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McLaren boss Zak Brown has admitted that he didn't have many doubts over Lando Norris not ceding the position to Oscar Piastri in Hungary. With the Woking-based squad having an IndyCar race at the same weekend in Toronto, Zak was absent from his duties in Hungary and was attending the race in Canada.
During the race in Hungary, McLaren's strategy of handling Lando Norris, the undercut over Oscar Piastri on the second pitstop, put the team and the drivers in an undesirable position. Lando was given the preference in the pitstop because the team wanted to shield him from Lewis Hamilton's undercut attempt. This, however, led to a situation where Norris and Piastri ended up swapping places.
With Lando Norris in the lead, McLaren continuously relayed back and forth on the team radio to yield position from Norris. Looking back at the incident, Zak Brown admitted that he was never worried about what was going to happen as he trusted Lando to do the right thing.
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He did admit it would have been a nail-biter moment for him if Norris had yielded position early and then fought Oscar for the win with 20 laps left. He told Sky Sports, (via RacingNews365):
"I know Lando very well, so I had no doubt that he was going to move over. I think we maybe left it a bit too long because they were free to race, and had he made that change of position right away, there were 20-21 laps of racing still to go."
He added,
"Part of me is actually happy they didn't race because that would have been 20-21 laps of biting my nails, which I tend to do anyway. But it all worked out in the end, there were some learnings there, maybe some better communications amongst us to be a little bit clearer, but it all worked out in the end."
McLaren would have let Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris battle it out for the win
Brown was questioned if McLaren would have let both Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri battle it out for the win if the position had been reversed much earlier by the driver, to which the American replied in the affirmative. While admitting that it would have been a tough battle to watch, Brown felt that Lando knew his Australian teammate had the pace to cover him. Brown said,
"Oh no, definitely not, I think we would have swapped right away and then let him have a go. I don't think Lando thinks he would have beaten Oscar, Oscar was absolutely flying and the undercut presented a big gap and had we pitted Oscar first, he would have come out six or seven seconds ahead."
He added,
"But we wanted to make sure we had Lewis covered, it turned out we did so I don't think he needed to do it right away. We certainly don't want them going down to the last lap battling, but we would have let him have a crack at it."
The race also saw Lando Norris cut the points deficit to Max Verstappen to 76 points. The driver will be looking to string together a few strong races and close the gap even further.
