McLaren’s CEO Zak Brown heaped praise on Andreas Seidl saying he is ‘the best Team Principal in the pitlane’.
Brown joined McLaren as Executive Director back in 2016 and has overseen a remarkable upturn in fortune for the Woking-based squad, cumulating the team finishing in the top three in the Constructors Championship last season – the best it had achieved since 2012.
The McLaren boss made a number of key personnel acquisitions including Seidl from Porsche’s LMP1 programme – Brown says he is the ‘best in the business’.
“I think the structure we have at McLaren works extremely well for us,” said Brown to Motorsport.com. “Andreas and I have an outstanding working relationship. I think it’s extremely clear what my role is, what Andreas’ role is, and it is very clear to the team too.
“My job as CEO of McLaren Racing is to field the most competitive, financially sustainable racing team, not only in F1, but anything else that we may venture into like IndyCar etc.
“I think my job is to get the best people in the business, and I think we’ve done that. I think Andreas is the best team principal in the pitlane, in my humble opinion.
“I don’t know how to run an F1 team, it’s not my competency. That’s what Andreas is awesome at. So my job is to give him the freedom, the support, and the financial resources to allow him to do his thing. So Andreas has full authority to run the F1 team as he sees fit.”
Seidl, who previously worked in F1 as part of BMW’s programme, explained that the freedom he enjoys under Browns leadership enables him bring the team success and it helps that both of them see eye-to-eye.
“I think it’s very important, and crucial to the success of an F1 team, to have clear responsibilities, and also clear accountabilities,” he explained.
“I’m very happy with how we have defined responsibilities within McLaren Racing, and I’m very happy with Zak being the CEO of McLaren Racing, and being my boss also.
“He gives me in the end, the freedom and the support I need in order to bring my style and my experience and my way of how I want to set up an F1 team and lead it. And that’s simply great.
“We are aligned on a lot of topics in terms of how we see the steps we have to make within the team. I think we can also see in the last three years that we already could make some good steps. But we also know that we are far away from where we want to be in a few years’ time.”
