Jeans to genius: How McLaren’s softer edges are powering a very hard grip on F1
Once upon a time at the McLaren Technology Centre, denim was a disciplinary matter. Turn up in jeans and you’d be shown the door. Literally. Ted Kravitz recounted on Sky F1 that a sound tech was booted from a McLaren launch over the dress code back in the Ron Dennis era. These days? You can wear jeans. And, more importantly, you can win.
That small shift says plenty about the big one that’s taken place in Woking. Under Zak Brown and team principal Andrea Stella, McLaren has built an environment people actually want to work in — and the argument is that’s become a competitive advantage in 2025, right up there with the MCL39’s downforce and driveability.
Brown knows the trap championship-calibre teams fall into. Success paints a target on your back. Rivals sniff around for your aerodynamicists, your designers, your operations leads. Mercedes learned it when Red Bull Powertrains hoovered up engine talent. Red Bull has lost high-profile figures to the opposition. The pit lane never sleeps, and it never stops poaching.
On the Sky F1 podcast, host Simon Lazenby relayed Brown’s message pretty simply: the hardest job now is keeping the band together. McLaren’s been busy on that front. Stella is tied down on a multi-year deal. Aerodynamics chief Peter Prodromou renewed. Rob Marshall joined last year. The continuity around a car that’s been the benchmark more often than not this season isn’t accidental — it’s policy.
Jamie Chadwick, guesting on the broadcast, cut to the heart of it. Results help, but culture keeps people. F1 devours weekends and blurs the line between job and life. If you don’t want to walk into the factory on Monday, the trophies won’t matter for long. By most accounts, McLaren’s a place people do want to walk into.
And that’s where the jeans joke becomes something more than a neat anecdote. Kravitz’s story — being told in 2012 you weren’t allowed to wear denim inside the MTC — was emblematic of a stricter, more clinical past. Today’s McLaren still takes itself seriously, but it has a human touch. Brown’s style is measured but open; the mood music from the floor to the simulator bays is more relaxed, and it shows on track and off. People perform better when they’re trusted, and if you keep the brains, the lap time follows.
It helps that the headline act is behaving like one team. Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri have been relentless this year and, crucially, harmonious. That dynamic matters to everyone behind the garage doors who spends half their year living out of a suitcase. If the drivers set a tone of respect and accountability, the rest of the operation tends to hum the same tune.
The state of play bears it out. McLaren has stacked wins and 1-2s, and they’re the benchmark in the Constructors’ fight with Norris and Piastri leading the Drivers’ battle between them. The team that chased Red Bull hard at the end of 2024 now looks like the outfit everyone else is chasing in 2025. It’s the natural byproduct of an aggressive development plan that landed, yes, but also of a people strategy that didn’t fray when the results finally arrived.
None of this guarantees permanence. Dominant teams always enter a second race: the one to retain talent when everyone’s calling your best people. Contracts help, but culture seals the deal. That’s why McLaren’s “vibe shift” matters. It’s why a jeans policy can become a punchline rather than a principle. And it’s why Brown’s biggest job over the coming months won’t be announcing another upgrade package — it’ll be making sure the folks who conceived it are still around to build the next one.
F1 has a way of rewriting the script just when it seems settled. Right now, McLaren’s writing it their way: fast car, calm heads, no dress code drama. For a team that once obsessed over the shade of chrome on a sidepod, that’s quite the evolution — and for 2025, it looks like a winning one.