Transforming the apps, website and digital fan experience for an iconic F1 team.

The Situation

McLaren Racing is one of motorsport's most iconic and demanding brands. Their fans are global, deeply passionate and hold the brand to an exceptionally high standard — in everything from on-track performance to how the digital experience looks and feels.

When I took on the role of Product Lead at TwoCircles — McLaren's digital partner — the project existed but hadn't yet found its footing. Initial groundwork and early strategy had been laid, but the product lacked clear direction, the processes weren't working, and the design execution hadn't yet matched the standard the McLaren brand demands.

Underneath all of this sat a technically complex integration challenge. The product needed to bring together multiple third-party solutions across racing data, fan engagement, live commentary, authentication and content management — each with its own dependencies and requirements — into a single coherent experience.

The clock was running. The first race of the season was the deadline — immovable and very public.

The Role

I took full ownership across product management, UX, design and delivery — leading the entire TwoCircles team, including engineering, with McLaren as the client.

The first priority was establishing control. I overhauled the processes that were slowing the team down, reset the strategic direction and priorities, and implemented a roadmap that gave the team the clarity to move decisively rather than reactively.

From there, I drove a fresh design execution — one that could hold up under the scrutiny of a brand with decades of visual heritage and an internal rulebook governing exactly how that heritage should be expressed. Working inside McLaren's brand world is not a creative free-for-all. Every design decision has to earn its place against the brand's standards and the expectations of a fan base that notices everything.

At the same time, I orchestrated the delivery of a genuinely complex technical environment. Integrating racing data, fan engagement tools, live commentary, authentication and content management systems — each from different vendors, each requiring careful coordination — demanded rigorous cross-functional leadership and a product strategy robust enough to hold all the parts together under pressure.

The Outcome

We launched ahead of the first race of the season — on time, on brand, and to a global audience of millions of fans.

Since launch, the product has continued to evolve through multiple iterations of both the website and apps, building on the foundation rather than patching it.

The numbers tell the clearest story:

• Almost 50% increase in registered fans since the relaunch of the website and app

• Formula 1's first-ever paid team membership — a commercial model that had never existed anywhere in the sport — launched under McLaren and attracted thousands of paid subscribers in its first month

The membership launch represents something beyond a metric. It opened a direct commercial relationship between McLaren and their most committed fans — a new revenue stream, a new data asset, and a new dimension to fan engagement. Getting there required not just strong design and product thinking, but the strategic conviction to pursue something that had no precedent in the sport.

What This Required

McLaren is not a typical product client. The brand equity is extraordinary, which raises the bar on every decision. The fan base is knowledgeable and unforgiving of anything that feels unworthy of the name. The internal stakeholder environment is complex, with multiple teams having a legitimate view on how the brand is expressed digitally.

Delivering in that environment — leading a full team across product, design, UX and engineering simultaneously, integrating multiple technical solutions, to a hard public deadline, with a landmark commercial outcome at the end — required the full range of what I do.

Strategy without execution would have missed the launch. Execution without strategy would have missed the membership.

The result was both.