Brundle swats McLaren ‘sabotage’ talk as Piastri wobbles and Norris turns the screws
Oscar Piastri’s lead is gone, the momentum has flipped, and the internet’s tinfoil hats are out in force. Martin Brundle isn’t buying any of it.
After the Mexico City Grand Prix, Piastri slipped one point behind McLaren teammate Lando Norris with four rounds to run, a 34-point swing since Zandvoort that’s put the Australian firmly on the back foot. Max Verstappen, never one to miss an opening, is creeping into the frame, too.
It’s not hard to see why the narrative has gone noisy. Piastri’s been nursing a “strange” handling feel for a couple of weekends and admitted he’s had to drive “very differently” to chase the car. Azerbaijan was messy: two trips into the barriers and a jump-start that looked, frankly, out of character for a driver who’s been ice-cool since day one. That was the first real sign the pressure had finally found him.
Brundle, speaking on Sky’s The F1 Show, cut through the chatter. McLaren, he said, will be tearing through the data, checking chassis, aero fit and setup “ad infinitum,” but there’s no grand plot to hobble one side of the garage.
“I honestly believe McLaren don’t mind which of their two drivers wins the World Championship, as long as it’s one of them — and not Max Verstappen,” Brundle said. The team is spending hundreds of millions and employing thousands; you don’t do that to make one of your cars slower. It’s as simple as it sounds.
What McLaren can’t engineer is headspace. The Oscar Piastri who spent most of the season sounding horizontal on the radio looks a touch rattled. The margins at the front are razor-thin; lose a sliver of confidence and a car that was doing what you asked yesterday suddenly refuses today.
Brundle’s take tracks with the paddock’s read: Piastri needs a clean, no-drama reset weekend. Brazil arrives at exactly the right time. He doesn’t need fireworks; he needs rhythm — get through Friday without chasing ghosts, qualify in the window, convert on Sunday. Do that, and the season that was “astonishing” early doors, as Brundle put it, can snap back into focus.
The other half of this story is Norris. After his Zandvoort DNF, he’s been relentless. McLaren’s development cadence has been ferocious all year and Norris has worked the car into a balance he can lean on, particularly in qualifying. When that happens, he’s lethal on tire management and race pace. And as Brundle reminded, top-tier sport runs on a simple truth: “You’re either giving pressure or you’re taking it.” Right now, Norris is handing it out. Verstappen’s doing the same. Piastri’s absorbing it — and that’s the flip we’ve witnessed since August.
Strip away the noise and the picture is straightforward. McLaren’s car is good enough to win this championship. The team doesn’t care which driver crosses the line first in Abu Dhabi so long as the driver’s wearing papaya. Piastri’s job is to stop fighting the thing, trust his feel, and get back to the version of himself that won early and often. Norris’ job is to keep doing exactly what he’s been doing.
If you’ve been around this sport long enough, you’ve seen this movie. Title runs almost always hinge on a two- or three-race patch where someone wobbles and someone else strings it together. This one’s just arrived late in the year and involves a pairing that’s been largely frictionless to now. The internal dynamic matters: McLaren has managed them superbly so far, and you’d expect that to continue. Equal shot, equal support, no gifts.
One point is nothing. Four races is an eternity when you’re living lap-to-lap and the other garage is finding hundredths. Whether Piastri’s Mexico sting becomes a footnote or a turning point will come down to whether he can make Brazil feel boring again.
That’s the trick at the sharp end: when the world is getting louder, make your weekend smaller. Reset Friday. Nail your marks. Stop the rot. Then let the car — and the season you’ve already put together — do the talking.
