McLaren boss Zak Brown says Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri will ‘not properly fall out’ in bid for F1 title

Piastri has won six races to Norris’ five this season, and they have won 11 of the 14 races so far between them.

Racing resumes at the Dutch Grand Prix on 29-31 August and Brown says he expects their battle to remain fair.

“I’ve said to both of them individually, at windows of opportunity, has your team-mate ever done anything to annoy you? ‘Never’. And that’s what they both said,” Brown added.

“So there’s competitiveness brewing. We’re not feeling any tension. As the championship builds I’m sure that tension will grow, but like Montreal – I’m glad we got it out of the way, because it was a non-event, Lando owned it, Oscar understood, it was a mistake.”

Brown said that although he expects the two drivers to end up colliding again, he was “very confident it won’t be deliberate”.

He added: “I’m positive they’re never going to run each other off the track, and that’s where you get into bad blood.”

And he said that McLaren would deal with any tension that evolves in the same way they have managed the relationship between the drivers so far.

“If something bubbles up, we’ll deal with it,” he said. “And how we operate, which is [in] an open, transparent, deal with it right away [manner].

“It seems like from the outside looking in, when you’ve seen battles between other team-mates, you’ve kind of seen it brewing, and you kind of go like ‘have they jumped on that, or are they just kind of letting it build up?’

“We’ll take the air out of the balloon right away, if we feel like anything’s bubbling up, but we’ve not seen any of it.”

Brown said it was vital for McLaren for the two to remain on good terms because they both have long-term contracts.

“They’re going to be racing against each other for a long time in the same team,” he said, “so it’s important that relationship continues to grow, because the relationship’s not just about this year, but it bleeds into next year, and they’re going to be together for a long time”.