Zak Brown lands hilarious McLaren joke at new F1 car launch

Zak Brown delivered a lighthearted joke at the expense of McLaren's 2017 F1 car, the MCL32, at the launch of the MCL40, the Woking-based squad's challenger for the season ahead.

Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri will look to defend McLaren's constructors' championship this year, which it also won in 2024, a far cry from the position the team was in only a decade ago, which was the nexus of Brown's quip.

The British driver was promoted to a race seat with the team in 2019, meaning he had three years of experience in F1 before ground effects were reintroduced.

As that era has now drawn to a close, he was asked how the new F1 cars feel — following the overhaul of the championship's power unit and chassis regulations — and whether they remind him of the ones he raced when he first came up from F2.

"It certainly feels different to all the ones that I've raced," Norris said at the launch of the MCL40, which he will defend his F1 drivers' title in.

"So it's definitely more pre 2017-18. So not really like I've driven, but more like... almost like F2 in some ways — in terms of more power, a bit more undergripped, which is it to make it more of a challenge behind the wheel, which is exciting."

"You know, it's our job to drive whatever we get given at the end of the day," he continued as his boss cut him off.

"I sure hope it's not like our 2017 car," Brown joked to a chorus of laughter from Norris, Piastri and team principal Andrea Stella.

The American became the team's CEO the year following that ill-fated season, having first joined the papaya outfit in 2016 as executive director of McLaren Technology.

Whilst the team's recent low point was 2015, when it scored just 27 points all season, its 30 points two years later delivered the same disappointing ninth-place finish in the constructors' standings — McLaren's worst result in the standings since 1980.

"It definitely won't be," Norris said in response before adding: "Yeah, it's exciting. We know we're in a better place than we've ever been, and [I'm] excited to see what the team have put together, for sure."