Zak Brown: "We're here, we want to win, and we're here for the long term."

Welcome to the McLaren Racing Center [0:00]

Zak Brown: It's awesome. I feel like a little kid again.

Tony Kanaan: Hello FanAmp community. I'm Tony Kanaan and we are here. We just built a new facility and I'm going to take you guys on a tour, so come on in.

Jamie Little: Welcome to the official grand opening of the McLaren Racing Center!

Kevin Thimjon: As you come into the building, showcasing our drivers. When we talk about McLaren, this is a Formula 1 Constructors' Championship car.

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McLaren’s mission to create a racing legacy [0:31]

Greg: McLaren isn't on a mission to become Formula 1's top team. Sure, winning the Constructors' Championship for the first time since Mika Häkkinen and David Coulthard 26 years earlier was a major milestone. And yes, doing it back-to-back along with Lando Norris’ first Drivers' trophy was even bigger. But, what if McLaren's real mission hinges on more than just their Formula 1 success?

Kevin Thimjon: IndyCar, a Formula 1 car, and McLaren road car here.

Greg: What if it's about creating a McLaren racing legacy rather than just a Formula 1 legacy.

Kevin Thimjon: If we're going to be in IndyCar, we have to be here full time.

Greg: Enter the Arrow McLaren IndyCar team. An essential component of McLaren's strategy to build the global racing brand.

Kevin Thimjon: Tie overall McLaren Racing together.

Greg: Although they've found success in IndyCar, the team only joined the series full time in 2020 and is fighting hard to claim the throne.

Zak Brown: I don't think anyone doubted our seriousness and desire to win the Indy 500 and win the championship. We're getting remarkably close. You know we're here and we're here for the long term.

Greg: Now, Zak Brown and his leadership team, including Tony Kanaan and Kevin Thimjon, are working at light speed to change that.

Lauren Gaudion: We now have a home to do that in.

Zak Brown: It also helps raise the bar for IndyCar.

Greg: They've invested $30 million in the brand-new McLaren Racing Center, and built out the entire facility in six months.

Tony Kanaan: We're here 28 days before the first race.

Greg: The goal is simple: become the team to beat here in North America, because a championship winning IndyCar team is essential for making McLaren the indisputable kings of racing. And as Zak Brown notes, that's good for business.

Zak Brown: No matter how big Formula 1 gets here, having an IndyCar team makes us have that much more presence in North America for our fans to follow us and for our partners to get involved.

Greg: Is this new facility what McLaren needs to not only stand on the top step of the IndyCar podium, but also to stand out ahead of peers like Red Bull and Mercedes on racing's global stage? We want to show you how they leveled up their game and let you decide. 

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What this project means to Tony Kanaan [2:31]

Greg: Why don't we start with 'where are we?'

Tony Kanaan: The most important part of the race shop. It's the car base, where the mechanics put the cars together, prep the cars for the race. That's where the magic happens. So, the car build—it's obviously extremely important for us.

Greg: Take us through this whole buildout. From your perspective. Running this whole team, seeing this all come to life. What has this project been?

Tony Kanaan: The most fun and the most stressful. Like anybody that actually, from FanAmp, that ever moved a house or built a house.

Greg: An apartment, a small apartment in New York.

Tony Kanaan: It's the same thing. Basically, six months, we remodeled the whole thing. This is a completely different building. We spent days, countless days here, just sitting on the floor and building chairs, and that brought a lot of people together. It was actually even more effective than if we just had come to work normally. I was proud, you're looking and everybody is pumped, everybody is trying to help. No excuses. Everybody did what we needed it to do. Everybody wants to win. We want to win. We want to give Pato [O’Ward] that win. So, this is finally our house.

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The biggest upgrades and surprises with this transition [3:33]

Greg: What was the big last-minute sort of surprise? Like, oh, maybe we should have put that together sooner?

Kevin Thimjon: Honestly, for us, the biggest surprise we had was we didn't have an internet connection into the building.

Greg: Ok, that’s a big one!

Kevin Thimjon: That created a little anxiety around here for a few days.

Greg: What about the hardest parts about keeping a race team in race-ready shape?

Kevin Thimjon: Honestly, I think the biggest thing is space. So let me show you a little bit of the upgrades that we were able to do just to allow our team to be more productive. This is where you can see a true production gain. We didn't have room for most of this equipment in our last shop. If we decided we had to update this part, we'd have to outsource it and it would probably come two, three weeks later. Now, our engineering team comes up with the concept, our production team builds it—two to three days it's on the car.

Zak Brown: Our old building was 24-25,000 ft². This is more than three times that size. For me it's all about creating a great environment for the team, the people. That's what we've done at the MTC [McLaren Technology Center]. We've replicated what's impacted our people at the MTC, here. There's a benefit from the teams learning from each other. Our World Endurance team, our Formula 1 team, and our IndyCar team are more connected now than they ever have been.

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McLaren is here to stay and here to win [4:50]

Zak Brown: I don't think anyone doubted our seriousness and desire to win the Indy 500 and win the championship. We're getting remarkably close, but I think it's to send a message that we're here, we want to win, and we're here for the long term. You don't make an investment like this if you're not going to intend to be in IndyCar for a long time. It gives us some optionality to expand in case something like IMSA, which is an exciting series for us. Now we've got elbow room that we could do things like that.

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McLaren’s brand standards and Papaya Army [5:22]

Lauren Gaudion: So we have the team here that is creative in our own ways, and we know the brand standards and we've got effort to be able to add influence. But we have a thousand people in the UK that we're able to tap into and be able to leverage more resources, whether it's the brand creative or whether it's social media. Even our website is all centralized. McLaren's doing even more effort today than ever before to keep the teams unified. So rather than us being the Arrow McLaren IndyCar Team, and then there's the McLaren Mastercard F1 Team, we have those different entities, but they're all able to pull from McLaren Racing resource. So, from a car design, we work with the brand creative team that goes over all of McLaren Racing. We're fortunate that across our three cars, it's all papaya. In IndyCar especially, you don't see that across a lot of teams. You'll see one team, even the shirts that they wear at the racetrack being yellow, and then the next crew on the same team is wearing red and then green. So, for us, we really do look like a Papaya Army.

Greg: So do the fans because everyone literally can buy the same shirt and wear it at any different race.

Lauren Gaudion: You'll see this year that we're bringing more papaya to life.

Greg: I didn’t know you could fit more, to be honest. They were pretty orange—pretty papaya already. 

Lauren Gaudion: Just when you start doubting, you find little corners that you're able to fit it in. But it is as papaya as it can get, which is fun.

Kevin Thimjon: If you want to talk about taking branding all the way. Papaya everywhere.

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How the new race shop affects culture and standards [6:55]

Greg: How does it feel for you, as part of the leadership team, to have a base like this for the team?

Tony Kanaan: We didn't have our house, and you get the other part of the team, the F1, the WEC, and every other team that we have at McLaren, they establish their facility is up to the standards of McLaren. We always felt like we're always explaining to people that came into the old building why we're in that building. We kind of felt guilty, like “We're moving.” So here, it's just like we made it. We're up to the standard now. We're finally all equal. It was just really circumstances, it wasn't because people didn't give us attention. We just had to build it.

Greg: Then flipping that on its head, when those guys come into this space and this is obviously built to help support them, make them successful; what are you excited about them having in this space now, that maybe they didn't have in the 33,000 ft²?

Tony Kanaan: People, we’re the same people. But it's like a new house. You have space. It's very organized the way you want it to be organized. The guys are pumped. I mean, everybody likes buying new shoes, you have a new place, and that is awesome. I think it's an extra motivation. I think creating an environment that is up to the standards that even psychologically we're now equal to the teams that we compete against. 

It's important. Some people think, well, that's materializing. It's not. It's really like when you walk into a building and you go, “Wow,” it changes. It's no different than—we all live in Indy, a sunny day in Indy or a winter day in Indy. You might not want to leave the house or think, “Wow, that's what they say.” Basically, it's the same thing.

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What 2026 means for Arrow McLaren [8:37]

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Greg: When you think about the year ahead, what do you want 2026 to be for the team and this new home?

Kevin Thimjon: Get started, get racing. It's been fun getting this building ready. But man, I think people are like, “Okay, let's get this grand opening taken care of and let's get to racing.” But when we look at the season, obviously Pato has been right on the doorstep. We want him to challenge for wins.

Pato O’Ward: Walking in here feels like we are a championship caliber team.

Kevin Thimjon: Christian [Lundgaard] was a great addition last year. Came on and finished fifth in the series.

Christian Lundgaard: We don't have an excuse now. We need to go out and perform and that's what we want to do.

Kevin Thimjon: And Nolan [Siegel] had a good year for a first-year driver. We've got high expectations for him. The big goals are obviously to win the 500, win the drivers’ championship. We want to have more weekends where we have all three drivers in the top ten.

Greg: Is there a secret party when you get all three McLaren drivers on the podium?

Kevin Thimjon: All right. I just added a team goal.

Greg: I gave you homework.

Kevin Thimjon: Yes, absolutely.

Zak Brown: Very, very exciting. And it's a beautiful building. It's a facility that will give us great operational efficiencies. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

Jack Carney: All right, guys, I think we've had enough. See you next time.

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