McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown says Max Verstappen has shown he doesn’t need the fastest car to win the world championship.
After winning his fourth title in Las Vegas last week, Verstappen challenged Brown over a widely misquoted six-month-old comment claiming the McLaren boss said he could only win the championship if he had the fastest car.
Speaking in an interview published this week, Brown said Verstappen’s success this year demonstrates F1 teams need both a competitive car and a competitive driver to win the championship.
“That’s what Max has shown: Great driver, great car,” he told Business of Sport. “I think when you see great car, not as great driver, Sergio [Perez] – who is a very good racing driver, he’s won grands prix, but clearly not at Max’s level – you can see the difference.
“If Max was in a car that’s not capable of winning, he’ll get a little bit more out of it because of how awesome he is. But he’s not going to take a car that’s 15th and win in it.
“He might be able to take a car that’s third quickest and win it. But you’ve got to have the car, then you also have to have the driver.”
Verstappen and McLaren drivers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri have each failed to reach the final round of qualifying once this year. Perez has missed Q3 on nine occasions and was eliminated in Q1 for the sixth time last weekend.
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Brown said he prefers McLaren’s philosophy of having two highly competitive drivers than having one which is significantly stronger than the other.
“For sure it’s not without its challenges,” he said. “But I’d rather have the challenges of two drivers fighting for a win than the challenges of one driver fighting for the win and the other fighting to get into Q3. That has plenty of downside.
“We’ve got two great drivers with great relationships: transparent, fair. And so I think we can manage through their desire to beat each other because they’re both team players. There’ll be moments, as there have been this year, of high stress. But that’s sport.”
Norris and Piastri’s strengths are “how fast they are and how few mistakes they make,” said Brown. “There’s a lot of fast drivers in Formula 1 but our guys keep it on the black stuff, as we say. “They race hard, they race clean.
“They’re great guys: They’re great with our sponsors, they’re great with our fans. So as I’ve said many times, I think we have the best driver line-up in Formula 1.”
The most significant stress point between McLaren’s drivers the team had to manage this year occurred in Hungary. Norris, their highest positioned in the championship, gained the lead of the Hungarian Grand Prix from Piastri due to the timing of McLaren’s final pit stops, but was ordered to let his team mate through. He eventually complied with the instruction.
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Later in the year Piastri helped Norris by letting his team mate through to win the sprint race at Interlagos, collecting an extra point. Brown said the team keep track of when each has been called upon to assist the other as part of their efforts to ensure the relationship between them is harmonious.
“You don’t take them by surprise,” he explained. “You develop a plan every day. So we’re at the race track on Thursday, we’re talking about what we’re going to do on Friday, Saturday. So good communication, good transparency.
“We do keep score when they help each other out so we try and bring a balance to that. But I think just being upfront and letting them know what our goals are and how their goals fit within our goals.”
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