McLaren will decide during the summer break whether they need to prioritise one of their drivers in the championship.
The team instructed Lando Norris to give up the lead of the Hungarian Grand Prix to team mate Oscar Piastri last weekend despite him being the closest driver to Max Verstappen in the championship standings. Norris trails Verstappen by 76 points while Piastri is another 40 behind and will go into the summer break behind his team mate whatever happens this weekend.
McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown said any decision on whether to prioritise one driver will “ultimately” be made by team principal Andrea Stella.
“We want to get through the first half of the season, see where we end up this weekend,” he told Sky. “I think the constructors’ championship, while it’s definitely not going to be easy, is well within reach. I think the challenge on the drivers’ front is Max’s bad days are second and third places.
“So to make those clawbacks that we’re making on the constructors we can do because Perez is struggling at the moment – we also know he’s capable of turning it on at any moment – so, that’ll be something I think we’ll discuss over the summer break.”
Verstappen starts this weekend at a disadvantage as he has a 10-place grid penalty for Sunday’s race. However Brown said the Red Bull driver’s pace in first practice showed he is still a contender for victory.
“Max’s second sector there was pretty awesome,” he said. “You’ve got to assume he’s on for pole, which means P11.
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“You can pass around here. I think he went from 20th to ninth* in two or three laps not long ago. So, I think it would be a big mistake to think he can’t go from P11 to P1, but we’ve got to take advantage of every opportunity we can.”
Brown added Norris does not believe he would have been able to pass Piastri if he’d let him past sooner, or if he hadn’t had the benefit of the ‘undercut’ by pitting earlier than his team mate, but that the drivers would have been free to fight.
“Speaking with Lando, I don’t think he thinks he would have beaten Oscar. Oscar was absolutely flying and the undercut there presented a big gap.
“Had we pitted Oscar first, he would have come out six or seven seconds ahead. But we wanted to make sure we had Lewis [Hamilton] covered, it turned out we we did. So I think he needed to do it right away. And then you certainly don’t want…
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