Lando Norris, Max Verstappen, Oscar Piastri, Monza, 2025

McLaren must take seriously the threat Max Verstappen poses as a potential “disruptor” in the world championship fight, says the team’s CEO Zak Brown.

Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris appeared to have the fight for the drivers’ championship to themselves until two races ago. After the Dutch Grand Prix, Verstappen trailed Piastri by 104 points.

However Verstappen has won the two races since then as Red Bull appear to have made a breakthrough with their RB21 chassis. A dire weekend for Piastri in Baku, where he crashed in qualifying and the race, allowed Verstappen to trim his lead to 69 points.

McLaren are poised to clinch the constructors’ championship for the second year in a row at the next round. But Brown says they cannot afford to be complacent about their drivers’ chances in their championship.

“I think you’ve got to pay attention to Max,” Brown told Bloomberg. “We’ve got to keep doing what we’re doing.

“The constructors’ is looking very good,” he acknowledged. “We had a chance to wrap it up in Baku, but let’s not talk about at Baku. Hopefully we can get the job done in Singapore.”

He said the team will continue to give both its drivers an equal chance to win but haven’t taken their eye off Verstappen.

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“We want our two drivers and Max – but we’d like to kind of get him out of there – to fight for the championship and just give them equal opportunity and equal equipment,” he said. “Which is what we’re doing and may the best man win. That’s what we want to do.

“We’d like to not play a role if at all possible. But you get into [sitations like] Lando had a mechanical [failure] and things can happen, Safety Cars and things of that nature.

“But I think our goal is to just set Lando and Oscar up to be competing for the championship down to Abu Dhabi and may the best driver win.”

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