McLaren boss Zak Brown sure has been busy this last month, hasn’t he?
In addition to letting an Andretti Autosport driver test last year’s McLaren Formula One car last week at Portimao, everything that happened on Tuesday night (July 12) happened. This was on top of one of the team’s current F1 drivers having to make a statement detailing that they expect to stay on the team. And there was even yet another rumor that a former WDC may end up driving for Brown in F1 after all, with the reigning F2 champion also in the mix.
This whole situation comes at a time where McLaren is tied for fourth in WCC standings with Alpine, which is not a fantastic position to be in. Fernando Alonso’s horrible luck so far shows that the French team has the definitive edge pace-wise on the papaya orange squad. That’s without mentioning that Alfa Romeo is still within striking distance in spite of even worse luck than Alonso, or Haas making strides to potentially challenge in the midfield.
But why have racing when there’s a carnival going on in the background? I could preview the choices Brown has for next year in a serious matter befitting the average F1 team, but if Brown is going to turn this whole situation into a gameshow by being purposefully vague on what even one of these drivers would do with him, then I’m going to turn this column into a gameshow too.
So sit down, relax. Put some U2 on in the background, and have a glass of wine. Because it’s time to play “The Next Top McLaren F1 Driver!”
As a general note to all of the contestants today: there are no winners and losers. One will join Lando Norris as a McLaren F1 driver, some will go on to the NTT IndyCar Series and one poor sap is going to end up on the McLaren Extreme E team.
Of the options in the running for the McLaren seat, really the only one I don’t buy as a contender is Alex Albon. He probably isn’t going to bring much to the seat the incumbent driver already has, so that rumor just screams to me that Albon’s agent leaked it in order to get a better deal from Williams.
Contestant Number One: Daniel Ricciardo
The first driver on this countdown is somebody who already drives for McLaren F1, and one who seems pretty sure that he’ll stay there.
Ricciardo is a multi-time race winner in F1, winning in such classic venues as Monaco and Monza. He has the second-highest floor of anybody else in the running, mainly because two of the other three drivers could very easily pull a Michael…
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