The critical tasks awaiting the 45-year-old American at Woking following his appointment as the team's executive director...
Monday 28 November 2016 11:27, UK
Find a title sponsor
McLaren have been bereft of a title sponsor since the end of 2013 when their long-term partnership with Vodafone expired. The team's subsequent on-track recession hardly helped in the search for a replacement, nor the worldwide economic recession in general. But Dennis' intransigent refusal to lower the team's 'rate card', comparing McLaren upon his return as chief executive in 2014 to Manchester United and arguing "that requires the correct recognition from a close relationship with a principal sponsor" hardly helped either. It may have also been a pivotal factor in Dennis' boardroom ousting.
Finding the right deal, and the right title sponsor, will be no easy matter but who better to try than Brown, a recognised 'marketing guru', previously responsible for bringing Johnnie Walker and Martini into F1?
Reassure Fernando Alonso
The recent upheaval at Woking, described privately to Sky Sports as 'a bloodbath' and culminating in the forced exit of 'Mr McLaren', can hardly have done anything for morale at the team.
Brown's management style may well ease the tension, especially after the authoritarian nature of Dennis' rule, but ultimately all McLaren's 3,500 employees will care for is reassurance they are on the right path to the front of the grid. Chief amongst them will be Fernando Alonso, entering the twilight of his F1 career and without an F1 title in a decade. The Spaniard warned in August he could quit F1 if he didn't enjoy driving F1's next generation of cars but most suspect that he will be happy enough just as long as the 2017 McLaren is a frontrunner.
Alonso needs to hear McLaren's ambition remains just as intense, and urgent, as ever.
Tidy up McLaren's management structure
While McLaren have confirmed that Brown will 'jointly lead' the F1 team and business alongside Jonathan Neale, there was no mention of either Eric Boullier or Jost Capito in the announcement confirming Brown's appointment as executive director.
Capito has been a curiously inconspicuous figure since his own appointment at McLaren as chief executive of the F1 team in September and quite how - or indeed if - he fits into McLaren's new structure remains to be seen. A dream team of Boullier running the racing team, Brown taking charge of all commercial activities and the Woking born-and-bred Neale acting as facilitator and organiser would constitute a formidable unit.
But do McLaren have another regime set-up in mind? According to their own press release on Monday night, the "process of identifying and recruiting a new Group Chief Executive Officer will continue", suggesting that a triumvirate of Brown-Boullier-Neale isn't, at least not yet, McLaren's own idea of F1's dream management team.
Make a splash
As their recent history of just one championship since the turn of the century after 19 in the previous 26 years testifies, McLaren are an F1 superpower fallen on hard times. Although respectability, of sorts, has returned this season, their humiliation of 2015, when they only out-pointed a points-less Manor outfit cut deep.
Fortunately for Brown, his team already boast a formidable driver line-up in the shape of Alonso and Stoffel Vandoorne for next year while Jenson Button will take on a ambassadorial role - in effect, very expensive insurance against Alonso departing.
But there is still a way for Brown to make a serious statement of intent this winter.
Out of F1 since his departure from Ferrari in April, James Allison is understood to have rejected offers from Williams and Renault before being heavily linked in recent weeks with Mercedes. Using the lure of Allison's previous successful partnership with Boullier at Lotus, if Brown can attract Allison to Woking it would be a decisive - and impressive - first act for the latest post-Dennis era.
Keep the racing team focused
Life on the F1 road can be a hard one, especially at the end of a gruelling, record-breaking 21-race podiumless calendar, but the relentless treadmill of hotel-circuit-airport has at least kept McLaren's racing team detached from the bloodletting back at base.
Brown's next step must be to make the transition of power as seamless as possible without any distraction seeping into McLaren's army of designers and race-team engineers. Although the group's shareholders may well measure the success of Brown's tenure in hard currency, his time in charge will ultimately be remembered for whether or not he succeeds in making McLaren winners again.
After four years without a single win, the clock is already ticking.
