Zak Brown Digs Up Ugly History With Daniel Ricciardo as Bold Move Stirs Up Controversy Among DR3 Fans

McLaren CEO, Zak Brown is arguably one of the most outspoken and visible team bosses in F1 at the moment. The American sponsorship magnate has settled into his duties well at the Woking-based team. Since he arrived in late 2016, the Papaya team has gone from strength to strength. Now, we may know the reason why. Brown isn’t just a man manager like we see. While he makes the all-important decisions on the pit wall, he does like to get his hands dirty, too. This can be evidenced by the fact that he was recently in Barcelona, testing McLaren’s F1 car himself, per WTF1.

Zak Brown has made it a goal in life to stay in racing trim. This dedication to this pursuit was rightly pointed out in a recent Sky Sports segment where the American revealed that he aims to fit into racing cars.

Well, whatever he’s been doing, it’s working wonders! At the Barcelona testing, this was proved by his stint in the 2021 Monza GP winning MCL35. But to add a bit of context to it all, he was running the very same livery that was on the car that day. That’s right, he was in the McLaren of Daniel Ricciardo.Now, this is a very contentious subject for F1 fans over on Twitter.

Fans call Zak Brown out after he parades around in Ricciardo’s prized possession

Daniel Ricciardo’s horrific stint with McLaren came to an end in 2022. Zak Brown’s involvement in the way Ricciardo was let go left a very poor taste within the honey badger’s fanbase. Naturally, seeing Brown in the car that was immortalized by Ricciardo himself in the backdrop of his doomed career with the team, fans were quick to question the rationale.

The reaction of the fans is exactly what Brown had feared the second he had decided to let the Perth-born driver go.

Zak Brown’s fears the post-Daniel Ricciardo era

When Daniel Ricciardo signed up with the resurgent McLaren back in 2021, it looked like a match made in heaven. However, things went sour pretty soon. With one year left on his contract, McLaren told Ricciardo that they would part ways with him. But the public backlash Brown received for it has troubled him ever since.

He was quoted by The Race as revealing, “I think the challenging part is being judged by people that aren’t really close to it. We had a lot of fun together. And we had a lot of frustration together that it didn’t work.”

Brown’s admission should be more ominous than you think. The team couldn’t make it work with a bona fide winner like Ricciardo. Rather, it arguably ruined his career. This underlines a very sinister, fundamental flaw in the team that can potentially ruin stars like Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris, too. If the team wants to win again, they need to learn from the Daniel Ricciardo incident.