McLaren will let them race: Brown ready to risk 2007 déjà vu as Verstappen stalks
McLaren’s dream season has a familiar edge to it: two drivers in papaya at the sharp end of the championship, and a Red Bull looming in the mirrors. Oscar Piastri leads, Lando Norris sits just 14 points back, and Max Verstappen has hacked 64 off Piastri’s advantage in four rounds to bring the gap to 40 heading into Mexico City. The math says advantage McLaren; the mood says this could get spicy.
Zak Brown’s response? Keep the gloves off.
“I’m comfortable with that,” the McLaren CEO said of the possibility that refusing team orders might cost them the title. “I’m comfortable with that because the other scenario is, how do you take a driver out of the championship that’s competing for the championship? That’s not right at all.”
It’s a hardline, racer’s answer, and it comes with a ghost in the garage. The last time McLaren ran a true two-headed title assault was 2007. Back then, Fernando Alonso and rookie Lewis Hamilton devoured points off each other all season while bristling inside the same motorhome. Kimi Räikkönen played the long game and stole the lot at the final round. Different team, different era, same risk.
Brown’s not flinching. “That’s the risk, right? If you have two drivers like in 2007, where they equalled in points and Kimi barely beat them, but that’s how McLaren want to go racing. We want to have two drivers that are capable of winning the championship,” he said in Austin. “We’re racers. We want to go racing.”
The distinction from 2007 is obvious the moment you step into McLaren’s hospitality. Norris and Piastri aren’t sniping through press officers; they’ve played it straight all year. Verstappen, after winning the United States Grand Prix, admitted the door’s open for a late charge. Piastri, unruffled, noted he’d rather be the one being chased than the one chasing. It’s calm, it’s clinical — and it’s undeniably tense.
This is where team policy matters. McLaren have been consistent: no preference unless the numbers demand it. Team principal Andrea Stella has been explicit that only “mathematics” will force their hand. Until then, equal treatment survives, even if that sets teeth on edge when the margins shrink.
Brown pointed to the unpredictability that makes team orders a blunt instrument. “We’ll continue to evaluate on a race-by-race basis,” he said. “If we get to a situation — and that’s what we did last year in Baku — to start helping Lando, then what ends up happening is Oscar goes and wins the race and Lando helps him. So this is a pretty unpredictable sport. But where we sit right now, we’re going to give both drivers equal opportunity to try and win the Drivers’ Championship.”
You can understand the temptation to intervene. When you lock down a one-two, you also risk tripping over your own feet: strategic offsets that compromise one car to protect another, tense pit windows, and openings for a third party to undercut both. The Constructors’ race can get messy in the crossfire too — as Brown admitted, prioritising one driver can weaken your overall result if it dulls the second car’s Sunday.
But this is the trade McLaren have chosen. The constructors’ haul is one thing; the drivers’ crown — the headline act, the one that stamps an era — is another. They want both. And if you take Brown at his word, they’d rather lose fighting fair between their own two than win by telling one to stand down.
None of which will bother Verstappen. The Red Bull driver’s mid-autumn surge has been ruthless enough to turn a Piastri cushion into a conversation, and he now heads to a circuit that rewards precision, confidence on the brakes, and nerves made of steel. He’s hunting. McLaren know it.
So we head to Mexico with a championship shaped like a tightrope. Piastri and Norris are teammates and rivals, mature enough to keep it clean, competitive enough to push it to the edge. Verstappen has nothing to police inside his own garage and everything to gain if orange elbows touch. If 2007 taught McLaren anything, it’s that one misstep can turn a two-horse race into someone else’s title.
Brown’s prepared to live with that. That’s the point. Let them race, trust the garage, count the points, and take the heat. It’s brave. It’s risky. It’s exactly the kind of decision that decides who lifts the trophy in Abu Dhabi — or watches someone else do it.
