Zak Brown breaks silence after controversial McLaren team orders decision
Who will be crowned world champions between Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris?
Zak Brown, the McLaren chief executive, has hailed the “great teamwork and respect” shown by Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris at the Italian Grand Prix.
McLaren missed out on victory for the first time since June’s Canadian Grand Prix at Monza as Max Verstappen, the Red Bull driver and reigning four-time World Champion, collected his third victory of the F1 2025 season.
Zak Brown praises McLaren ‘teamwork and respect’ at Italian Grand Prix
The Woking-based team found itself at the centre of a team orders drama in the closing laps in Italy after Piastri overtook Norris for second place during the pit-stop phase.
McLaren parted with standard convention by pitting Piastri first on Lap 45, despite the Australian being behind Norris on track at the time.
Norris pitted a lap later, but a slow stop delayed the British driver and saw him drop behind Piastri into third.
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McLaren was heard asking Piastri to reverse the positions in the closing lap, with the Australian slowing on the main straight to return second place to his teammate.
Taking to social media, Brown has praised Norris and Piastri for working together at Monza as McLaren close in on a second successive Constructors’ title.
He wrote: “P2 & P3 in Monza!
“Great teamwork and respect from Lando & Oscar secures another double podium and valuable points. We keep pushing as a team, focus now on Baku.”
With Norris taking three points out of Piastri’s points lead to reduce the gap to 31 with eight races remaining, McLaren has been widely criticised for potentially influencing the outcome of the F1 2025 title race by instructing Piastri to give second place to Norris.
Speaking after Sunday’s race, however, McLaren team principal Andrea Stella insisted that the team was merely sticking to its “principles” by inverting the cars.
He told PlanetF1.com’s Thomas Maher and other publications at Monza: “I think that the pit stop situation is not only a matter of fairness, it’s a matter of consistency with our principles.
“However the championship goes, what’s important is that the championship runs within the principles and the racing values that we have at McLaren and that we have created together with our drivers.
“The situation whereby we swapped the drivers is not only related to the pit stop.
“And this is pretty useful that I clarified, it’s also related to the fact that we wanted to sequence the pit stop of the two cars by stopping Oscar first and then Lando – and we had the clear intent that these should have not led to a swap of position.
“It was just done because we were covering Leclerc and, at the same time, we were waiting until the last possible moment to see if there had been a red flag or a Safety Car.
“So we pursued the team interest. And to capitalise as much as possible on this interest, we needed to go first with Oscar, then with Lando.
“But [the] clear intent was [that] this is not going to deliver a swap of positions.
“So the fact that we went first with Oscar, compounded by the slow pit stop of Lando, then led to a swap of positions, we thought it was absolutely the right thing to go back to the situation, pre-existing at the pit stop, and then let the guys race.
“This is what we did and this is what we think is in compliance with our principles.
“We will review the case. We will review also the situation whereby it was a slow pit stop in isolation.
“We already have our principles in relation to that. We will review our principles in relation to that and reinforce the direction, if this is in agreement with our drivers.”
More on McLaren drivers Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris from PlanetF1.com
Meanwhile, Mercedes boss Toto Wolff argued that McLaren has set a precedent by forcing its drivers to swap after a “team mistake.”
He added: “There is no right and there is no wrong. And I’m curious to see how that ends out.
“You set a precedent that is very difficult to undo. What if the team does another mistake and it’s not a pit stop, do you switch them around?
“But then equally, because of a team mistake, making a driver that is trying to catch up lose the points is not fair either.
“So I think we are going to get our response of whether that was right today towards the end of the season when it heats up.”
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