McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown says that the team knows that it can open itself to defeating an external threat in a closer title race by not being able to favor one driver above the other, but accepts that if a risk is worth taking.
Lando Norris emerged in 2024 as a possible challenger for Max Verstappen, but McLaren began not to support his championship than Oscar Piastri’s until the last third of the season, with Norris eventually falling 63 points short. Although that title was a long chance, McLaren came to the fore this year when the favorite and Brown says that last season showed that the team would give its drivers as long as possible equal opportunities, even if it could stay in contact in the future.
“We have our faith system and we just keep up,” said Brown. “We stick to our faith system, we are familiar with how we are going to race – we also know that we are not always doing well.
“We had many people last year But Oscar was never more than one race win [from being in the fight]. So we are and will always be and I think we have always been a team with two cars.
“We recognize the consequences of that. Could it be 2007 – forget the penalty, we have two drivers [Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton] that tied up and loses to Kimi [Raikkonen] At one point. We could have won that driver’s championship, but who do you choose? And then you run the risk of the man you don’t choose, he’s gone here.
Having equal drivers who cost McLaren in 2007, while Hamilton and Alonso took points from each other and allowed Raikkonen to beeping for the title, but Brown feels that the long -term benefits outweigh the risk. James Moy/Sutton
“Our drivers are treated fairly well.
“So we know that the team will benefit. They accept that. They are cool with that, and we know the risk of this, if you want, from the director’s point of view, is 2007. But I think the disadvantage of favoring one or the other is one, then it wants to leave – what is exactly what happened at the end of ’07.
‘You put the constructors’ McLaren ‘recognizes the consequences’ of equal driver approach | RACER jeopardize [too]. You see other teams prefer one, and that is beneficial for the driver’s championship and harmful to the constructors’. Both championships are equally important to us. So what is more important? I think if you have honest, just racet, and you have two great drivers, then a kind of constructors will take care of themselves. “
With only nine points that divorce Piastri and Norris championship leader in the rankings after the last time had won in Hungary in Hungary for the 200th Grand Prix victory of McLaren, Brown expects that the McLaren couple can maintain a positive relationship in the midst of this year’s title fight that they have.
“I think you have two great, respectful boys fundamentally, and I think their relationship is the best it is ever today,” said Brown. “So if you look at what way the relationship goes, it becomes stronger every day.
“As Montreal was a good thing from the point of view of a relationship. So although the competition narrows, the relationship becomes stronger.
“It is our culture and the drivers, and I think the combination of the two is why it is so strong. They are going to race against each other for a long time in the same team. It is therefore important that the relationship continues to grow because the relationship is not just this year, it is bleeding in next year. And they will be together for a long time.
“So I think that is our greatest strength at McLaren-what the results on the track and the car produces the entire culture in McLaren, the ways of working, which takes place from the highest levels of the crown prince that of McLaren, and it is all about the people.
#McLaren #recognizes #consequences #approach #director #Racer