{"id":345377,"date":"2025-12-13T13:10:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-13T13:10:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/345377\/"},"modified":"2025-12-13T13:10:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-13T13:10:09","slug":"zak-brown-confirms-mclarens-worst-kept-secret-ahead-of-f1-2026-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/345377\/","title":{"rendered":"Zak Brown confirms McLaren&#8217;s worst-kept secret ahead of F1 2026 season"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Zak Brown, the McLaren chief executive, has dropped the biggest hint yet that the team will retain its so-called \u2018papaya rules\u2019 between Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri for the F1 2026 season.<\/p>\n<p>McLaren secured its first drivers\u2019 and constructors\u2019 title double since 1998 this season, retaining the teams\u2019 championship with six races to spare.<\/p>\n<p>Zak Brown hints McLaren to retain \u2018papaya rules\u2019 for F1 2025 season<\/p>\n<p>The Woking-based team had to wait until last weekend\u2019s season finale in Abu Dhabi to secure the drivers\u2019 title, with Norris seeing off Red Bull\u2019s Max Verstappen by two points.<\/p>\n<p>Norris\u2019s triumph saw him become the 11th British world champion and the first McLaren driver to take the crown since Lewis Hamilton in 2008.<\/p>\n<p>McLaren operated a policy of total fairness across the F1 2025 campaign, refraining from throwing its support behind a single driver despite Norris and Piastri both establishing healthy points leads at different stages of the season.<\/p>\n<p>Lando Norris vs Oscar Piastri: McLaren head-to-head scores for F1 2025<\/p>\n<p>\ud83d\udc49\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.planetf1.com\/news\/f1-2025-qualifying-head-to-head-team-mates\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">F1 2025: Head-to-head qualifying statistics between team-mates<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\ud83d\udc49\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.planetf1.com\/news\/f1-2025-race-head-to-head-team-mates\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">F1 2025: Head-to-head race statistics between team-mates<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The team\u2019s philosophy was widely criticised, particularly after <a href=\"https:\/\/www.planetf1.com\/features\/mclaren-lando-norris-oscar-piastri-tiptoes\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the penultimate race in Qatar<\/a> where Piastri and Norris failed to pit under an early safety car.<\/p>\n<p>Having run first and third at the time, Piastri and Norris eventually came home second and fourth respectively at Lusail after effectively missing out on a free pit stop as Verstappen took victory.<\/p>\n<p>Appearing on stage at the FIA\u2019s prize-giving gala on Friday, Brown spoke of his pride that McLaren secured both titles by keeping it fair between Norris and Piastri.<\/p>\n<p>And he teased that the policy will be retained for next season, insisting it\u2019s \u201cexactly what we plan to do\u201d in F1 2026.<\/p>\n<p>He said: \u201cFantastic season.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll the men and women at McLaren have done an unbelievable job, led by our two awesome drivers.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOf course, the job Andrea has done leading our team.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTo go into the final race with two drivers fighting for the world championship, when everyone said that couldn\u2019t be done, I\u2019m just very proud of how McLaren went racing and that\u2019s exactly what we plan to do next year.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Watch our drifting finale with V14<\/p>\n<p>Andrea Stella, the McLaren team principal, added: \u201cThe drivers are those who do the job.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey are the ones that deliver the results, the points, the victories, the podiums, which ultimately made us the constructors\u2019 champions.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd also we are very, very proud of how the drivers conducted themselves, allowing McLaren to go racing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s what we do \u2013 we go racing \u2013 and we did it with equality and fairness, so thank you to Lando and Oscar.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Read next:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.planetf1.com\/news\/lando-norris-fia-fine-mohammed-ben-sulayem-speech\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">FIA president waives \u2018\u20ac5,000\u2019 Lando Norris fine after X-rated acceptance speech<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Zak Brown, the McLaren chief executive, has dropped the biggest hint yet that the team will retain its&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":345378,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,818,913,44,17165,85,9657],"class_list":["post-345377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-home-page","tag-mclaren","tag-news","tag-popular","tag-sports","tag-zak-brown"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345377","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=345377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/345378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}