre, we can do in this room. It's quite a simple process. We do lots of it through layers and layers of pre-preg carbon fiber. It's built up with lots of thin layers of carbon. We lay them on one on top of the other in an organized manner. We cook them in a large pressure cooker and they'll come out and we'll get solid carbon fiber components that we can then use to make fast, light, very strong parts for our Formula one cup.

The final step is laminating where the all-important sponsorship stickers are added. Nowadays, they use vinyl wrap, not paint. It saves on weight, but also makes the design adaptable. The sticker on the car is almost to let everyone know that we have this great partnership. But what goes on behind the scenes, the amount of business that we've driven for our business-to-business partners, introducing them to governments and other Fortune 500 companies, to doing a lot of business with them ourselves, to helping them build their brand.

Andrea Stella is McLaren's new team principal. So what's his role? You have to make sure that these 700 people are all aligned in what is the vision, the mission, the objectives? And all this needs to be incredibly simply stated, make sure that everyone is on the same page.

Under Liberty Media, the vision of F1 is expansion building on a global fanbase. Human rights groups have criticized the sport's decision to host races in Qatar and Saudi Arabia as it pushes into the Middle East with accusations of sports washing. But F1 also has its sights on the US this year. A Las Vegas Grand Prix is on the calendar to add to Miami and Austin, and the number of US viewers is on the up. The sport has also been boosted by the Netflix show Drive to Survive, which taps into the drama on and off the track.

2022 represents a new dawn for Mo, the biggest overhaul regulation have ever had. Why the fans have responded, and we found so many new fans, is we've let people in behind the scenes of how actually a Formula One team operates. There's always an element of emotions and passions that drive individuals. I'm sure Drive to Survive is playing this element in the new generation, which is great to see.

It's not just the drivers who thrive on passion and competition. At McLaren HQ, everyone is working with the aim of taking on leading constructors Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes. The stakes are high. US investment group MSP Sports Capital is putting 185 million pounds into McLaren to help fund their return to the top. It's allowed the team to spend on a new wind tunnel to develop the aerodynamics of the car. But the tunnel isn't ready just yet and will take time to pay off.

If you don't go to the limit in terms of capitalizing on your potential. Simply, you cannot be competitive to score podiums or win in Formula One, we always have to constantly look at ways that you can get a competitive advantage on the other teams, and everyone is trying to do that. And it's not just technical, it can be politics as well. If someone's got something, you decide whether you protest it or you copy it. You're a competitor in a really competitive, world-class sport, and if you. If you are not running all of the time, you're just standing still. And if you're standing still in Formula One, you're at the back of the grid.

So it is relentless all the time. Things get heated, but that's the nature of what we do. Just like the drivers are in competition with each other, I'm in competition with the build director at other teams. We get judged every two weeks on our performance, which is unique in business. The whole team's really excited to see. See their parts performing on track and obviously running reliably.

So we are probably the really fast legs under the pond. When a duck's swimming and you only ever see the beautiful duck at the circuit. But yeah, we are running really fast here, collaboratively working together to make sure this all happens and they can go and race cars each weekend. It's a hundred lap fuel. Scenic but dangerous. F1 is a sport where history becomes legend. But what of the future? Ford will re-enter the fray in 2026. It's hoping to showcase its technology as rules on net zero exhaust emissions come into play and F1 as a whole has pledged to go net zero by 2030.

However, it's not clear how this can be achieved not only because of race emissions, but also because of the carbon footprint caused by F1's huge traveling circus, moving people, cars and equipment by land, sea and air to more than 20 races around the world. One thing that is clear is that if McLaren is going to start winning championships, it needs to develop as well as race faster than the competition. Trying to close the gap to catch our competition means we're going to have to actually out-develop them because they're not sitting still. You actually need to start thinking about the 26 car. That's where we want to put the team in condition to have more capacity to deal with these challenges because that's what's required if you want to compete at the top.

History echoes through the sport, but it takes fast legs under the water to keep a team heading in the right direction for the future.

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