Beyond the flag: How The McLaren F1 Team races against the clock every week

In Formula 1, once all the cars cross the finish line, and the black-and-white checkered flag is waved, a new race begins off track.

“We’re racing 24 times a year, all over the world,” McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown explains. “Every race week, we are debriefing and at the same time we’re preparing for the next race.”

The urgency increases when there’s back-to-back races. Then, The McLaren F1 Team only has four days to share and analyze an avalanche of content off track to make data-driven decisions. This intense sprint is just as critical to McLaren’s success as Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri’s driving, though it’s not the story in the spotlight after a win.

In this race, success isn’t measured in laps and points but in split-second decisions that could make or break race day. Dropbox gives this elusive behind-the-scenes work its due in The Race Between Races, a short film debuting September 23.

The shadow race gets some shine

F1 fans are already familiar with the ins and outs of race weekends: Typically drivers and pit crews test their setups on Friday, then Saturday there’s a qualifying run to determine the starting grid before the race on Sunday. Mondays are rest days for the drivers.

But when Piastri asks Norris who he “reckon[s] has the toughest job on the team,” they both agree: “Not us.” F1 fans soon understand why, as The Race Between Races swings the spotlight over to the work The McLaren F1 Team does across engineering, IT, marketing, race strategy, manufacturing, and more—a group of approximately 1,200 people.

“Dropbox has always been about making great work possible, about giving teams the technology and tools they need, and then getting out of the way,” says Dropbox’s chief communications officer Saman Asheer. “This campaign celebrates the unsung heroes of teams everywhere who work tirelessly to make good teams truly great.”

As one of The McLaren F1 Team’s official technology partners, Dropbox supports its digital and commercial teams with seamless sharing; effortless security; and fast syncing, uploading, and downloading across various devices, operating systems, and time zones. These features bring the organization’s hybrid workforce some much-needed reliability and ease. (Many team members travel to race tracks around the world every week.)

Using a fast-paced style befitting a sport that sees drivers reach speeds of 200+ miles/hr, The Race Between Races takes viewers through a typical race week for the team. There are multiple work streams happening at once to deliver the cars to the track and exciting content to fans. Mondays are for reviewing races and content planning, Tuesdays for race prep. On Wednesdays, the team travels to the next race location and build out the garage on site. Thursdays are all about prep: Cars get stripped down and rebuilt within five hours to meet the new track’s vagaries and the team discusses the upcoming weekend’s strategy.

“No matter the effort or mountain that the team has to climb to make a change possible, they show up every week ready to do it again,” Asheer says.

A podium-worthy partnership

When it comes to technological innovation, The McLaren F1 Team has long been a standard bearer. Now, every car on the track has approximately 300 sensors sending 250 million+ performance-enhancing data points to their respective teams in real time.

In a sport where the difference between winning and losing can come down to a millisecond, The Race highlights why speed in data collection and processing is at a premium. The McLaren F1 Team creates terabytes worth of photography and video every race week.

“With the volume of content we handle, the ability to approve in real time using the Replay tool for online editing and approvals is game-changing for me and the team,” explains Lou McEwen, Chief Marketing Officer, McLaren Racing.

“There's only 24 hours of the day, seven days in a week,” says Zak Brown. “So I think Dropbox plays a very pivotal role in increasing your bandwidth.

“You can't create more time in the day,” he adds. “All you can do is become more efficient.”

Want to see the race few get to see? Get your front-row seat to The Race Between Races: Watch the short film below.