Brown's huge pay packet tops McLaren stars

Zak Brown has joined the ranks of sport’s top earners, with his salary at McLaren now outstripping even that of his own Formula 1 drivers.

Freshly released accounts at Companies House show the American CEO received just over $50m in 2024, the year McLaren secured its first constructors’ crown since 1998.

Bloomberg reported that the sum for the team’s highest-paid director "jumped from ($35m) the year before", confirming through a McLaren spokesperson that Brown was the beneficiary.

The figure puts him ahead of the pay packets of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, who nonetheless have carried the team back to the top of Formula 1 and currently lead the 2025 drivers’ championship fight.

Overall compensation for McLaren’s leadership more than doubled to $102m, with most of the rise coming from share-based awards, while profits climbed to $50m on revenues of $714m.

The operation is now valued at over $4.6 billion, with Bahrain’s Mumtalakat and Abu Dhabi’s CYVN Holdings set to take majority control. Brown, 53, has led McLaren since 2018, including its Indycar arm, with Bloomberg labelling him “one of the sports industry’s best-paid bosses”.