The McLaren F1 Team will zoom to more strategic partnerships with Agentforce.

Manual tasks limited time that could be spent on expanding strategic partnerships.

The McLaren Formula 1 Team is a global icon, synonymous with speed and innovation. Since their first race in 1966, the team has captivated racing fans and become a favorite in the sport. When the Netflix series “Drive to Survive” premiered in 2019, the sport continued to grow , reaching fans in over 100 countries worldwide. This surge in popularity opened the door to new audiences and contributed to F1's growing and more diverse fan base, with 42% of fans now female — up from 32% in 2018 — and 1 in 3 fans under 35.

One part of the team’s mission is to connect with a diverse and younger audience, and they recognize that building partnerships with brands that share these values is essential to this effort. A small team of partner managers handles requests from the McLaren F1 Team’s more than 50 partners, including organizations like Mastercard, Google, and OKX. They manage everything from co-marketing campaigns to exclusive experiences. But much of their day is spent on manual tasks. For instance, when a partner requests trackside experiences, the partner manager has to check the agreement, confirm availability, and coordinate with the Trackside Operations team to secure the experience — a process that takes time away from relationship building.

Partnerships are business critical for the McLaren F1 Team, fueling loyalty among fans and expanding into new audiences. They are looking for a way to streamline partner requests and accelerate lead engagement, allowing their teams to focus on building stronger relationships and driving innovative collaborations.

“If you stand still in our sport, you’re actually going backwards,” said Zak Brown, McLaren Racing’s CEO.

Agentforce will help streamline processes for the McLaren F1 Team partners, accelerating response times and enhancing efficiency. 

For the McLaren F1 Team, a key to building stronger partnerships and making their processes more efficient will be Agentforce — the agentic layer of the Salesforce Platform. For example, if a partner wants to host an event for their customers with a Team Management experience, their partner manager will soon be able to use Agentforce to analyze availability, review the partner’s allocation of rights stored as PDFs in Sales Cloud, and fulfill the request promptly. 

To further assist the partner team, Agentforce will also be able to autonomously manage additional inquiries, such as requesting trackside experiences at a Grand Prix. Instead of partner managers spending time coordinating availability and confirming sponsorship agreement terms, Agentforce will support the team through the process end-to-end. After the partner requests the trackside experience, their partner manager will use Agentforce to validate the number of experiences the partner has remaining in their contract.

And because partner managers are working with VIPs who want answers quickly, Agentforce’s ability to surface up-to-date, accurate information and converse in natural language will be a game-changer.

In the future, the McLaren F1 Team plans to build a dedicated partner portal, centralizing all partner activities in one place — and integrating with Agentforce. In this portal, partners will eventually be able to request everything from content reviews to contract-related questions. These requests will then be handled quickly and efficiently by partner managers, without the need to switch between systems or email threads. This centralized portal will bring everything together, simplifying workflows and making collaboration easier than ever. "With Salesforce, we're connecting with partners and fans in more meaningful ways, adapting to the evolving commercial landscape and changing nature of fanship in F1," said Dan Keyworth, McLaren Racing’s Director of Business Technology, Dan Keyworth.

Smart automation accelerates business development with prioritized leads and personalized marketing journeys.

To continue momentum, the McLaren F1 Team needs to continue driving growth through meaningful partnerships — creating a need for consistent, quality lead generation. While business development managers focus on identifying brands that align with the team’s goals and resonate with their target audiences, Agentforce will streamline outreach efforts and give the team a head start on sourcing, managing, and pitching leads.

Agentforce can reason across key data from Sales Cloud, including company size, industry, and previous interactions, to identify high-value prospects. It will also pull engagement metrics and interaction history from Marketing Cloud, such as past email campaign performance and any feedback received from the prospect, to pinpoint leads with the greatest potential for successful partnerships. For example, if a large retail brand with solid past engagement asks for sponsorship details, Agentforce will prioritize them. Once identified, Agentforce will trigger a personalized marketing journey via Marketing Cloud that sends tailored emails and follow-up reminders based on the prospect’s previous actions, like opening specific emails or clicking on partnership links. These emails will add to the 74 million the McLaren F1 Team has already sent through Marketing Cloud.

Agentforce goes beyond lead generation by equipping business development managers with the tools and insights needed to prepare for meetings more effectively. Its features include intelligent lead sourcing, scoring, automated outreach, and tailored meeting preparation—such as suggesting key talking points that align a prospect’s brand values and target audience with themes like the team’s performance and innovation.

The McLaren F1 Team sees an opportunity for Agentforce to identify strong brand alignment with potential partners — helping frame partnership packages more strategically, accelerate qualification, and empower the business development team to focus on high-priority prospects and close deals faster.

Salesforce’s deeply unified platform, which connects data from all of the McLaren F1 Team’s systems in one place, serves as a single source of truth for their employees. Reusable APIs in MuleSoft bring their data together from dozens of sources — from marketing and merchandising systems to partner and fan interactions — all into a unified record in Sales Cloud. With Agentforce, the McLaren F1 Team will be able to take action on their unified data at scale, starting with partners, in the apps and workflows they already use and love. 

With one platform, the McLaren F1 Team’s partner managers, event ambassadors, and marketing team have access to the same comprehensive view of every fan, partner, and guest. And soon, digital workers with Agentforce will have the same view, allowing them to deliver a more personalized experience at every touchpoint – human-led, AI-assisted, or fully autonomous through AI agents. For example, their leadership team uses Salesforce to track detailed insights and preferences at races, ensuring a tailored, one-of-a-kind experience. Agentforce will prepare the team with key insights ahead of these important engagements, and then autonomously follow up with a tailored offer for each VIP. These are the kinds of seamless, unique experiences that VIPs expect, and Salesforce’s integrated platform makes it effortless.

“Salesforce has helped us improve fan and partner engagement,” Keyworth said. “Understanding our audience is vital to adapt the McLaren F1 experience to meet the expectations of a changing demographic.”