McLaren CEO Zak Brown is still afraid of race cars

And you do what you do when you’re thirteen, you immediately look at the most expensive thing you can buy.

How much money are we talking about here?

I think it was $3,050, or $3,000.

This is not an insignificant amount of money.

I went to the top of the list, which happened to be his and her watches, which came out of my mouth, what would a 13-year-old want from some very nice Cartier watches?

Then I went back to the Long Beach Grand Prix in 1987 with my high school friend, met Mario Andretti, and was so scared. Now I wanted to take part in the race, and I asked him, “How do you start?” “Karting,” he said.

By karting, you mean karting?

Karting, yes. It’s Little League, if you like, although it’s very dangerous. And I thought, “Oh, I know how I can pay for this. I have some watches in my drawer that I think I can take to the Van Nuys pawn shop.” I went and sold it and got some money.

They never asked me: “Why do you have these watches?” Today they probably wouldn’t pass the Know Your Customer (KYC) test at a pawn shop. So I sold it, bought a go-kart, and that’s how it started.

And your parents were like, “Yes, sell these watches, or buy a small car?”

No, I’m not sure I ever passed the idea on to them. It was my hours.

Independent teenager.

exactly. Yes, I was definitely a very independent teenager.

But from there, you already had a career as a driver.

Yes for 10 years. I had done well in karting, so I wanted to pursue my dream in Formula One. Requires care. My family wasn’t in a position to support me much, certainly by racing standards. My mother gave me her salary for one year, which was enough to move to England, which was very nice of her. But not enough to go beyond that. But she was a travel agent, and she’s still a travel agent. She knew someone at TWA who loved racing, so they gave me some airline tickets, which I would then trade and sell, and that’s how I got into sponsorship.

This is a rant.

I would go to companies and say, “Give me 50 grand to go racing, and not only will I put your logo on my race car, and you can get some hospitality, I’ll give you 50 grand in plane tickets to match it.”

It was kind of like, “This is a good deal.” That’s how I started. Then I became obsessed with my racing career and the need for sponsorship. So I just started calling everyone and trying to understand how it all works? I still carry that with me to this day.

You run a small business. I mean you were running your own business

I raced for 10 years, and then when I stopped racing everyone said: “Hey, you’re really good at the sponsorship stuff.” I ended up building what was considered the largest motorsport agency in the world. I was interested in the institutional side of the sport, as well as the sponsors, because I felt that no one was giving them advice. They have a lot of juice in the sport. They are the money. So I thought: “Hey, I can give you great offers here.” I had credibility in understanding the sport, being a racer.