Zak Brown has a new home for an old F1 narrative. With Lando Norris no longer burdened by the “can’t win from pole” tag, McLaren’s CEO reckons the storyline has drifted toward Charles Leclerc — and he’s not buying the implication.
Speaking to RACER, Brown joked that the chatter about Norris’s supposed pole-to-win problem has gone quiet now the Brit has racked up a string of lights-to-flag victories this year. “There was a time Lando couldn’t win from pole, according to the world,” he said. “Now that he’s won four or five from pole, no one seems to be talking about that.”
Brown then pointed to Leclerc as the latest target of the stat merchants. The Ferrari driver remains one of the quickest qualifiers in the field and underlined it with that shock Hungary pole — Ferrari’s first of 2025 — snatched from McLaren. But his conversion rate from P1 has long been scrutinized.
For Brown, that’s context, not condemnation. He argues Leclerc’s record says more about Ferrari’s race trim than the driver’s mettle. “I’m a big fan,” Brown said. “He’s so awesome over a lap that he can carry a car that may not have the ultimate race pace. That’s not on him.”
The subtext is hard to miss. McLaren’s transformation has shifted the conversation from what Norris isn’t to what he and Oscar Piastri are: the two drivers trading blows for the championship with 10 rounds left and just nine points between them. That could have been combustible months ago after their brush in Canada; it wasn’t.
Team boss Andrea Stella isn’t expecting it to become one now. Pressure will climb as the calendar winds down, he admits, but McLaren has built a framework designed to keep the peace while keeping the speed. The approach wasn’t imposed on the drivers, Stella says — Norris and Piastri helped shape it. And he’s not shy about where the team spends its development tokens. “Relationships are as fundamental as aerodynamics,” he notes, arguing that the time invested in debriefs and shared learning since last year has paid off.
It’s a neat contrast. Ferrari’s season has again leaned on Leclerc’s Saturdays to punch above its Sundays; McLaren’s has been defined by execution across both. Brown’s defense of Leclerc reads like something else too: a reminder that stats need context and that narratives, especially the lazy ones, don’t age well.
As the title fight tightens, McLaren’s job is to keep the story about pace and process — and not let an old trope find new life in Woking’s garage.
