McLaren’s ‘brutal’ reality of ‘that Max guy getting in middle of our fun’

McLaren Formula 1 boss Zak Brown predicted the “brutal” climax to this year’s world championship match at the United States Grand Prix on Saturday morning.

Brown’s words were proved right within a couple of hours of being uttered in a manner the American has said many times he expected to happen this year but was certainly not envisaging when he said them.

At the start of the Austin sprint, his drivers Max Verstappen and Oscar Piastri collided, and Red Bull’s Lando Norris won.

Verstappen added eight points to both McLaren drivers after that, and the four-time world champion champion later resurrected his rivals’ wounds with a magnificent pole position for the grand prix.

Norris will line up alongside Verstappen on the front row. Verstappen did not have a second run because of traffic on his out lap, which meant he did not make it to the line before the session ended, which made the gap a chunky 0. 291 seconds more concerning for McLaren.

With six races left, McLaren won their second consecutive constructors’ championship in Singapore, but their outstanding form from the beginning of the season has deteriorated. Since the Dutch Grand Prix at the end of August, four races ago, a McLaren driver has finished ahead of Verstappen.

McLaren have never deviated from their belief that Verstappen was still in the title battle, even as he won only two of the first 15 races of the season.

It seemed to be the kind of thing F1 teams used to say to keep their collective attention afloat in the early stages of the competition. It starts to seem very real all at once.

“This Max guy”, Brown said in an interview with BBC Sport, “he’s relentless.

Because our goal is to finish one-two in the drivers’ championship, give our guys equal opportunity to choose who will win, who will finish second, and so I’m more focused on making sure he doesn’t get himself any more in the game than he already does. We really don’t want Max to interrupt our enjoyment, though.

The Circuit of the Americas race took place on Saturday, dominating the McLaren drivers’ crashes.

The world champions responded calmly to it, as they have to every difficult moment this year, including the collision between them on the first lap in Singapore.

The two drivers, Sauber’s Nico Hulkenberg and Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso, were on the inside of Piastri at the first corner, according to Brown and the McLaren team principal Andrea Stella.

Not surprising, Norris did the same, claiming Piastri “got hit” as well.

Piastri said:” For me, it’s a racing incident. The cars behind me were going pretty far to the corner, and I was a long way away from the apex.

“So perhaps I should have done something slightly different,” I ask. Maybe yes, but that different thing would have been to potentially let two or three cars go by.

We can’t just use up all the space on the track by driving around the other side.

With its wide, uphill entry that inevitably leads to a concertina effect mid-turn, the majority of the people insisted that it was a racing incident.

But that view can be held at the same time as differing with McLaren and Piastri’s position.

Some observers thought Piastri was dicing with danger by cutting back so forcefully in an effort to pass Norris on the exit, including the 1996 world champion Damon Hill, who was making comments for BBC Radio 5 Sports Extra.

If it had been in the middle of a grand prix, it would have been without any difficulties. But Hill said that his golden rule at the first corner used to be to make no sudden movements, and many experienced racing drivers would agree.

McLaren argued that Hulkenberg had plenty of room left after Piastri was a few yards from the exit. However, the German had little room for maneuvering and Alonso inside.

Norris was questioned after qualifying about McLaren’s review of it and what he thought of it now.

” It will be reviewed, “he said”. Before qualifying and the race are both not ideal, it may take a little longer to fully comprehend everything.

“Things will be reviewed to clarify some more details,” the statement read. Nothing I can do. Just go ahead and pursue my own interests.

“It was difficult, but I said what I did, and I won’t add more,” the statement read.

Stella said the team had had” a couple of chats with Lando and Oscar but fundamentally they were about resetting”, emphasising that focusing on qualifying was important.

We will review it when necessary, work together, and arrive at a fair decision.

The crash and Verstappen’s subsequent sprint win cut the four-time champion’s deficit to Piastri to 55 points, while he is now 33 behind Norris.

After the Dutch race on August 31, Verstappen lost almost half of Verstappen’s lead, leading by 104 points, so nearly half of that advantage has been lost in three sprints and grands prix. Six races and two more sprints are still pending.

In the normal run of things, it seems inevitable that Piastri will lose more ground to Verstappen on Sunday in Texas. Norris has a chance to advance, but as he pointed out, this weekend’s McLaren has not looked like a Verstappen-beating car at any point.

Norris declared, “It’s going to be challenging.” “We were hoping to learn a lot in the sprint in terms of how the car set-up would be from qualifying to race and hopefully make tweaks but that didn’t go to plan so we are certainly on the back foot. However, we won’t use it as a justification for tomorrow.

We must be pleased with second because it’s obvious we weren’t going to be as quick as the Red Bull. It’s not being distracted by the mess and nonsense that everyone creates.

“Saturdays have never been this good, so I’m hoping we can turn them up tomorrow and move a little bit quicker.”

I must be optimistic, they say. Every lap we did today was 0.3-0.5secs off Max so to turn that around will be pretty difficult. Max would have gone a good step faster in any case if he had completed his final lap.

They have recently been quick in a lot of races. They have been doing a very good job and seemed to catch us up a little bit. They are only going to be ahead for a short while. And then you can also benefit from more opportunities, which Max is known for making the most of.

Meanwhile, Stella admitted that McLaren were even more aware of just how potent Verstappen can be for the remainder of the season.

He said, “We have to look at the facts, we have to look at the numbers, because I would have anticipated a smaller gap here,” if there had been one. “Just objectively, not necessarily we maximized what the car’s current level of performance offered.”