McLaren would rather miss out on the Formula One world championship by a point than favour one of its drivers against Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, according to the team’s chief executive Zak Brown.
McLaren’s Lando Norris leads Australian teammate Oscar Piastri by a point in the standings with four rounds, including Sunday’s Sao Paulo Grand Prix and sprint, remaining.
Verstappen, chasing his fifth title in a row, is 36 points off the pace and closing in after slashing the gap from 104 at the end of August while McLaren’s pair have taken points off each other.
The Dutch driver’s return to contention has reminded some of the 2007 season won by Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen, who finished strongly and ended up beating McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso by one point.
NOT HOW WE GO RACING, SAYS BROWN
“We’re well aware of 2007,” Brown told Formula One’s Beyond the Grid podcast on Thursday. “But we’ve got two drivers who want to win the world championship. We’re playing offence; we’re not playing defence.
“I’d rather go ‘We did the best we can and our drivers tied on points and the other guy beat us by one’ than the alternative,” he added.
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“Which is telling one of our drivers right now, when they’re one point away from each other, ‘I know you have a dream to win the world championship, but we flipped a coin and you don’t get to do it this year’.”
“Forget it. That’s not how we go racing.”
Norris has beaten Piastri in the last five races, a situation that has already led to online conspiracy theories about McLaren potentially favouring the Briton at the Australian’s expense.
Brown said the best way to win the constructors’ title, which McLaren clinched last month for the second year in a row, was for the drivers to finish first and second.
The best way to win the drivers’ championship, he added, was to have two drivers going for the title.
Verstappen is effectively a one-man team at Red Bull, his points making up 321 of their 20-race total of 346, and does not have to worry about Japanese teammate Yuki Tsunoda taking anything off him.
Brown said he wanted to make sure that if Verstappen were to win, it was down to him beating McLaren rather than the teammates beating themselves.
“In the event 2007 happens again, I’d rather have that outcome than all the other outcomes by playing favourites,” he added. “We won’t do it. We’re racers, we’re going racing.”
Published on Nov 06, 2025