McLaren would rather lose the world championship by a point than favour one of their drivers against Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, the Formula One team’s CEO Zak Brown said on Thursday.
McLaren’s Lando Norris leads Australian teammate Oscar Piastri by a point in the drivers’ standings with four rounds, including Sunday’s Sao Paulo Grand Prix and Saturday sprint, remaining.
The team have already won the constructors’ title for the second year in a row but have not won both championships in the same year since 1998.
Verstappen, chasing his fifth title in a row, is 36 points off the pace and closing in after slashing the gap from 104 at the end of August, while McLaren’s pair have taken points off each other.
The Dutch driver’s return to contention has reminded some of the 2007 season won by Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen, who finished strongly and ended up beating McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso by one point.
“We’re aware of 2007,” Brown told Formula One’s Beyond the Grid podcast on Thursday. “But we’ve got two drivers who want to win the world championship. We’re playing offence; we’re not playing defence.
“I’d rather go with ‘We did the best we can, and our drivers tied on points, and the other guy beat us by one’ than the alternative,” he added.
“Which is telling one of our drivers now, when they’re one point away from each other, ‘I know you have a dream to win the world championship, but we flipped a coin and you don’t get to do it this year.’
“Forget it. That’s not how we go racing.”
Norris has beaten Piastri in the past five races, a situation that has already led to online conspiracy theories about McLaren potentially favouring the Briton at the Australian’s expense.
Verstappen’s father Jos, himself an ex-F1 racer, stirred the pot by telling Dutch media that Piastri should stand up for himself and bang fists on the table.
The Australian, in response, told reporters at Interlagos he was capable of making his point and nothing needed to change.
“We’re open with each other in what we think, whether we think things have been fair, whether we think the right decisions have been made,” he said.
“I respect the team allowing us to both try to fight for the drivers’ championship.”
Verstappen is effectively a one-man team at Red Bull, his points making up 321 of their 20-race total of 346, and does not have to worry about Japanese teammate Yuki Tsunoda taking anything off him.
Brown said he wanted to make sure that if Verstappen were to win, it would be down to him beating McLaren rather than the team beating themselves.
“In the event 2007 happens again, I’d rather have that outcome than all the other outcomes by playing favourites,” he added. “We won’t do it. We’re racers; we’re going racing.”
Reuters
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