McLaren boss Brown apologised to Hulkenberg after F1 US GP clash, says Wheatley

Zak Brown personally apologised to Nico Hulkenberg after blaming him for the retirements of Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris from the Formula 1 United States Grand Prix sprint, according to Sauber boss Jonathan Wheatley. 

The McLaren drivers crashed out on lap one of Saturday’s race after championship leader Piastri attempted a cutback on team-mate and title rival Norris at Turn 1 in the fight for second.

But as he attempted the move, he was knocked into Norris after being tagged by Hulkenberg’s Sauber, which was sandwiched between Piastri and Fernando Alonso’s Aston Martin at the apex.

It was deemed a racing incident but only after Brown had appeared on Sky Sports F1 slamming it as “amateur” driving, claiming Hulkenberg “had no business being where he was”. 

The McLaren CEO did, however, later retract that statement to Sky after watching another replay in which he then spoke to Sauber team members to clear the air. 

“Zak sent me an apology really quickly afterwards. He apologised personally to Nico,” said Wheatley.

“Look, this is a passionate sport, I love the passion. You’ve got two cars, you’re fighting for a world championship, and two cars get taken out in the first corner.

“It’s easy to think that it’s somebody else’s fault sometimes and you react with passion. I think he probably did that to Sky TV – the heat of the moment and the emotion. But I’ve known Zak a really long time. He’s a racer. We’re all racers and we sorted it out afterwards.”

Although the incident didn’t end Hulkenberg’s race, it did cost him an opportunity of scoring points as the German eventually finished 13th, but found much more success the following day.

Hulkenberg came eighth in the Sunday race, marking the first time he has scored points since his podium at July’s British Grand Prix. The result means he is now ninth in the championship after moving above Isack Hadjar.

“We had a bit of a Nico Hulkenberg effect this weekend,” added Wheatley, whose veteran driver only joined Sauber this year. “For Nico, what an incredible race weekend.

“I think all the people that had criticism about him, his qualifying performance, various other criticisms over the last few months, I think we’ve probably got reason to have another look at that because he just was flawless from the very first lap in FP1.

Jonathan Wheatley, Team Principal of Stake F1 Team Kick Sauber and Lee Stevenson, Chief Mechanic of Stake F1 Team Kick Sauber

Photo by: Andy Hone/ LAT Images via Getty Images

“You can’t help but wonder what the sprint would have brought if there wasn’t that incident in Turn 1. I’m fairly sure we’d have had some serious points out of that as well and then today, look at him, he just drove a flawless race again.”

But the star of the Austin weekend was Max Verstappen, as the Red Bull driver dominated both races from pole to put himself in contention for a fifth, consecutive world championship. He is third in the standings and 40 points behind Piastri with five rounds remaining, but that points gap stood at 104 just five races ago.

Verstappen is therefore F1’s most in-form driver after Red Bull brought upgrades to Monza at the start of this run, leaving him as the bookmakers’ joint-favourite for title glory alongside Piastri.

“You can never write Max Verstappen off,” said Wheatley, who joined Sauber this year after previously serving as Red Bull’s sporting director.

“Red Bull is a class racing team. Max Verstappen is perhaps the best driver in the world. The fact that they’ve found some performance in the car, I think they’re probably kicking themselves that they didn’t find it sooner.

“But I’m not surprised that they’ve been able to do that. In the years that I worked there, quite often there was a big turnaround between Friday night and Saturday in terms of performance. If I was McLaren, I’d be looking in my rear-view mirrors.”

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– The Autosport.com Team