The next Oscar Piastri? Meet Melbourne\u2019s young racing prodigy<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cI can shrug it off, but we\u2019ve got a lot of people in the racing team and when things are sent their way, they are human and I want to protect the racing team.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s unfortunate, you can\u2019t control it. We\u2019ve tried to explain it a thousand times but you just have some people in this world who would rather run with the conspiracy theory.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs the leader of the team, I kind of tell them point them my way \u2026. they\u2019re human beings, they\u2019re giving it all they\u2019ve got. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve got families and kids so it is unfortunate some people can be so hostile and they\u2019re wrong.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo one said we\u2019re perfect and we did make mistakes, but they weren\u2019t intentional or prioritised.\u201d<\/p>\n
Having led the championship by 34 points two thirds of the way into the season, Piastri missed out on the F1 title to Norris in a thrilling three-way battle for the drivers\u2019 crown at the end of the year.<\/p>\n
Norris clinched his maiden world title by just two points ahead of Red Bull\u2019s Max Verstappen, while Piastri finished a further 11 points behind in third place.<\/p>\n
Brown said he had held numerous conversations with Piastri over the off-season about how the team could improve, but denied there had needed to be a \u201csmoothing\u201d of the waters.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know a lot of people have that view. That was never his view,\u201d Brown said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is what has always been very important to us is the feeling inside the house, if you like.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo there was nothing to smooth over. We made mistakes, he made mistakes, Lando made mistakes. That happens. But he (Piastri) always knew from day one that we were doing our best to have sporting fairness.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously fans get excited and have their views of what that looks like, but they don\u2019t really know what is going on inside the team. <\/p>\n
\u201c(Our conversations were) more talking about how do we keep getting faster and better. There was no looking back or smoothing anything over, it was more what do we need to do collectively together as a team, how do we communicate better?<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was just about him giving us feedback on what is going to give him the best environment to succeed in. So they are all very healthy conversations.\u201d<\/p>\n
McLaren drew plenty of headlines over its rules of engagement between its drivers \u2013 dubbed the \u2018papaya rules\u2019 \u2013 which were put in place to ensure fair and equal fight on track. <\/p>\n
Team principal Andrea Stella flagged a \u201cstreamlined\u201d approach to the rules in the off-season, which Brown said would largely centre on communication.<\/p>\n
Brown said he was \u201cvery confident\u201d the tweaks would keep both drivers happy this year.<\/p>\n
He added it was inevitable there would be racing incidents again and there would be times the team \u201csteps in\u201d for the betterment of the squad.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow, we are going to have our incidents because this is racing. You have two drivers, unbelievably competitive, racing each other hard so it is going to happen,\u201d Brown said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo we are comfortable with that and anticipating that.<\/p>\n
\u201cI always said it wasn\u2019t if our two drivers come together, (rather) when our two drivers come together. Fair to say I\u2019ll say that again and that doesn\u2019t necessarily mean 2026, it might be 2027. But they\u2019re going to trade paint as they say in the world of NASCAR at some point.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey know that, we know that. As long as it\u2019s not intentional, which none of the incidents that they had last year \u2013 which were all pretty minor \u2013 none of them were intentional, it was just hard racing.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe welcome the hard racing. Really the rule has always just been to treat your teammate with respect, race them hard. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe tweaks are more around some communications and things of that nature.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven though they\u2019re free to race, there will be times the team steps in and goes \u2018For the betterment of both of you guys and the team, we don\u2019t know if you\u2019re going to slicks or wets or intermediates, so let\u2019s just pause for a moment\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were free to race all year (last season) and we\u2019ll let them again, but we\u2019ll race intelligently when it makes time sense to race as a team because of circumstances we\u2019ll do that. There\u2019s not much change other than a little bit of communication.\u201d<\/p>\n
ENDS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"McLaren chief Zak Brown has revealed he had to shield his team from the \u201cbeating up\u201d it took…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":515379,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":["post-515378","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-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515378","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=515378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515378\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/515379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=515378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=515378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=515378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}