Oscar Piastri has never sounded particularly interested in paddock noise, but even by his standards the last 12 months at McLaren have been a proper stress test — and, he insists, one that’s left his relationship with Zak Brown stronger rather than strained.
Speaking after a much-needed return to the podium at the Japanese Grand Prix, Piastri described his bond with McLaren’s chief executive as “very good”, adding that it has “only gotten stronger” through the tougher stretches of 2025. It’s a pointed message, not because Piastri is suddenly chasing headlines, but because the subtext around him and McLaren hasn’t always been kind.
Suzuka, at least, gave him something tangible to lean on. Piastri finished second behind Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli for his first podium of the 2026 season — a timely uptick after a start to the year that was more stop-start than statement. He failed to start the opening two rounds in Melbourne and China, a miserable run in a season where the margins are already punishing.
And the shadow of 2025 still hangs over the garage. Piastri went into the closing stages of last season with a 34-point lead in his championship fight with team-mate Lando Norris, only for it to unravel into a final 12-point deficit. The slide was messy enough on track, but what really lingered was the reaction: accusations in some quarters that McLaren tilted the playing field towards Norris, a debate that escalated beyond the usual fan forums and into Australian politics. Brown, inevitably, became a lightning rod.
Asked directly about Brown “becoming a bit of a villain” back home, Piastri didn’t bite. If anything, his answer was the sort that quietly draws a line under the drama.
“My relationship with Zak is very good and it’s gotten stronger the longer we’ve known each other,” Piastri said. “He’s certainly good fun and it’s good to have around. Him and Andrea [Stella] are two people with very different styles that work well together.
“As a team, we obviously had some tough moments through last year, as any team has, but I think our relationship has only gotten stronger from that.”
It’s worth noting what Piastri chose to emphasise there: not just personal loyalty, but the way McLaren’s leadership works as a pairing. Brown is the outward-facing energy — commercial, combative when required, comfortable throwing elbows — while Stella runs the racing operation with a calmer, more technical touch. When a team starts taking hits from multiple directions, that split can become either an asset or a crack. Piastri’s point was that, from his seat, it’s the former.
Brown, for his part, has been in no mood to indulge the “bias” narrative. Earlier this year he expressed frustration at what he described as “uninformed” commentary, specifically calling out politicians “pretty far removed” from the sport for weighing in.
“I think fans – put aside countries – all have various opinions in sport,” Brown said. “It can be frustrating when some people… are very uninformed and the statements you see are just ridiculous.
“As Oscar has communicated many times, he knows he’s getting a fair shake at it. You win some you lose some. Things fall your way, things don’t fall your way.”
Brown also pointed to the simple truth that 2025 wasn’t a season where one side of the garage escaped the pain. “We lost Oscar some points [in 2025], we lost Lando a lot of points [with his DNF] in Holland, etcetera,” he said, framing it less as a question of internal preference and more as the familiar grind of small disasters adding up over 24 races.
What makes Piastri’s stance interesting isn’t that he’s backing his boss — plenty of drivers do that, especially when microphones appear — but that he’s doing it at a moment when he could just as easily retreat into boilerplate and focus on Suzuka. McLaren, after all, doesn’t need old wounds reopened just as the 2026 campaign begins to settle into shape.
There’s also a longer memory at play. Brown previously had to bat away claims — aired during McLaren’s legal case involving former reserve driver Alex Palou — that he wasn’t personally keen on signing Piastri from Alpine in the first place. Whatever truth sits behind those paddock whispers, Piastri’s trajectory since arriving has made the whole argument feel increasingly academic. McLaren built a future around him and Norris; the uncomfortable part is that, in 2025, that future arrived sooner than the team’s rulebook did.
Suzuka won’t erase the scar tissue of last season, and it certainly won’t stop rival fans from keeping score, but it does change the immediate temperature. Piastri is on the board in 2026 at last, and the message from both driver and CEO is the same: McLaren’s leadership isn’t flinching, and neither is he.
In a year where early momentum matters — for points, for politics, for peace inside a team that knows it has two legitimate title-level drivers — Piastri’s most important line might not be the one about villains or parliament. It’s the simplest one: the tough moments didn’t split them. They welded them together.
