{"id":59460,"date":"2025-08-10T15:59:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-10T15:59:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/59460\/"},"modified":"2025-08-10T15:59:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-10T15:59:08","slug":"mclaren-acknowledges-open-approach-to-f1-title-battle-could-trigger-2007-repeat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/59460\/","title":{"rendered":"McLaren acknowledges open approach to F1 title battle could trigger 2007 repeat"},"content":{"rendered":"

McLaren<\/a> CEO Zak Brown has confessed that Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris\u2019 title fight in Formula 1<\/a> could mirror the team\u2019s contentious 2007 intra-team battle.<\/p>\n

Piastri and Norris are leading the way in the Drivers\u2019 standings, separated by just nine points, the team\u2019s MCL39 challenger enabling them to open up a huge gap on their rivals.<\/p>\n

McLaren\u2019s philosophy of \u2018papaya rules,\u2019 whereby both men are allowed to race each other but without negative consequence to the team, has been longstanding.<\/p>\n

Despite the pair\u2019s collision in Canada \u2013 which saw Norris retire \u2013 and some close shaves in both Austria and Hungary, the rule has largely been adhered to.<\/p>\n

Even the Montreal moment was quickly nipped in the bud, with Norris taking public responsibility, and both men moving on from the incident.<\/p>\n

This is a stark contrast to 2007, in which a rookie Lewis Hamilton and then-reigning World Champion Fernando Alonso battled amid extreme needle.<\/p>\n

Incidents such as one at that year\u2019s Hungarian Grand Prix, in which Alonso was adjudged to have deliberately held Hamilton up in the pit lane during qualifying, contributed to both men eventually losing out to Kimi Raikkonen.<\/p>\n

Whilst it would take a minor miracle for neither driver not to win the championship now, Brown has acknowledged that a repeat is not an impossibility.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have our belief system, and we just stick to it,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re comfortable with how we go racing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe also know we don\u2019t always get it right. We are and always will be, and I think we always have been, a two car team.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe recognise the consequences of that could be 2007. You got two drivers that tie and lose to Kimi by a point. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe could have won that Drivers\u2019 Championship, but who do you pick? And then you run the\u00a0risk\u00a0of the guy you don\u2019t pick, he\u2019s out of here.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOur drivers are treated equally fairly. There\u2019s nothing in their contract that gives one priority over the other, nor have they ever asked for that. They just want fair and equal treatment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brown reiterated that the Drivers\u2019 and Constructors\u2019 Championships are treated with equal importance to the Woking-based squad<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know that benefits the team. They accept that, they\u2019re cool with that, and we know the\u00a0risk\u00a0of that, if you\u2019d like, from a driver point of view, is 2007,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I think the downside of favouring one or the other is one then wants to leave, which is exactly what happened at the end of \u201907 [anyway].\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd you put the Constructors\u2019 Championship at\u00a0risk, right? You see other teams favour one, and that kind of is beneficial to the Drivers\u2019 Championship, but detrimental to the Constructors\u2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBoth championships are equally important to us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"LandoThe McLaren drivers collided in Canada<\/p>\n

The differences between the McLaren 2007 and 2025 battle<\/p>\n

Whilst comparisons of 2007 are not far from his mind, Brown also made the point that the circumstances are slightly different.<\/p>\n

Alonso arrived at McLaren fresh from back-to-back titles, with Hamilton fresh into the sport, largely expected to be a more dutiful number two to the established Spaniard.<\/p>\n

Despite Norris competing in his seventh season of F1, Piastri is now in his third, and therefore firmly embedded into the fraternity.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it was like year one, it\u2019d be like \u2018this rookie has given me a run for my money\u2019,\u201d Brown said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I think now that they\u2019re \u2018veterans\u2019, it doesn\u2019t matter who\u2019s been here longer, how long they\u2019ve been in.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think he [Norris] has just got a mindset of, \u2018I want to win the championship and my team-mate\u2019s my number one competition\u2019. <\/p>\n

\u201cSo I don\u2019t think it\u2019ll be easier or harder for either of them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey both can smell the championship, and only one can win it. So I\u2019m sure it\u2019ll be hard on the one that doesn\u2019t win the championship, assuming the other one does. But I don\u2019t think tenure matters now.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sure Fernando was going, \u2018Man, this Lewis guy just got here, this is really irritating\u2019.\u00a0But he [Norris] doesn\u2019t say anything about that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"LewisLewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso endured a fraught rivalry at McLaren in 2007<\/p>\n

McLaren \u2018talk about\u2019 potential Piastri\/Norris battles openly<\/p>\n

Hamilton and Alonso\u2019s battle spilt over into a sense of genuine off-track contention, something that has yet to happen between Norris and Piastri.<\/p>\n

Despite the closeness of the racing and their obvious will to succeed, Brown is confident the pair\u2019s relationship will not degenerate into something similar.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think they\u2019ll properly fall out,\u201d the American said. \u201cBecause of the communication, trust and respect we all have, and they have for each other.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re very fortunate to have the two personalities that we have. We love the challenge \u2013 like, I\u2019m looking forward to them racing each other. So we like it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brown revealed that the team meet the pair\u2019s on-track battles head-on, and said that there is transparency in how both men race each other, with frank discussions.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not the elephant in the room. We talk about it,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe meet every Sunday morning after we\u2019ve seen how qualifying is going. They know each other\u2019s strategy. We\u2019re totally transparent. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve said to both of them individually, the windows of opportunity \u2013 has your team-mate ever done anything to piss you off? Never. And that\u2019s what they both said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSo there\u2019s competitiveness brewing. We\u2019re not feeling any tension. As the championship builds, I\u2019m sure that tension will grow, but like Montreal, I\u2019m glad we got it out of the way, because it was a non-event. Lando owned it. Oscar understood it was a mistake.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re fully anticipating them swapping paint again at some point. I\u2019m very confident it won\u2019t be deliberate, which is where you then get into the problems.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey will have racing incidents in their further time here at McLaren. We know that. They know that. So we\u2019re not afraid of that. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m positive they\u2019re never going to run each other off the track, and that\u2019s where you get into bad blood.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt seems like from the outside looking in, when you\u2019ve seen battles between other team-mates, you\u2019re seeing it brewing, and you kind of go like \u2018have they jumped on that, or are they just kind of letting it\u2019?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll take the air out of the balloon right away if we feel like anything\u2019s bubbling up. But we\u2019ve not seen any of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

READ MORE \u2013 Lando Norris warns F1 must avoid \u2018fake\u2019 or \u2018scripted\u2019 racing with 2026 regulations<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"McLaren CEO Zak Brown has confessed that Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris\u2019 title fight in Formula 1 could…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59461,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[14969,49,48,578,576,577,591,590,592,82],"class_list":["post-59460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-brown","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-lando-norris","tag-mclaren","tag-oscar-piastri","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59460","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=59460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59460\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}