McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown claimed he was “glad to have the weekend behind us” after the United States Grand Prix ended with a P2 and P5 for Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, respectively.
According to the American, Piastri “never really felt comfortable” in the car this weekend and lacked confidence in it.
“Glad to have the weekend behind us, but a good result,” Brown told Sky Sports Germany. “Lando, I think, had the pace of Max, but with [Ferrari’s] tyre strategy, starting on the soft, obviously got a good run into Turn 1, and it took a while to get past Leclerc. He was strong.
“Oscar struggled a bit all weekend, this wasn’t a great weekend for him. Not a bad result.
“Congratulations to Max, he was fast as always, but here we come in Mexico. Yeah, Leclerc started on the soft, so he obviously had a good launch and a good first lap, and it just took us too long to get by him.”
When asked to clarify what Piastri was struggling with, Brown added: “He just never really felt comfortable or he had the car underneath him that he wanted, so just a little bit off all weekend. It wasn’t his favourite track last year, so just a little bit off, just never felt he was really comfortable.”
Race winner Max Verstappen closed the gap to the championship leader Piastri to just 40 points. Piastri’s team-mate Norris also closed the gap to him in the standings, with 14 points now separating the two McLaren drivers.
Oscar Piastri, McLaren, George Russell, Mercedes
Photo by: Clive Rose / Formula 1 via Getty Images
“Great racing team, I think you saw the turnaround we had in ’24 and how competitive we got pretty quickly,” Brown said of Red Bull’s recent momentum.
“So I think the sport is unbelievably competitive, it just shows that these teams never sit still, they’ve had some great developments. Max is an awesome driver and next thing you know they’ve got a lot of momentum, we need to break that momentum now.”
He added: “[We have to] just keep doing what we’re doing, I think we had a very fast race car today, I think we could have won today. Obviously we didn’t, so it’s a good could have, should have, would have, but it’s going to be very close, the championship is far from over.”
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