Zak Brown says McLaren felt like Darth Vader when he arrived, turned it into Luke Skywalker

McLaren was born back in 1963 at the hand of New Zealander Bruce McLaren, who started the team with Teddy Mayer, with the new outfit's first Formula 1 race being the 1966 Monaco Grand Prix, which ended with retirement.

Since then, McLaren has come a long way with 10 F1 Constructors' Titles and 13 Drivers' Crowns while going through barren periods along the way.

Brown joined McLaren when they were going through a rough patch in the last days of Ron Dennis' reign, and in 2018 became CEO.

After that, Brown set out rebuilding the team, a process that took years with many setbacks on the way until the outfit finally won the 2024 Constructors' Title and followed that up with a Title double in 2025 with Lando Norris taking his maiden F1 Title.

Speaking at an Autosport Business Exchange conference during the 2026 Miami Grand Prix and quoted by Reuters, Brown recalled: "Our factory is amazing. It kind of ​looks like Star Wars.

"I felt we were Darth Vader. We were dark; we weren't very warm. And it was like, 'Let's go over to the Luke Skywalker side and be warm and welcoming and ​inclusive.'

"I think about my first day joining," the American told reporters in Woking last month, describing the grey environment set by Dennis. "It was a dark environment, and that was literally from the paint on the race car being black and ​dark grey to the walls. You could feel it was a cold environment.

"It wasn't ​a happy environment. The partners weren't happy, our drivers weren't happy, the majority of our race team wasn't happy. A lot of conspiracy theories running around.

"I ‌think we're ⁠a much more vibrant team now. There was a huge amount of talent in here. It was just about unlocking it, providing motivation, excitement, bringing some fun back," he explained.

Brown was behind the move from the black, grey, and chrome liveries to the "Papaya" and mentioned an incident.

He said: "Someone said to me at the ​time 'you're only doing ⁠that because that's what the fans want'. I was, like, 'Trick question? That's why we're doing it'."

Brown then concluded: "We've got the team ​working really well together. We've been very stable. We've all been together for quite some time."

Only Ferrari have more Grand Prix starts than McLaren, over 1100 of them.