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Sports EdgeWELL POURSeptember 13, 20263 min readAd-free
Harrison Barnes visits McLaren F1 paddock at Monza, third NBA player spotted this season
The Spurs guard's Saturday appearance follows a pattern: F1 is now NBA front-office recruitment theater.
Sports Edge deskSports Edge · Huang GoodmanSource: McLaren Racing ↗
In plain words
Barnes's Monza visit follows McLaren's pattern of converting athlete paddock access into US commercial deals within 60 days.
33
is in his
13th
NBA season and earns approximately
$18 million
this year on a two-year deal signed in 2024
14
athlete visits this season across its paddock and technology…
San Antonio Spurs guard Harrison Barnes spent Saturday in the McLaren Racing paddock at Monza, walking the garage floor during first practice and qualifying for the Italian Grand Prix. McLaren confirmed the visit through its official team channels. No deal was announced.
Barnes, 33, is in his 13th NBA season and earns approximately $18 million this year on a two-year deal signed in 2024. He previously played for Golden State, Dallas, Sacramento, and joined San Antonio in a February 2025 trade. McLaren has hosted 14 athlete visits this season across its paddock and technology campus in Woking—up from 8 last year—but Barnes is only the third NBA player after Milwaukee's Giannis Antetokounmpo in Miami and Utah's Lauri Markkanen in Monaco.
The visit matters because it signals two things. First, McLaren is still building its US athlete pipeline even after securing a $350 million sponsorship renewal with Google Cloud in April. NBA players carry family-office cash and board relationships that F1 teams increasingly value for stateside expansion as Liberty Media adds 3 more US races by 2028. Second, Barnes himself has become a visible off-court investor since co-founding a venture fund in 2022 that backed sports-tech companies including a wearables startup McLaren Applied uses for driver biometrics. His presence suggests either a personal investment conversation or brand ambassador positioning ahead of the 2026 Las Vegas Grand Prix, which falls during NBA's November schedule and where 9 current players attended last year's race.
McLaren CEO Zak Brown has run this playbook before. After hosting Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones in 2023, the team landed a $15 million co-marketing agreement that put McLaren branding on AT&T Stadium's F1 viewing suites. Brown's strategy is to convert paddock tours into commercial relationships by demonstrating McLaren's data operation—he walked Barnes through the race engineering room, not just the pit wall photo op. The team's US sponsorship revenue grew 41% year-over-year in 2025, and 6 of those deals originated from athlete introductions rather than agency pitches.
Barnes arrived wearing a McLaren team polo, which means someone inside the organization shipped him apparel before the weekend. That detail is not incidental. McLaren's athlete relations team, expanded to 4 people in January, now pre-qualifies guests by net worth and business adjacency before extending paddock invitations. They coordinate wardrobe, travel, and post-visit follow-up calls within 72 hours. Three previous athlete visits this season converted to either equity conversations or paid ambassadorships within 60 days.
Watch for Barnes to surface again in Austin during the US Grand Prix in October, which coincides with NBA preseason and is 190 miles from San Antonio. McLaren typically uses that race to finalize US commercial deals before the fiscal year closes. Also watch whether the Spurs announce any F1-adjacent partnerships before their season opener—the team has been shopping a jersey patch deal since March and has met with 2 automotive suppliers that also sponsor F1 teams. And if Barnes posts any McLaren content to his 1.9 million Instagram followers in the next week, that will confirm a structured relationship rather than a courtesy visit.
McLaren's stock price on the private secondary market has held steady at approximately $4.8 billion valuation through August, buoyed by strong on-track performance and a 19% increase in hospitality revenue. The team has not commented on whether Barnes met with ownership or only operational staff.
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