Zak Brown doesn’t mind a bit of noise around McLaren — it usually means the team is relevant again — but even he sounded genuinely irritated at the idea that Oscar Piastri’s 2025 season was undone by some internal preference.
The McLaren CEO has pushed back hard on the “bias” narrative that gathered pace in Australia last year and, improbably, ended up being aired in Parliament. In Brown’s view it wasn’t just wrong, it was clueless: a loud opinion formed a long way from the reality of how a front-running F1 team actually functions when it’s trying to win both championships.
McLaren’s 2025 campaign was, by any measure, a return to the old standard: a drivers’ and constructors’ double for the first time since 1998, with Lando Norris becoming the team’s first world champion since Lewis Hamilton in 2008. That success, though, came with a dynamic that inevitably invites second-guessing — because for a decent stretch, Piastri looked like the man with the upper hand.
After Norris retired from the Dutch Grand Prix in August, Piastri held a 34-point lead. It should’ve been the platform for a straight fight to the wire. Instead, Zandvoort became a turning point the wrong way: it was Piastri’s last win of the season, and his run-in featured only three podiums across the final nine races. By the time the dust settled, he was third in the standings behind Max Verstappen, while Norris took the title.
That arc — early control, late fade — is exactly the sort of thing that gets reduced to a simplistic storyline. In Australia, it morphed into something stranger: politicians weighing in on whether McLaren had “cost him the world championship”, and another suggesting he’d “definitely copped some raw decisions”.
Brown was asked on Monday whether he expects any edge from the home crowd when the season opens in Melbourne next month. His answer was measured, but the subtext was clear: he’s not losing sleep over it, and he’s certainly not accepting the premise.
“I think fans – put aside countries – all have various opinions in sport,” Brown said. “It can be frustrating when some people – and again, this isn’t country specific – are very uninformed and the statements you see are just ridiculous.
“But I don’t think that’s territory specific. I think, as Oscar has communicated many times, he knows he’s getting a fair shake at it.”
Brown leant into the point McLaren always makes in these moments: fairness doesn’t mean perfection, and it doesn’t mean one driver’s bad luck is proof of a conspiracy. If anything, the sport has a habit of distributing pain generously — and not always evenly — across a season.
“You win some you lose some,” he continued. “Things fall your way, things don’t fall your way. We lost Oscar some points, we lost Lando a lot of points in Holland, etcetera.
“I think we just need to keep our head down, stay focused and the people that matter most to us know that we bring total sporting fairness to our racing team, our papaya fans and our sponsors, family and friends.”
There was also a more pointed barb reserved for the Parliamentary intervention itself — not because Brown thinks fans shouldn’t care, but because he can’t see what an elected chamber is doing trying to litigate race-team decision-making.
“It’s a shame that people in parliament, who I would say are pretty far removed from understanding Formula 1, vocalise things like that,” he said. “I wouldn’t dare, because I’m not knowledgeable, comment on the job they’re doing. But I bet I can make some comments.”
What’s striking here is less the existence of a fan debate — that’s normal when a country has a star driver in a title-capable car — and more the way modern F1 turns team radio, strategy calls and every intra-team exchange into evidence for prosecution. McLaren’s resurgence has put it back under that microscope, and the Norris-Piastri pairing guarantees the scrutiny won’t fade any time soon.
Piastri, for his part, seemed to take the whole episode in good humour when it first surfaced at the end of last season. Speaking in Abu Dhabi, he admitted he’d seen the clips of his name being mentioned in Parliament and found it more surreal than offensive.
“I did see it reach Parliament. That’s quite impressive,” he said. “I think the support from back home has been really special. I obviously don’t see a huge amount of it.
“I’ve not being back to Australia since the grand prix [in Melbourne in March 2025], but I think the fact that Formula 1 and my name – regardless of why – was in Parliament in Australia is pretty cool in some ways.
“A pretty cool thing and I guess it signifies the magnitude of the support and the following that we’ve had back home. That’s very, very cool to see.”
If there’s a real takeaway heading into 2026, it’s that McLaren is now living the reality that comes with being successful again: when you’ve got a car that can win titles and two drivers capable of taking them, every swing in momentum gets interrogated like it’s a boardroom decision.
Brown’s message is essentially: don’t confuse the chaos of a season with intent. But Melbourne will be a useful temperature check. Not for whether Piastri is being “favoured” or “ignored”, but for how quickly last year’s noise evaporates once the lights go out — and the only currency that matters is lap time.
