Brown, McLaren Racing’s CEO, said he would expect the pair to “swap paint again at some point” after Norris hit into the rear of Piastri in Canada in June. But he added: “I don’t think they’ll fall out properly because of the communication, trust and respect we all have, and they have for each other. We’re lucky to have the two personalities that we have. We enjoy the challenge. I’m excited to see them racing against each other.”
Norris sliced Piastri’s advantage back to nine points by winning Sunday’s Hungarian Grand Prix, the final round before F1’s summer pause. The racing resumes at the Dutch Grand Prix on 29-31 August, and Brown asserts that he is confident their fight will be fair.
“I’ve said to each of them separately, windows of opportunity, has your teammate ever done anything to get under your skin? ‘Never. ‘ And that’s what they both said,” Brown stated.
“So there’s competitiveness smouldering. We’re not seeing any tension. As the championship heats up, I’m certain that tension will increase, but like Montreal – I’m happy we got it out of the way, because it was a non-event, Lando dominated it, Oscar recognised, it was an error.”
Brown indicated that while he is expecting the two drivers to end up bumping into each other once again, he was “very sure it won’t be intentional. He went on to say: “I’m sure they’re never going to drive one another off the circuit, and that’s where you run into ill will.”
And he said McLaren would handle any tension that develops in the same manner that they have handled the drivers’ relationship up to this point. If something comes up, we’ll address it,” he said. “And how we go about things, which is [in] an open, honest, deal with it immediately [way].
“It looks from the outside in like, when you’ve witnessed fights between other team-mates, you’ve sort of seen it coming, and you sort of go like ‘have they latched on to that, or are they just sort of letting it snowball?’
“We will burst the balloon off immediately if we feel that anything is boiling over, but we’ve not seen any of it. It was important for McLaren that the two should be on good terms, according to Brown, as both have long-term deals.
“They are going to be racing against one another for a long time in the same team,” he said, “so it is crucial that the relationship continues to build, because the relationship’s not just concerning this year, but it carries over into next year, and they are going to be together for a long time. Brown thinks Red Bull’s Max Verstappen is still in with some hope of the title, even though the Dutchman is 97 points behind Piastri.
But he indicated that if it reaches a situation where the championship is evidently between only the two McLaren drivers, he and team principal Andrea Stella intend to sit down with Norris and Piastri and talk about how to deal with the unavoidable scenario where one of them takes the title and the other loses it.
Brown stated: “They both can smell the championship, and only one of them can get it, so I’m sure it’ll be tough on the one that doesn’t get the championship, if the other one does.”.
“We’ll just sit down and properly have a chat, and go: ‘Right, one of you is going to win, and it’s going to be the best day of your life, one of you is going to lose, and you’re going to be [devastated], how do you want us to deal with that, how do you want us to behave?
“We’ll be very mindful of that strategy, because that’s how we believe it comes back to considering our people. Brown dismissed as “not accurate” what he described as “the narrative” about Norris that he was mentally weaker than Piastri.
“Lando’s open, he kind of wears his heart on his sleeve, so to speak,” Brown said. “Everybody’s different, but he’s in a fantastic place. I’ve never seen him in a better place. He’s doing a terrific job.”
He likened the present criticism of Norris to one earlier, where certain onlookers alleged he could not win from pole position – after a few wins were snatched away last season. Brown added: “The, he can’t win from pole start, now that he’s won four, or five races, from pole, no one seems to be mentioning that.”
