McLaren CEO Zak Brown says he “wouldn’t miss the start” of Sunday’s Formula 1 Qatar Grand Prix as he expects an ultra-aggressive Max Verstappen to attack Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri.
Verstappen qualified third behind polesitter Piastri on Saturday, with Norris starting from second on the dirty side of the grid. If those positions remained unchanged during the race, Verstappen would be mathematically eliminated from the title battle, with a Piastri win taking the intra-McLaren fight to the wire in Abu Dhabi.
And with Doha’s Losail track being almost impossible to overtake on and the strategies locked into a mandatory two-stopper, McLaren chief Brown expects the four-time world champion to be at his most aggressive at the start of Sunday’s 57-lap race.
“For sure, you know he’s going to try and lead into Turn 1, so I wouldn’t miss the start of tomorrow’s grand prix,” Brown told F1 TV.
“Our goal is to make sure papaya wins this championship, so if we can finish where we’ve started here and just have it be a two-horse race in Abu Dhabi, that’s our goal. And if they want to reverse positions that’s up to them, I don’t care.
“It’s business as usual, they know the rules, we love watching them race, they race each other hard, they race each other cleanly, so, they know if they can kind of check out that we’ll be looking good in Abu Dhabi. But let’s see, they’ve got to do that first.”
Photo by: Steven Tee / LAT Images via Getty Images
Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko is also expecting fireworks from his driver: “Certainly. And when you know Max is alongside you, most drivers get nervous,” he told Sky Germany.
Expanding to Autosport, he said: “Overtaking is nearly impossible. I think you have to do it in the first corner or in the first two laps. But we have two stops and that offers some tactical possibilities.”
Marko believes Verstappen is in better shape in the race than in qualifying after Red Bull dialled out the worst of the car’s bouncing issues. And while Verstappen still struggled from oversteer in qualifying, Marko believes the RB21 can be closer to the McLarens on the harder tyre compounds used in the race.
“We changed a lot. First of all, we put an [another] old floor, which was in better shape than the one that was damaged, and we made some other changes,” he said. “So we cured it and it showed. We had been more or less half a second behind the whole weekend. And now it’s only two tenths, so that makes us feel confident.
“I’m still optimistic because the difference on the medium and hard tyre was even less, so I believe in the race we could be competitive.”
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– The Autosport.com Team
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