McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown is unwilling to consider prioritising either of their drivers in the championship fight as Red Bull’s Max Verstappen continues to gain on them.

Verstappen has slashed his deficit to the championship lead from 104 points to 36 in just five rounds. But Brown made it clear he would rather see Verstappen win the championship than favour either Lando Norris or Oscar Piastri, who are separated by a single point at the head of the standings.

“I’d shake his hand and say, ‘job well done’,” Brown told the official F1 channel. “I want to make sure if we don’t win, [it’s because] he beats us, we don’t beat ourselves. That’s important.”

Several years before Brown took charge at McLaren, the team ended the 2007 season with both its drivers – Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso – one point behind Kimi Raikkonen, who overturned the largest deficit in F1 history to beat the battling pair to the title.

Feature: Red Bull in 2010 or Ferrari in 1979? Past title fights illustrate McLaren’s current dilemma

“We’re well aware of 2007,” said Brown. “Two drivers tied on points, one gets in front.

“But we’ve got two drivers who want to win the world championship. We’re playing offence. We’re not playing defence. And I’d rather [say] ‘we did the best we can and our drivers tied on points and the other guy beat us by one’, than the alternative, which is telling one of our drivers right now, when they’re one point away from each other, ‘I know you have a dream to win the world championship, but we’ve flipped the coin and you don’t get to do it this year’.

“Forget it, that’s not how we go racing. The best way to win the constructors’ is to finish first and second in the [drivers’] championship, and the best way to win in the drivers’ championship is to have two drivers going for the drivers’ championship.

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“And in the event 2007 happens again I’d rather have that outcome than all the other outcomes by playing favourites. We won’t do it. We’re racers, we’re going racing.”

2007 Brazilian Grand Prix: Raikkonen claims title by a point after Hamilton hits trouble

McLaren has been criticised at times over its efforts to ensure a level playing field between its two drivers.

At Monza the team told Piastri to let his team mate past after giving him the opportunity to pit first, only for Norris to suffer a slow tyre change. The team temporarily enforced unspecified “repercussion” on Norris after judging he caused a collision between their cars in Singapore, but rescinded them after another clash in the United States Grand Prix sprint race.

Brown said he isn’t concerned by external criticism and their drivers have bought into their philosophy of going racing.

“We are so focused on ourselves and doing the right thing and the commitment we’ve made to the racing team, our sponsor-partners, our shareholders and our fans. But not everyone can be as informed as we are.

“I think the reason why you see such a great relationship between Lando and Oscar is they know they have equal opportunity to win the world championship. And we’re transparent, we’re fair, we communicate.

“We’re not perfect, but we’re racers, and they know that. So there’s all this noise around, but we don’t let that noise come inside the MTC [McLaren Technology Centre].”

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