Verstappen is fast enough to win in the third fastest car, say McLaren’s Brown · RaceFans

McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown says Max Verstappen has shown he doesn’t need the fastest car to win the world championship.

After winning his fourth title in Las Vegas last week, Verstappen challenged Brown over a widely misquoted six-month-old comment in which he claimed the McLaren boss said he could only win the championship if he was the fastest car would have.

In an interview published this week, Brown said Verstappen’s success this year shows that F1 teams need both a competitive car and a competitive driver to win the championship.

“That’s what Max showed: great driver, great car,” he told Business of Sport. “I think when you see a great car, not such a great driver, Sergio (Perez) – who is a very good racer, he has won Grands Prix but clearly not at the level of Max – you can tell the difference .

“If Max was in a car that wasn’t capable of winning, he would get a little bit more out of it because he’s so great. But he’s not going to take a car that’s in 15th place and win with it.

“Maybe he can win with the third fastest car. But you have to have the car, then you have to have the driver.”

Verstappen and McLaren drivers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri each failed to reach the final qualifying round once this year. Perez missed Q3 nine times and was eliminated in Q1 for the sixth time last weekend.

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Brown said he prefers McLaren’s philosophy of having two highly competitive drivers rather than one who is significantly stronger than the other.

“Certainly it’s not without its challenges,” he said. “But I would rather have the challenges where two drivers are fighting for the win than the challenges where one driver is fighting for the win and the other is fighting for a place in Q3. This has many disadvantages.

“We have two great drivers with great relationships: transparent, fair. And that’s why I think we can get along through their desire to beat each other because they’re both team players. As was the case this year, there will be moments of high stress. But that’s sport.”

The strengths of Norris and Piastri are “how fast they are and how few mistakes they make,” Brown said. “There are a lot of fast drivers in Formula 1, but our boys stick with the black drivers, as we say. “They ride hard, they ride flawlessly.

“They’re great guys: they’re great with our sponsors, they’re great with our fans. As I have said many times, I think we have the best driver line-up in Formula 1.”

The biggest point of stress between the McLaren drivers that the team has had to overcome this year occurred in Hungary. Norris, their highest-placed driver in the championship, took the lead at the Hungarian Grand Prix from Piastri due to the timing of McLaren’s final pit stops, but was told to let his teammate through. Finally he complied with the instruction.

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Later in the year, Piastri helped Norris by letting his teammate through to win the sprint race at Interlagos and collect an extra point. Brown said the team tracks when each was asked to help the other to ensure the relationship between them is harmonious.

“You don’t surprise them,” he explained. “You develop a plan every day. So we’re at the track on Thursday and we’re discussing what we’re going to do on Friday and Saturday. So good communication, good transparency.

“We score when they help each other, so we try to balance things out. But I think we just have to be open and let them know what our goals are and how their goals fit in with our goals.”

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