McLaren boss Zak Brown clashes with Alex Palou lawyer: 'You are talking rubbish!'

De Marco began to reel off names, new and old, that Brown could have elected to hire in place of the Spaniard, at one point highlighting 2014 Indy 500 winner Ryan Hunter-Reay. Brown replied: “I could have also approached Nigel Mansell, but he has not driven for a while.”

When De Marco mentioned that the American had last won a race in 2018, the McLaren boss queried, “what year is it now?”

McLaren’s case against Palou is partly based on reduced income from one of its main sponsors NTT Data, which has recently announced it will be ending its involvement with the McLaren IndyCar squad following the 2026 season.

The firm was supposed to be funding Palou’s slated No7 McLaren car, which has since toiled in the hands of young pay driver Nolan Siegel.

Brown said that as an emergency option to replace Palou when he announced he would not be driving for McLaren, he made a last-minute “multi-million dollar” offer to Marcus Ericsson to join the team for 2024.

He claimed that, as an Indy 500 winner, the Swede would have been a satisfactory replacement for NTT, but also reasoned that the scenario would have been a compromise and condemned Ericsson’s grand prix efforts: “He wasn’t very good in F1.”

But when Ericsson rejected the McLaren offer, Brown said that he did the”honourable thing” in calling NTT to voluntarily renegotiate a lower sponsorship agreement, reflecting the lack of an A-class driver — even though the company had not yet asked him to.

“You are trying to claim all of this money from our client,” said De Marco, and suggested that Brown was giving the money away.

“I have been doing this for 30 years,” Brown responded, adding that NTT would have demanded a reduction. “I know exactly what would have come had I not said I would make good on the situation”.

The questioning became heated and the tempo increased but Brown, who made his name as an unforgiving motor sport sponsorship negotiator, wasn’t cowed. As the cross-examination became more intense, De Marco said “I am just testing your evidence”. Brown came back with: “I wish you would test my integrity”.

The American was interrogated over his use of WhatsApp’s disappearing messages function, after being ordered to conserve evidence relating to the current case in August 2023. McLaren policy is that staff should use the function, the court heard.

De Marco asked about a conversation with two senior McLaren IndyCar officials. “Do you see that what appears to have happened on 30 October 2023, you have turned on disappearing messages?”

“Yes. Perhaps because it was off,” replied Brown. “Sometimes it turns itself off… it can happen inadvertently.”

Brown said that turning on the function would not have destroyed potential evidence. “As I said about ten times now,” he responded gruffly. “I was compliant in preserving documents associated with this case.”

The case continues.