Seven Tenths of a Second, page 3
And so that Hyatt-Hilton moment is a turning point for me. From that moment onwards, I don’t hide. Don’t hide. I make the problem so much worse by hiding because now the guy at Hyatt doesn’t trust me any more. I should have just picked up the phone and called the guy. And it may have been an uncomfortable conversation but it would have been the right thing to do.
I’ve got a lot of time for people who say stuff to my face that I don’t necessarily want to hear. If people say something to my face, I’ve got no problem. I have no problem if someone tells me they don’t like me. Just have some guts about it.
I’ve got no problem with almost anything. What I can’t have is someone being two-faced. We can agree to disagree. I’ve got respect for that.
Now, almost to the extreme, I tell people how I see it. I do it quickly, I do it transparently. I do it professionally and respectfully. And I think that’s how you’ve got to roll. Then no one can ever accuse you of not being honest, transparent and genuine. They may not like what I’m being honest, transparent and genuine about, but they can’t accuse me of not being straight with them.
I enjoy people that are not like me. I think you want a mix of different people, but I like smart people. I’ve always liked to surround myself with smart people, whether they’re an advisory team, which I’ve had for twenty years, or more junior people. Smart has to be the common denominator.
You can see when someone’s smart and motivated and entrepreneurial and just has the right ingredients. I’ve always surrounded myself with good people.
Does being a racing driver help with being a CEO? Absolutely. I race karts when I’m a teenager. I race in all sorts of different formulas in Europe and in the States. You need to know risk versus reward. When to go for it, when not to go for it. If you crash, analyse why you crash. Get back in the race car.
This is exactly what you’re asked to do as a CEO. You have to be really good at giving direction and taking direction and knowing when to lead and when to follow.
As a racing driver, you’ve got to communicate what’s going on with the car, but you also need to listen to your engineer. It’s a two-way relationship. You have to be very good at communication. It’s very precise, very articulate and clear. You bring the energy. You set the tone in the garage, you set the environment, being a leader. Same thing you do as a CEO.
You make some decisions, sometimes they’re not going to work and you’re going to crash, but you know what, you’ve got to get up the next day and go again and learn from what you did wrong and learn from what you did right. Same thing you do as a CEO.
You’ve got to be self-critical. When you’re in a race car, you’re constantly saying to yourself, ‘I didn’t get on the power early enough, I missed it.’ You’re just constantly talking to yourself and trying to inspire yourself and being critical all the time. Same thing you do as a CEO.
You have to have a blend of technical data and instinct. So, as a racing driver, you have got to take in all the data, all the technology, but you also need to use your experience and not rely solely on the data. Same thing being a CEO: lots of data, lots of information, use it but trust your instinct. A lot of my failings over the years have been when I haven’t trusted my instincts.
You need to be very good at multi-tasking when you’re in a race car – thinking about the car, thinking about the strategy, thinking about the tyres, thinking about who you’re racing. You’ve got a lot of stuff going on. And in the final stages, you need to be competitive as hell. You’ve got to have a real fire and desire to win.
You need the best equipment around you. You need the best people around you. You need to have trust. It’s life and death.
So I find being a racing driver is the same mindset as being a CEO. Do I go for it? Do I not? Be honest with yourself. You’ve got all the data and telemetry so you can’t bullshit yourself.
And I’ve always been very critical of myself. We’ll get this book done and I’ll read it and two weeks later there’ll be fifty things I wish I would’ve said differently.
But that’s just like when you’re racing; you can always go faster. There is no such thing as a perfect lap. Even if you’re on pole, you still could have found something somewhere.
And so that’s always been my mindset: chasing perfection. But you actually never get to perfection. So you never stop chasing because you can always go a little bit faster.
Some people feel threatened by smart people. They feel threatened by ambition and cleverness. They don’t want lean and hungry people around them. That’s not me. That’s the opposite of me. I’ve always wanted help and I’ve done everything I can to surround myself with extremely smart and motivated people who have a lot more expertise in their respective fields than I do.
I always have an advisory board at my old company. I’ve got one at McLaren, too, and it’s pulling on experience. I call those boards ‘teams’. There are people that are smarter, more experienced, have different knowledge. I have my leadership team, the people I’ll take a bullet for, and they challenge me.
There’s a time where I’ll go, ‘Right, I’ve listened to all of you, here’s what we’re doing.’ But there are also times when I listen and I’ll be impressed with what someone says and I’ll accept the point.
The more data you have, the more telemetry you have, the better you can understand how to make the race car go faster. So, if you’re driving a race car and you get out of the car and your engineer says, ‘Oh man, Zak, you drove brilliantly, how do you improve on that?’, that’s no good to me.
I want my engineer to go, ‘Zak, you could have braked a little bit later at that corner,’ or, ‘You were overheating your tyres by doing that.’ I can take that information in and go, ‘Ah, let me try that.’
My theory of life is that a lot of people are driven by insecurity, and therefore they overcompensate and it becomes arrogance. I know what I’m good at, I know what I’m bad at, I know what I’m decent at, I know what I’m not as good as other people at. I know I’m perfect at nothing. I might be the best in my field but I’m still not perfect.
I’m real with myself. And so I’m totally comfortable being who I am. It’s always been part of my sales process. I’m very transparent. I don’t need to lie. I’ve taken risks, but risks I know I can deliver on.
I’m worth a few quid now, as the English might say, and I think I’ve earned every single penny. When I first come to Europe to try to make it as a racing driver, I’m sleeping on an air-bed in the front room of my best mate’s sister’s house in Sheffield. I pay my dues. I do the hard yards.
I think anyone can do what I’ve done. I’ve earned it, so why can’t someone else work their butt off, be passionate about what they do, and just graft and graft and graft? I think anyone can. It’s not easy but there’s not much that’s easy in this life.
When I come into Formula 1 as executive director at McLaren at the end of 2016, Bernie Ecclestone, who has always been a massive supporter, wants to have a bet with me about whether I will last longer than two years. He’s half-serious, half-joking.
There are questions over whether I know how to run a racing team. I don’t think there are questions over whether I know my way around a Formula 1 pit lane because I’ve been around pit lanes for twenty-five years.
But when I come in, some people see me as a suit. They see me as a commercial guy. A marketeer. A dude in a tie. I’m an outsider. They’re saying, ‘What does this guy know about running a racing team?’
What I quickly figure out is you don’t need to know how to run a racing team, you just need to know how to run a business. What you don’t do is try to run a racing team when you don’t know how to run a racing team.
I’ll never compare myself to Ron Dennis, because for me he is one of the three greatest legends of motorsport alongside Enzo Ferrari and Bernie Ecclestone. McLaren win ten drivers’ titles and seven constructors’ titles while he is here.
Ron, Bernie and Enzo created what Formula 1 is today. I would like to be on that list, but I would never dare to put myself on it. But I already feel like the captain of an incredible team that wants to live up to the success that McLaren has had in the sport over many years.
And anyway, it’s hard to compare today’s team bosses with their predecessors. The teams have become far too big for men like Ron to control by themselves. If you want to do it right, you have to have a CEO and a team principal, in my opinion.
Andrea looks after the performance of the team; I look after the rest. I have the feeling that I work for the team and not the other way around. My job is to support Andrea and look after the business.
If Andrea’s distracted by media work, marketing, contacts with shareholders or sponsors, he can’t do the job he does. If you want to be successful, you have to have a culture in which people trust each other and have total focus on their responsibilities.
So I don’t call pit-stop strategies when I’ve never called a pit-stop strategy in my life. I’ve come into F1 and the last thing I want to do is look arrogant. The last thing I want to do is meddle in things I don’t understand because someone thinks that’s a way of stamping their authority. Have the strength to delegate. Pick the best people and collaborate.
I have a thirst for feedback. One time I ask Tom Stallard, who is Oscar’s engineer, for feedback. He says to me: ‘Zak, you’re great on pit wall.’ I ask him what he means. He says: ‘You never say anything.’ We have a laugh about that. He’s right. I take it as a compliment. I’ve been on pit wall next to Tom for eight years and he’s probably heard me talk on the radio two or three times. And that’s when I’m talking to the drivers after the last race of the season, congratulating them.
I don’t disrupt pit wall. There are a lot of people that can’t resist their ego. They want to show they can talk to anybody on pit wall. They want to create a perception that is not reality.
I know not to let my ego get ahead of me. And I’ve got a huge ego, make no mistake about it, but my ego is big enough that it wants to protect my brand. My ego wants to help me avoid making an idiot of myself. I talk to Andrea on pit wall. No one else.
So my ego protects me. I don’t want to be slagged off and laughed at behind my back. That may well have happened over the years but I prefer to try to keep it to a minimum. I’m a very proud individual and the last thing I’m going to do is let my ego get bigger than the team and let that be my lasting legacy in the sport, as we have seen others do in the past.
When JMI is being acquired by Spire Capital in 2008, they commission an analysis of my qualities and my shortcomings. Part of it reads like this: ‘At heart Mr. Brown is a competitor – a man who wants to win and prove that he can meet his goals.
‘There are two types of successful leaders: those who are motivated by the thrill of victory and those who are motivated by the fear of failure. Mr. Brown is motivated by the fear of failure.
‘When he sets his sights on something, he aggressively pursues it, not going off half-cocked but applying himself fully. He strives for what he wants, and he is typically confident that he can get it.
‘This competitive edge and aggressive style have been present ever since Mr. Brown was a child and are still present today. These are two of the key attributes that have made Mr. Brown and JMI successful.’
To this day, I don’t feel like I have a job. I feel like I’ve got a passion. I am driven by doing what I love. I know some people probably have various views of their job. I’m in a very fortunate position and I think it’s allowed me to excel. I love what I do and I think I’ve found what I want.
It’s back at school that I think I learn how to power through failure. Then I find my calling, which enables me to work long hours and be totally immersed in my job. Failure’s tapped me on the shoulder plenty of times and I’ve always powered through it because I want success so badly.
Chapter 1
Taking the Brave Pill – The Mick and Me
I grow up in Van Nuys, in the suburbs of Los Angeles, in the late 1970s. Locally, that means I’m a Valley boy. We move to North Hollywood in the early 80s, when I’m twelve. My dad’s a musician, an arranger, a success and an introvert. My mom’s an extrovert, a social networker, a travel agent, a saleswoman and someone who’s passionate about what she does.
We are a working-class family. In the first house we live in, I share a room with my younger brother, Kasey. My mom and dad are about twenty feet away in the master bedroom, which isn’t really a master at all. In the second house, we move up in the world a bit and I have a room of my own, over the garage.
We are what many people might describe as a dysfunctional family. My mom and dad travel a lot. We never, ever sit down for meals together. But I always feel loved, even if my dad and I never really say we love each other. My mom says it all the time. And if there is something that holds us together, something we love doing together, it’s going to watch and play baseball.
I love baseball when I’m a kid. Really love it. I’m all-in on it, there’s no stopping me. I’m a fan. I’m still a fan. And I’m not content with just watching games on the television, or playing it at school – it’s about the only A I ever get – or collecting baseball cards.
I want more than that. I want to be closer than that. I want to feel more a part of it than that. I suppose I channel my mom. I want to talk to my heroes. So I do something about it.
I call stadiums to try to get a hold of a famous baseball player on the phone. I find out where the teams are staying when they come to town and I go and hang out there to see if I can catch sight of them or speak to them. There are some who aren’t so friendly, but plenty who are.
I call the bowling alley where Stan Musial, who played for my favourite team, the St Louis Cardinals, likes to hang out, and ask them if they will go and find him. I ring Joe DiMaggio’s restaurant to see if I can get a word with him.
Dave Winfield, who’s played for the Yankees, the Blue Jays and the Twins, tells my mom to shut up when she asks if he will sign something for me. And when I hand Pete Rose a baseball to sign, Rose throws the ball right back at me – without signing it.
One summer, when I’m in junior high school, thirteen years old, I start trying to get in touch with Mickey Mantle, my favourite baseball player. Mickey Mantle’s one of the greats. The best three New York Yankees players of all time are probably Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Mickey Mantle. He played for the Yankees his whole career, all through the 1950s and 60s. He won the World Series seven times.
There’s something about The Mick that everybody loves. He’s the people’s champion, I guess. He has flaws and he is colourful and he is dogged and he drinks. And I think all of that makes people think they can relate to him. He is that precious thing in a sports star. He is Everyman.
I’m a great baseball player when I’m a kid. I’m first draft pick in Little League. And even though Mickey Mantle has retired by then, I idolize him. I love the history of the sport and I’m a walking encyclopaedia on baseball. I have a shirt made that has all his batting stats printed on it and, at school, one of the teachers actually starts calling me Mick.
I get pretty good at finding out where players hang out. I’m that kid who loiters in hotel lobbies, getting autographs. I read a feature in a magazine that says The Mick lives in Dallas in his retirement, and that he plays golf almost every day at Preston Trail Golf Club, one of the most prestigious courses in the country.
So I start calling Preston Trail every day. I’ll be put through and I’ll ask if Mickey Mantle is there. Every day, they say, ‘Nope.’ So I’ll call the next day. ‘Is Mickey Mantle there?’ ‘Nope.’ Next day: ‘Is Mickey Mantle there?’ ‘Nope.’ I’m not discouraged. I’m relentless. I keep calling.
I don’t have any concept back then that golf involves playing eighteen holes and that one hole might be further away from the clubhouse than another, and that, actually, a golfer could be a considerable distance from the clubhouse at any given time.
But I keep ringing, and then, one day, I get through to the pro shop at the club. I ask my usual question and, this time, they don’t say, ‘Nope.’ They say, ‘Hold on.’ They don’t even ask who it is.
I wait for fifteen minutes at the end of the line and it turns out they’ve called him off the golf course because they think it’s something urgent. They can tell I’m a kid. Maybe they think I’m one of Mickey Mantle’s kids. Maybe they think it’s an emergency.
Mantle is a hard-living guy and he doesn’t take too kindly to having his round of golf interrupted. He barks his ‘hello’ down the phone like it’s a rebuke. ‘Is this Mickey Mantle?’ I ask. ‘Who the fuck is this?’ Mantle shouts. I tell him who it is and he says, ‘Fuck off,’ and puts the phone down.
I’m in my bedroom in our house in North Hollywood and I start crying my eyes out. This is my hero. This guy is The Man, as far as I’m concerned. And he’s just sworn at me down the phone. I’m inconsolable. My mom hears me wailing. She comes rushing into my room and asks me what the hell has happened.
I tell her the story of me and The Mick. She listens and then she disappears. She doesn’t tell me what she’s going to do. She comes back into the room thirty minutes later and says: ‘Pack your bags. We’re going to the Hilton in Dallas. We’re going to spend half a day with Mickey Mantle.’
It turns out that she’s called the golf club and spoken to him. She’s explained what happened. To his credit, he feels terrible, apparently, especially when my mom tells him he’s my all-time hero. He thought it was a prank call, he says. He says: ‘Can you get on a plane in the next couple of days and come meet me?’ So my brother, Kasey, my mom and I get on a plane to Dallas.
We get to the meeting place before him and the main thing I remember is that he pulls up outside the hotel in a Chevy Nova. I mean, this is Mickey Mantle. I’m not even a car guy then, but I’m expecting at least a Mercedes. So I say to him in a kind of incredulous voice: ‘Is that your car?’
