McLaren chief Zak Brown believes the title fight between Max Verstappen and Lando Norris has offered more excitement than any involving Lewis Hamilton. Verstappen currently leads the Drivers’ Championship standings but Norris has been chipping away at the gap in recent months.
McLaren have emerged as the fastest team on the grid, with Red Bull on the decline and at risk of losing their Constructors’ Championship title. Oscar Piastri’s victory in Baku helped McLaren to surpass them at the top of the standings, with Norris coming home in fourth.
Discussing how the title fight is shaping up, Brown revealed he was enjoying it more than the historic 2021 battle which saw Verstappen beat Hamilton on the very last lap of the season.
“I think this is the best season I can think of ever in Formula One since I’ve been here,” said Brown. “That [2021] was mega exciting, but it’s just two guys, two good guys. Now you’ve got four good teams in today’s race.
“To have four teams that can win any weekend, and [Sergio] Perez was obviously back on form today, eight drivers going into Singapore.
“We’re going: ‘I don’t know which of these four teams might win, I don’t know which of these eight drivers might win’. I can’t recall Formula One having that level of competitiveness.”
The 2021 season is widely recognised as the greatest in F1 history in spite of the controversy which arose at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. Race director Michael Masi failed to apply the rules correctly by only allowing some lapped cars to overtake the safety car late on.
Masi also bypassed the standard procedure by resuming the race on the very next lap, rather than completing another full lap behind the safety car once the lapped cars had repositioned themselves.
It remains to be seen if this season’s battle for glory will provide a similar level of controversy or if the FIA will have learned from their past mistakes. In any case, it is shaping up to be an exciting one with Norris only 59 points behind Verstappen in the individual standings.
McLaren recently confirmed they would prioritise Norris over Piastri in their bid to end Verstappen’s era of dominance, with team principal Andrea Stella telling BBC Sport: “We [will] bias our support to Lando but we want to do it without too much compromise on our principles.
“Our principles are that the team interest always comes first. Sportsmanship for us is important in the overall way we go racing and then we want to be fair to both drivers.”
