McLaren set for summer decision over making Norris drivers’ title shot a priority

Zak Brown says McLaren will discuss over the summer whether it will make Lando Norris’  shot at the F1 drivers’ championship title a priority.

It comes after McLaren ordered Norris to swap places with his team-mate in the Hungarian Grand Prix – much to Norris’ frustration – after he undercut Piastri in the final round of pitstops.

Piastri’s victory, and Norris’s second place, meant the latter was denied an extra seven points that would have sliced Max Verstappen’s lead in the championship to 69 points.

McLaren Racing CEO Brown said he would now discuss its position with team principal Andrea Stella during the enforced summer shutdown as to whether it will back Norris in the second half of the campaign.

“That’s ultimately going to be Andrea’s call,” he told Sky Sports. “We want to get through the first half of the season, and see where we end up this weekend.

“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 that Max’s bad days are second and third places, so [it’s hard] to make those clawbacks that we’re making on the constructors’ that we can do because Sergio Perez is struggling at the moment, [but] we also know he’s capable of turning it on at any moment.

“That will be something I think we discuss over the summer break.”

Brown was not in Hungary for the race and said he never doubted that Norris would not give back the place to Pirastri despite the desperate pleas from Norris’s race engineer in the final few laps of the race.

Brown added: “I know Lando very well, so I had no doubt he was going to move over. I think we left it a bit long because they were free to race. Had he made that change of position right away, you would have had 21 laps of racing to go.

“Part of me was actually happy they didn’t race because that would have been 21 laps of me biting my nails!

“I think it all worked out in the end. Some learnings there, some better communication amongst us – to be clearer with each other. But it all worked out in the end.”