As McLaren admitted to before the summer break<\/a>, it is a stance that opens the risk for a title defeat like McLaren suffered in 2007, when Ferrari\u2019s Kimi Raikkonen came through the middle to triumph against Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso.\u00a0<\/p>\nHowever, abandoning the route it has chosen to take this year in letting its drivers fight it out is not something it is tempted by, even with the increased threat from Verstappen. <\/p>\n
Speaking on F1\u2019s Beyond the Grid podcast, McLaren CEO Zak Brown believed that sticking to the team\u2019s principles of fairness between its drivers mattered much more than the final result in the championship.<\/p>\n
Asked what the response would be if Verstappen came through and won, Brown said: \u201cI shake his hand and say, job well done. I want to make sure if we don\u2019t win, he beats us. We don\u2019t beat ourselves. That\u2019s important.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re well aware of 2007. Two drivers tie on points, one gets in the front. But you know, we\u2019ve got two drivers who want to win the world championship. We\u2019re playing offence. We\u2019re not playing defence.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I\u2019d rather go, we did the best we can on our drivers tied in points and the other beat us by one, than the alternative which is telling one of our drivers right now, when they\u2019re one point away from each other, I know you have a dream to win the world championship but we flipped the coin and you don\u2019t get to do it this year. Forget it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s not how we go racing. In the event that 2007 happens again, I\u2019d rather have that outcome than all the other outcomes by playing favourites. We won\u2019t do it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
McLaren has gone to great lengths this year to try to keep things as fair as possible between its drivers, even though at times some of its decisions \u2013 like the Monza position swap \u2013 have triggered controversy.<\/p>\n
But while the championship situation is getting increasingly tense, it thinks there would be more to lose by throwing its support behind one driver.<\/p>\n
McLaren team principal Andrea Stella added: \u201cIf Max is the champion at the end of the year, for us, the important thing is that we can say we have done our best and we have done our best according to the way we go racing.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd if Max wins this year, we say we\u2019re going to win next year, we\u2019re going to be there and we are going to be united as we are.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also refuted any suggestion that there would be any bias within the team.<\/p>\n
“So when you are in my role, it\u2019s like when you have two sons and somebody says, ‘Which one is your preferred son?’ Yeah, but they are my two sons, how can you say which one is the preferred one?” Stella said.<\/p>\n
“Sometimes when I hear or read some comments of this kind, I find them really very superficial and just like, I think sometimes people don\u2019t really understand what it means to have two drivers that are with you together in this journey in Formula 1. <\/p>\n
“I just feel very grateful to both, in fairness.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"McLaren says it would rather take a 2007-style title loss to Max Verstappen than secure the Formula 1…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":264970,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-264969","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-motor","11":"tag-motor-sports","12":"tag-motosport","13":"tag-motosports","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264969","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=264969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264969\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/264970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}