This article is part of our Origin stories series, a look into the backstories of the clubs, drivers and people who drive the sport.
Zak Brown never grew up expecting to become one of the most powerful figures in Formula 1.
He has no racing background nor does he have a university degree. Motorsport wasn’t even his ‘first love’. It was baseball. At one point in his career he slept on an air mattress on the dining room floor of a friend’s sister in England, where he worked for £75 a day.
Brown, who was born in Los Angeles, California but considers himself British given the time he has lived in Britain, got his racing start thanks to winning on a Teen Week episode of one of the longest-running game shows on American television and what advice from Mario Andretti.
Now Brown is the CEO of McLaren Racing – and one of his teams leads the F1 constructors’ standings for the first time since 2014.
“I don’t have a racing background. I didn’t come from a privileged background. We weren’t poor, but by racing standards we were poor,” Brown said The Athletics. “And so I think I was fortunate enough to get where I am today through a lot of help, a lot of luck, but also a lot of hard work. And I think what I have been able to achieve can be replicated by others if you put the time and effort and have the passion.”
“Wheel of Fortune” began in 1975 as a daytime game show on NBC, created by Merv Griffin, who also created “Jeopardy!” designed. Chuck Woolery and Susan Stafford were the original guest duo before Pat Sajak and Vanna White joined in the early 1980s.
The now evening game show resembles the pencil-and-paper guessing game Hangman. Participants spin a colorful wheel filled with possible prizes, such as different amounts of money and danger signs, such as ‘Lose A Turn’ and ‘Bankrupt’. They then try to win by correctly guessing the answer on the letter board letter by letter.
It was at this iconic American show that Brown began to build his motorsport career.
He attended his first F1 race with his family in 1981 and became fascinated by the cars, the sound and the speed. Although he ‘fell in love with racing’, he had no connections to the F1 world. “It seemed very unattainable,” he said, “and (I) didn’t even know how you get into racing, where baseball is quite easy because everyone plays it.”
His father continued to take him and his brother to local races, but baseball still captured Brown’s attention until high school, when the sport became more serious. He couldn’t continue playing because he didn’t go to school that often. He said, “You can’t stay on the baseball team if you don’t get good grades.”
Around this time, Brown finally had a racing connection: a friend’s family was involved in motorsports. But that world still didn’t seem feasible. He was still in love with America’s favorite pastime.
In 1984, the big game show came to town. Children could register and apply to participate in the Wheel of Fortune for Teen Week. Brown recalls that about 50 to 75 students from each school competed in “a dummy executioner competition, doing a little interview to see if they thought you could handle being on TV and so on.” From there, they reduced the number per high school to fifteen. The top fifteen finalists from each high school then underwent more “test and simulated games,” ending with a waiting period. ‘We’ll call you. Don’t call us, and we might not call you either,” Brown recalled.
A lifelong fan of the show, Brown eagerly navigated the process (and the waiting game). The call came a week later: he had called. “Wheel of Fortune” brought back 20 kids and taped an entire week’s worth of shows in one day. But there was a twist: only 15 teenagers could be at the show.
“They need 15 people, but you can be disqualified if you talk to the public or do something you shouldn’t be doing,” Brown said. “So even though you now know that you are in the top twenty and you actually go to the taping, you don’t know if you were among the fifteen or five substitutes.”
He was one of fifteen participants and behaved – and he won the first two rounds. “The Smurfs and Wild Bill Hickok, who I had no idea who that was.”
For those familiar with today’s Wheel of Fortune, you know that the contestants win money or sometimes a vacation. But when Brown played on Teen Week, they chose prizes. A kind of carousel with prizes rotated and the participants were put on the spot to select their winnings.
“They show this big whiteboard, and everything is in order of price, and they take out what you can’t afford,” Brown said. “And so, like most 13-year-olds, the first thing you do is look at the board and just ask, what’s the most expensive thing I can afford? They had to be watches.”
The watches sat in his house for a while, with the intention of selling them one day. A motor racing career was so far removed from him that when Sajak asked on the show what he wanted to do, Brown referred back to his favorite sport.
“Baseball player.”
A few years passed and the watches still had not been sold.
Brown attended the 1987 Long Beach Grand Prix, and one of his friend’s families happened to know Andretti, who won the 1978 F1 world championship. He met Andretti that race weekend and asked him a question that shaped the next chapter of his life: “How do you start racing?”
Andretti’s answer was karting. The racing program happened to contain an advertisement for a kart racing school. Brown then sold the watches he won on ‘Wheel of Fortune’ at a pawn shop in Van Nuys, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, California. He used that money to pay for kart racing school and loved it.
Brown began to progress and win in karting, competing in California for almost five years before making the jump to Europe in 1991, although it was not a permanent move. In 1984 he competed in both the British Formula Three and Formula Opel-Lotus Benelux Series, as well as the North American Toyota Atlantic Series. The following year, he made his Indy Lights debut and launched his own company, Just Marketing Inc.
“When I raced in Europe, ’91 through ’94, TWA Airlines was my big sponsor. I got a little homesick and got a deal to race back to the States. So I went to TWA and said, ‘Hey, I’m out of here. I’m going to race back to the States.’ And that’s when the sponsorship became very successful for them. So they said, ‘It’s a shame you’re leaving. But you have to know all the guys and girls in the pit lane. Can you place your sponsorship with someone?’”
Brown agreed and took on a commission after posting the sponsorship. He realized, “Not only should I pursue sponsorship for myself, but it’s actually much easier to sell to some of the better-known people.” Brown had spent years networking and building relationships, and he asked his contacts about expanding their sponsorship to various motorsports series, such as IndyCar, NASCAR and F1.
“Because they trusted me and I had credibility, that I knew what I was doing from the racing side, people started saying, yeah, we don’t want to sponsor you, Zak, because you’re not famous enough. But if you can get us for Jeff Gordon or Nigel Mansell, we’re interested. And that’s how the company started.”
His company grew along with his reputation for brokering sponsorship deals. But he needed help. Brown hired his first employee and created the company’s name: Just Marketing Inc. Brown said he didn’t want his name in the company, and he wanted “a bit of intrigue,” so he opted not to include motorsports. To this day he still calls Just Marketing ‘a bit of a funny name’.
Zak Brown rode in the Legends Parade during the 2024 Austrian GP weekend. (JOHANN GRODER/APA/AFP via Getty Images)
Brown was unable to continue pursuing a full-time racing career, although he still gets into a car occasionally and co-founded United Autosports with racing driver Richard Dean in 2009. However, Brown continued to thrive in the business world as he grew his skills and knowledge of the commercial and business world of motorsports. JMI became one of the largest motorsport marketing agencies in the world when Brown sold most of it in 2008. Seventy percent of the company went to Spire Capital and Credit Suisse.
Chime Communications bought JMI in 2013 and brought Brown in as Group CEO for three years, which he said was “about two years and eleven months longer than I would have liked.” The role focused on a variety of sports, but he enjoys baseball, hockey and racing.
“I got involved in sports that had no passion for me, and I have always been driven,” Brown continued. “My work ethic has always been driven by fun and passion. And so when I got involved in other sports that don’t tick that box, I felt like I had a job.
At the end of 2016 he had a choice: work for F1 or McLaren. He ultimately decided to join the papaya family and took over as CEO in 2017 at a time when McLaren was in midfield (he finished sixth in 2016). He not only helped transform the F1 team brand, but also took the company to a global level, with the most recent chapter being this year’s World Endurance Championship.
“It was always my favorite racing team and not only did I want to work on the commercial side of the business, which I loved, but I also wanted to be on the competitive side of the business,” Brown said. “So that was something that McLaren could offer me, but Formula 1 as a sanctioning body could not.”
The same characteristics that F1 fans see today are evident in every chapter of Brown. Passion is at the core of his work ethic, and he doesn’t shy away from showing excitement like he did at the age of 13 when he stood on the Wheel of Fortune stage.
But consider this: the story of a prominent F1 leader began thanks to a multi-colored steering wheel, a Hangman-style game and watches he sold to a pawn shop.
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Top photo: Clive Mason/Getty Images