McLaren boss Zak Brown has said the looming threat of Max Verstappen will keep racing rules in force despite the team wrapping up the constructors\u2019 title in Singapore two weeks ago.<\/p>\n
Oscar Piastri leads McLaren teammate Lando Norris by 22 points and reigning world champion Verstappen by 63 points with six races to go, starting with Sunday\u2019s U.S. Grand Prix in Texas.<\/p>\n
McLaren has tiptoed a delicate line this season in trying to keep the Piastri-Norris battle fair — last year, Brown and team boss Andrea Stella dubbed the racing guidelines its drivers must stick to \u201cpapaya rules,\u201d named after the shade of orange made famous on the car\u2019s built by founder Bruce McLaren.<\/p>\n
The rules have made headlines since the summer break: Piastri was asked to move over and let Norris through at the end of the Italian Grand Prix after the Englishman had a slow pit-stop — the Australian was also frustrated in Singapore when Norris almost put him into the wall at the beginning with an aggressive move for position.<\/p>\n
Verstappen has finished in front of both McLaren drivers at the last three races and Brown said he is a big factor in the run-in.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile we\u2019d like it to solely come down to our two guys, Max is still very much in the game,\u201d Brown told McLaren\u2019s website. \u201cI think what has been key is that the team have remained so focused but also very humble. So, we\u2019re just going to keep doing what we\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur strategy isn\u2019t going to change because we\u2019ve won the constructors,\u2019 we\u2019re going to approach the remaining race weekends in the same way we\u2019ve approached every one before it.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cThat\u2019s what we\u2019re here to do: win races and win championships. And we couldn\u2019t be hungrier.\u201d<\/p>\n
McLaren\u2019s back-to-back titles come after a long barren spell that had stretched back into the last century.<\/p>\n
Until last year, it had not won the constructors\u2019 championship since 1998.<\/p>\n
Piastri and Norris are hoping to become the team\u2019s first drivers\u2019 champion since Mika Hakkinen in 1999. Before that, McLaren had dominated with a run of championships between 1988 and 1992, one of the most successful spells any team has ever engineered.<\/p>\n
A regulation change is looming next year — a new set of rules on both the aerodynamic and engine side of the car — and Brown is downplaying the idea of replicating that old era.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo we want to create a McLaren dynasty and leave a legacy? Of course we do,\u201d Brown added. \u201cBut it\u2019s like Andrea says: \u2018You don\u2019t race trying to create a legacy, you show up every weekend, focused on what you need to do that weekend, and then, the results and the history books take care of themselves.<\/p>\n
\u201cNext year, with the new regulations, is going to be even tougher. This year, we had the benefit of working within regulations that we knew. But we\u2019re now entering a new era, with one of the biggest regulation changes in the history of F1 — that comes with a lot of risk and a lot of opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"McLaren boss Zak Brown has said the looming threat of Max Verstappen will keep racing rules in force…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":212660,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-212659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212659\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/212660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}