Brown: Norris and Piastri best F1 driver lineup of the grid

Zak Brown believes his McLaren team have the best driver pairing on the Formula 1 grid, with Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri shining in a competitive car they have had access to during the latter half of the 2023 season.

Only Red Bull and Max Verstappen have outscored McLaren, since the unrolled their updated car out for the Austrian Grand Prix. Since then the Papayas have been at the sharp end, the best of the rest being the World Champs.

Outstanding Australian rookie Piastri has raised to the challenge and even won the Qatar Sprint Race, while Norris is still hunting an F1 Sprint or GP, but closer than he has been before, and has six podiums to his name.

Norris (23) and Piastri (22) have great futures ahead of them in F1, proving that with the right equipment, they are capable of fighting at the sharp end as they have shown several times this season.

Thus no surprise that Brown, who took a big risk in handing seats to both drivers, is chuffed with his lads and not for the first time declared: “Best driver lineup of the grid when you look at a combination of experience, age, talent “I think clearly Lewis [Hamilton] and George [Russell] are awesome. But Lewis is nearer the end of his career as opposed to the start.

“So I think when you look at a complete package and you’re looking at, you know, five years down the road, there are some awesome teammates out there but I think given our age, experience, and youthfulness, we’ve got a driver line up second to none,” Brown told SBNation.

Brown: Lando is naturally fast and very talented

Starting with Norris, the McLaren CEO went on to elaborate on his driver’s qualities: “First, he’s obviously naturally very fast and very talented. He’s very mature. He’s very precise. He’s got all the natural talent in the world and then the patience, maturity, aggressiveness, and technical ability.

“He’s great in the team environment to get the most out of the team, just a complete racing driver. If we had a car capable of winning the world championship right now, he would be competing for the world championship.”

In Piastri, Brown sees similar traits: “He’s been fantastic. I think it’s been the best rookie season since Lewis Hamilton, at least that’s what everyone keeps telling me. He has all the same qualities Lando has just, what he doesn’t have is the experience Lando has.

“As far as his natural skill, his determination, his maturity, you know, he’s 22 years old. But a lot of young drivers are over-eager on Friday, and they get themselves in trouble, and then they never recover and have a good weekend because they spent time getting their car repaired.

“Oscar kind of creeps up on it, he uses Friday as a test session and that’s exactly what Friday is, a test session. And he doesn’t get, which a lot of rookie drivers do get lulled into the, ‘I wanna win Friday free practice’ and then they end up not focusing on Sunday.

“So that takes a maturity to be able to come into a race weekend and be, mature enough and confident in your own abilities to look at the team timesheet on Friday and go, ‘oh, I’m a little further down than I’d like to be.’ But that’s because he’s thinking about Sunday. Not about Friday,” explained Brown.

Zak: I love the trajectory we’re on and with all these podiums

Winning this season would be the cherry on the cake for Brown and his team. Five years ago the American presented a five-year road map to winning again, after a woeful spell in the Woking team’s illustrious history.

At the beginning of the season, few would have bet a dime on McLaren winning. But since the British Grand Prix – in which Norris finished second behind Verstappen (inevitably!) and ahead of Mercedes star Lewis Hamilton – that’s changed to the point if Max fails to win ever again, the next best bet is either Lando or Oscar for the victory.

McLaren are upwardly mobile in the 2023 F1 Constructors’ Championship standings with four rounds remaining and a Sprint race among them. They lie fourth currently, having just overtaken Aston Martin, and could catch Ferrari who are only 80 points ahead of the stars align from Brown and his team.

As for next year battling for wins and titles, Brown was cautious but optimistic: “I think it’s probably still a little bit early. I’d like to think that we’re gonna be able to compete for wins. We’re certainly getting very close.

“Now, the, the team’s very confident. The off-season development, from what I’ve seen so far is going very well. So, you know, we’re gonna go for it. That’s our desire. I think we gotta wait and see what comes out of the oven with our race car

“I love the trajectory we’re on and with all these podiums, and, finishing ten seconds off Max [Verstappen] where at the start of the year we were getting blue flagged and lapped, is just hats off to the men and women at McLaren for the progress that they made.

“So hopefully we can keep making that type of progress. And if we are, I think we’ll be fighting for the Constructors sooner rather than later,” predicted Brown, a hope that Norris and Piastri no doubt share.