Following Zak Brown’s warning that the conversations “will” come, Martin Brundle has told Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris that if they “hurt” McLaren, “there’ll be payback”.

Piastri, up by nine points, and Norris are cruising towards one of the most tame intra-team title fights ever seen in Formula 1.

‘If you hurt the team, we’ll hurt you, there’ll be payback’

Despite trading blows and momentum over the course of the first 14 races, the McLaren team-mates have yet to turn a wheel in anger or throw a verbal slight through the media.

Instead, it’s been all smiles and congratulations as one or the other has won a grand prix with Norris taking three of the last four 1-2 finishes to close the deficit to Piastri to nine points.

In a championship fight that almost from the get-go lined up as McLaren v McLaren, Norris has made one ill-timed pass on Piastri that saw him clip the back of his team-mate in Canada only to pitch his own MCL39 into retirement, while Piastri was called out for a near-miss – “a little too far” – on Norris in Austria.

That, though, has been the sum of the antagonism.

The McLaren head-to-head in F1 2025

👉 F1 2025: Head-to-head qualifying statistics between team-mates

👉 F1 2025: Head-to-head race statistics between team-mates

McLaren’s papaya rules, summed up as race hard but cleanly and without contact, have set the tone for the championship fight with the McLaren bosses adamant they won’t get involved unless necessary.

But even in an intra-team fight, there will come a moment when the team will have to tell either Piastri or Norris to cool their heels.

“Eventually,” accepted McLaren CEO Zak Brown, “we’ll just sit down and actually have a conversation and go, ‘right, one of you is going to win and it’s going to be the best day of your life. One of you is going to lose.

“‘How do you want us to handle that?’

“We’ll actually sit down and go, ‘Right, you want us to jump up and down and celebrate? This guy won’. So we’re fully aware and sensitive to how do you celebrate that situation/”

But before the Woking team gets to that moment, there will be “swapping paint”, as Brown put it.

“There’s competitiveness brewing,” declared the American, “as the championship builds, I’m sure that tension will grow,” he said.

“We’re fully anticipating them swapping paint again at some point. I’m very confident it won’t be deliberate, which is where you then get into the problems.

“They will have racing incidents in their further time here at McLaren, we know that and they know that, so we’re not afraid of that.

“I’m positive they’re never going to run each other off the track, and that’s where you get into bad blood. So they’re free to race… there are rules around our racing, which is respect your team-mate, they know that.”

But whether it is team ethos, a flash of anger or one of desperation, a hail Mary or a last-lap-of-the-season-winner-takes-all moment, former F1 driver Brundle is convinced the McLaren harmony won’t last much longer.

“It’s two against one at the front,” Brundle told Sky Sports. “So strategy wise, McLaren has got very much the upper hand.

“I think they’ll be thinking they’re World Championship. They know they can’t run into each other.

“They know it’s very clear in the team – if you hurt the team, we’ll hurt you, there’ll be payback.

“So the drivers know the ground rules.

“So, you know, we’re into the second half of the season, I think that would be pushing very, very hard to for their own points.”

On an even keel at the final race before the summer break, McLaren used Norris’ one-stop strategy against Piastri’s one-stopper. The Aussie was on a two-stop to cover off pole-sitter Charles Leclerc, but it ultimately opened the door for the one-stopping Norris to beat them both.

With both drivers given a say in their strategy mid-race, it was McLaren’s clearest indication yet that it won’t get involved in the Drivers’ fight.

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella is adamant the drivers will decide who wins this year’s World title.

“I think there may be a natural increase of what could be a sense of pressure because the races reduce in number and every race will become, relatively, slightly more important,” McLaren team principal Andrea Stella told the media, including PlanetF1.com, in Budapest.

“But from the point of view of the team principal and the team, our two drivers and the team have sustained this quest to the championships in a very solid way.

“Over time, reviewing this race by race, we have created a solid racing approach, an approach to which Lando and Oscar have definitely contributed.

“It’s not like the team created this racing approach and now Lando and Oscar follow it – we have put it together as a team including drivers.

“So, I think this is a very robust framework, and this will be more and more important as the marginal value of every race increases as we get closer to the end of the season.”

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