Zak Brown backtracks on ‘amateur hour’ jab after McLaren’s Sprint self-destruction in Austin
In the space of a few hours at the United States Grand Prix Sprint, McLaren went from a front-row fistfight to a smoking ruin — and Zak Brown went from furious to contrite.
The clash that wiped out both orange cars came at Turn 1, where Oscar Piastri hung it around the outside of Lando Norris for second, then looked for the switchback on exit. As he cut back, he met Nico Hülkenberg’s front-left right where he thought there was daylight. Piastri was flicked up onto two wheels and cannoned into Norris. Both McLarens out. Max Verstappen disappeared up the road and banked the full eight points for the Sprint.
In the immediate aftermath, Brown gave the TV cameras exactly what you’d expect from a team boss watching a double DNF unfold in slow motion. He called it “amateur hour” and pointed the finger squarely at Hülkenberg. By qualifying, though, the McLaren Racing CEO had cooled and taken a longer look.
“I’ve reviewed it. I think I’ve changed my view. I can’t really put that on Nico,” Brown said later, adding that his first reaction came in “the heat of the moment” amid the Turn 1 madness. It’s a rare, public climbdown — and the right one, if you study the onboard angles.
The sequence was classic COTA: wide entry, opportunists everywhere, and an apex that never sits still. Piastri’s move was on — he had momentum on Norris — but the concertina on exit put him right into Hülkenberg’s path. The German hadn’t dived from the car park; he was tracking through his line with Fernando Alonso arriving to his inside. By the time Piastri cut left, the door wasn’t just closing, it was already shut.
Karun Chandhok, on Sky Sports F1 duty, saw it much the same way. He reckoned Brown’s initial blame was “a bit harsh on Nico Hülkenberg,” arguing the Haas veteran — or rather, the experienced German — had “nowhere to go” once Piastri made that sharp left. It wasn’t pretty, but it wasn’t malicious.
From McLaren’s side of the garage, it stung twice. First, because this was a rare self-inflicted zero when both cars looked properly sharp over a single lap. Second, because Verstappen’s clean Sprint win nudged the title conversation back his way with a neat eight-point haul that neither Norris nor Piastri could defend. On weekends like this, you don’t lose championships, but you do hand out momentum.
The fallout inside the team will be more pragmatic than dramatic. There’s no inter-driver blamefest here — the collision was born of geometry more than judgment — but you can bet Andrea Stella will underline the golden rule: don’t turn intra-team aggression into a 160-mph boomerang. Piastri’s instinct to set up the cutback was sound until it wasn’t; Norris did what any driver on the inside does at Turn 1: hold your ground. The third car made it toxic.
If there’s a silver lining for McLaren, it’s that Brown’s retraction cools any simmering narrative aimed outside the team. Pointing fingers is cheap; context is everything at that corner, where the racing line expands to a bus lane and the exit funnels to a bottleneck. In the Sprint’s compressed format, there’s also zero time to reset. One misread and you’re accounting for carbon fiber.
What does it mean for Sunday? The bigger question is whether McLaren can convert the pace flashes that got them into that position into points when it counts. The MCL39 has looked feisty over a lap, but the window has been narrow all season; when it drifts, it bites. Keeping both cars in clean air early will be the quiet priority after this mess.
As for Hülkenberg, he’ll appreciate Brown’s second glance. He’s been around long enough to know how quickly reputations get torched in the court of public opinion. This one doesn’t belong on his rap sheet.
One more note on Turn 1 at COTA: it rewards bravery and punishes optimism dressed up as certainty. Piastri went for a move we’d praise nine times out of 10; this was the one that bit. It happens. The trick now is ensuring McLaren’s only heavyweight fight for the rest of the weekend is with the stopwatch.
