Official 2024 Italian Grand Prix Thread ***SPOILERS***

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Forester1965 said:

vaud said:

Why would you think he was just a marketing guy? He raced for 10 years at a pretty high level, including Indy Lights, German F3, GT2 and GT3... like Horner and others he might not be F1 grade but he is not a shabby driver.

How good or interested he is at driving is kind of irrelevant to his strategy as an executive. You can be a racing enthusiast and marketer whose business strategy is one of building a brand ahead of racing performance all at the same time. Until this season McLaren have kind of pottered about being social media slappers without much to show for it on the tracks their teams race on. This season is different hence my comment above.

I think Flavio Briatore proved decades to go that you don’t need to be a racing driver or engineer in order to run a successful F1 team.

[Hustle_]

vaud said:

Forester1965 said:

Zac Brown has defied my expectations and built a really strong team. I thought he was only really a marketing guy and happy so long as the team got plenty of exposure and I was clearly wrong. Bravo.

Why would you think he was just a marketing guy? He raced for 10 years at a pretty high level, including Indy Lights, German F3, GT2 and GT3... like Horner and others he might not be F1 grade but he is not a shabby driver.

That is how he was introduced to us. On Drive to Survive he said that he was a commercial guy with a job to do before he talked about the fact he is a 'racer'. When he joined Mclaren they had a blank car- commercial was the priority. I remember the media around the sport towing a similar line at the time.

I think Zak has spent the past 25+ years under no illusion that his main contribution to the racing business is going to be commercial.