{"id":223276,"date":"2025-10-18T18:05:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-18T18:05:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/223276\/"},"modified":"2025-10-18T18:05:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-18T18:05:10","slug":"brown-slams-amateur-driving-in-f1-us-gp-sprint-taking-mclaren-drivers-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/223276\/","title":{"rendered":"Brown slams “amateur” driving in F1 US GP sprint taking McLaren drivers out"},"content":{"rendered":"

McLaren<\/a> boss Zak Brown slammed the “amateur” racing at the start of the United States Grand Prix sprint race, after both of his Formula 1 drivers retired on lap one in Austin.<\/p>\n

Title contenders Lando Norris<\/a> and Oscar Piastri<\/a>, who started second and third respectively, didn\u2019t make it past the opening sector after being hit at Turn 1 causing terminal damage.<\/p>\n

It came after Piastri attempted to overtake Norris on the inside of Turn 1\u2019s exit, but his rear left tyre was hit by Nico Hulkenberg<\/a>, who was sandwiched between the McLaren and Fernando Alonso<\/a>\u2019s Aston Martin at the apex.<\/p>\n

Piastri was subsequently knocked into Norris, with Red Bull\u2019s Max Verstappen<\/a> eventually winning from pole ahead of Mercedes<\/a> driver George Russell<\/a> and Carlos Sainz<\/a> for Williams<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was terrible,\u201d Brown told Sky Sports F1. \u201cNeither of our drivers to blame there. Some amateur hour driving. Some drivers up there at the front whacked our two guys.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked if Hulkenberg wasn\u2019t only to blame, Brown said: \u201cI want to see the replay again, but clearly Nico drove into Oscar and he had no business being where he was.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Lando <\/p>\n

Lando Norris, McLaren crash<\/p>\n

Photo by: Sam Bloxham \/ LAT Images via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Brown added \u201cthe damage is relatively easy to fix\u201d meaning the McLaren cars should be okay for grand prix qualifying later on Saturday.<\/p>\n

It all means Piastri is still leading the championship, 22 points ahead of Norris in second but third-placed Verstappen is now 55 off the top, with race wins in three of the last four weekends.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When asked if anything could have been done differently at Turn 1, Norris told Sky Sports: \u201cNo idea, I just got hit, like what else was I meant to do? No, I need to look at it a bit more. I just got hit, I got taken out, so not a lot I could have done.\u201d<\/p>\n

Piastri was then asked the same question, to which he replied: \u201cI’ve not seen the incident from the TV cameras, but obviously I had a pretty good start and we both went pretty deep into Turn 1.<\/p>\n

\u201cI tried to cut back and got a hit. So yeah, obviously not a great way to start the day, but I need to have another look.\u201d<\/p>\n

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– The Autosport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"McLaren boss Zak Brown slammed the “amateur” racing at the start of the United States Grand Prix sprint…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":223277,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,135567,129598,817,813,816,1737,913,2333,85,129597],"class_list":["post-223276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-brown-slams-amateur-driving-in-f1-us-gp-sprint-taking-mclaren-drivers-out","tag-circuit-of-the-americas","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-lando-norris","tag-mclaren","tag-oscar-piastri","tag-sports","tag-united-states-gp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223276\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}