describing it as \u201camateur hour driving\u201d and accusing Hulkenberg of hitting Oscar Piastri<\/a>.<\/p>\nSpeaking to Sky Sports F1 during the race, Brown said: \u201cI want to see the replay again, but clearly Nico drove into Oscar and he had no business being where he was, went into his left rear tyre.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, after reviewing the footage, Brown conceded that his initial reaction was misplaced.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think I\u2019ve changed my view,\u201d he later told Sky. \u201cI can\u2019t really put that on Nico.\u201d<\/p>\n
Recognising the impact of his early comments, Brown reached out directly to both Sauber team principal Jonathan Wheatley and Hulkenberg to apologise.<\/p>\n
Wheatley confirmed the apology, explaining that he understood how emotions had run high in the aftermath of seeing both McLarens taken out.<\/p>\n
\u201cZak sent me an apology really quickly afterwards, and he apologised personally to Nico,\u201d Wheatley said.<\/p>\n
\u201cLook, this is a passionate sport. I love the passion.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve got two cars, you\u2019re fighting for a world championship, and your two cars get taken out of the first corner.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s easy to think that it\u2019s somebody else\u2019s fault sometimes, and you react with passion.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he probably did that on the Sky TV or something \u2013 in the heat of the moment and the emotion.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I\u2019ve known Zak a really long time. He\u2019s a racer. We\u2019re all racers, and we sorted it out afterwards.\u201d<\/p>\n
Replays and post-race analysis indicated that the Turn 1 pile-up was more a racing incident than a single-driver error, with even Piastri acknowledging the fine margins at play.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was a long way away from the apex and I think the cars behind were going in pretty deep to the corner, so could I have done something a bit different? Maybe yes,\u201d Piastri said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut that different thing would have been to potentially let two or three cars go by. I think a racing incident is fair.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stewards agreed with that view, opting not to launch a formal investigation into the crash.<\/p>\n
However, McLaren will still review the intra-team contact between Piastri and Lando Norris, which occurred as a result of the initial collision.<\/p>\n
Team principal Andrea Stella said at the time there was no rush to handle the matter during the Austin weekend.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will review at the right time the incident,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will do that collaboratively, the team, the drivers, and we will make the right assessment.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Zak Brown has apologised to Sauber and Nico Hulkenberg over his comments from the USGP Sprint. Image: XPB…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":92281,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[4262,111,139,69,69103,213,63140,69104],"class_list":{"0":"post-92280","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-mclaren","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz","12":"tag-sauber","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-united-states-gp","15":"tag-zak-brown"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92280\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Brown](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/XPB_1379480_HiRes.jpg\")