McLaren boss says Piastri-Norris crash will be a 'non-event'. Really...?
F1
Zak Brown is still adamant on his approach that Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri are ‘number ones’ at McLaren. But how long will it be before history repeats itself and takes a sour turn?
Norris and Piastri are yet to clash on track this year
With a third victory in five races, Oscar Piastri knocked Lando Norris off the top of the F1 championship standings in Saudi Arabia to take a 10-point lead.
Closely matched and in identical cars, both team-mates know that every point could count this season: the duel is set to continue in Miami, but we’re still waiting for the title battle to truly erupt where it really matters — on track.
It’s not just the fans who want to see the team-mates go wheel-to-wheel: McLaren Racing boss Zak Brown is also anticipating the prospect of watching the championship fight in real-time.
“We have got our two number ones,” he told F1 TV after the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix. “They are equal, right? They race each other hard and I think that we are yet to see them really have an epic battle. I think that day is coming and I am looking forward to it.”
Brown’s enthusiasm comes despite the knowledge that, at some point, the fight for the title is likely to bring both cars into contact.
“I know everyone is waiting for that big moment. I think it is going to be a bit of a non-event, and internally we know it’s more of a ‘when’ than an ‘if’.
“We have two great grand prix drivers racing hard next to each other, the majority of the time something is going to happen but that’s racing.”
Norris was too far behind Piastri in Jeddah to be a problem for McLaren
Grand Prix Photo
His determination to give both drivers equal treatment will be cheered by fans, but in a season that looks like it’s McLaren’s to lose, could that “non-event” lose it the title?
It would not be the first time.
The Saudi Arabian Grand Prix made McLaren’s dilemma clear. Faster than Piastri in the first Q1 stage of qualifying and fastest of all in Q2, Norris then hit the wall in Q3, leaving him tenth on the grid. A determined drive to fourth underlined the threat he could have posed during the race to his team-mate, who may be less experienced (by four full seasons), but looks at home at the front of the grid, with his calm and conscientious approach to racing, as well as his natural skill and speed, giving him a a maturity that far exceeds his 24 years of age.
Both drivers claimed their first grand prix wins last year and are now on five victories apiece, although Norris has the edge in overall results, having finished on 35 occasions compared to 16 times for Piastri over the past three seasons, including Piastri’s rookie year.
Brown believes a clash between his drivers is a matter of when, not if
Grand Prix Photo
Neither driver will want to give an inch when there’s a world championship at stake, but McLaren knows all too well the risks that duelling team-mates bring. In 2007, Fernando Alonso and a rookie Lewis Hamilton became locked in an increasingly bitter title battle. As the McLaren team-mates actively hampered each other, Ferrari’s Kimi Räikkonen picked up three wins in the last four races to snatch the championship by a single point — just ahead of Alonso and Hamilton who were tied on 109 points.
McLaren benefitted from the same effect back in 1986 at the final round of the season. Championship leader Nigel Mansell’s tyre famously blew out on Adelaide’s Brabham Straight, triggering Williams to call his team-mate, Nelson Piquet, in for a tyre change. That gave McLaren’s Alain Prost the lead, and he duly won the title by two points. However, the seeds had been sown throughout the season, with the Williams drivers splitting the points between them, claiming nine of the 16 race wins.
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Outside of F1, the most recent example comes from last year’s Formula E season where Jaguar TCS Racing had two of the best drivers in the all-electric championship, who were left to fight their own way to the title. What happened next included countless uncomfortable radio calls, awkward post-race interviews plus Nick Cassidy and Mitch Evans going into the season finale with respective chances to become champion – yet both left empty-handed.
Take a look at the current championship table and the risk is obvious: Max Verstappen sits just 12 points behind Piastri and two behind Norris in the current championship standings. While his Red Bull’s pace may be intermittent, he’s still managing to wring out enough performance to keep himself in contention. Watching, waiting for the moment when the McLarens clash in a cloud of carbon fibre, giving him the chance to take 25-points over his rivals.
Will Zak Brown be eating his words as he sits head-in-hands on the pitwall, as live TV shows the wreckage of two McLarens? Or will the team’s free-wheeling approach give way to a more pragmatic view as the season goes on — just as it did last year when Norris got the nod over Piastri thanks to a lead established early in the season.
All the more reason, perhaps for the McLaren drivers to fight tooth and nail at the earliest opportunity.
