McLaren’s Zak Brown says it is a matter of “when, not if” his two drivers clash with Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri given free rein to race.

The Woking team have so far let their two drivers race equally and for now, at least, there have been minimal incidents but Brown knows that will not last forever.

Zak Brown speaks of inevitable Oscar Paistri–Lando Norris clash

Unlike Red Bull and Mercedes in recent years, there is not a recognised number one at McLaren with both drivers competing for the title this season.

Aside from a near-scrape at Monza last year, the drivers have so far kept it clear but Brown expects that to not be the case forever.

“I know everyone’s kind of waiting for the moment [and] I think that moment will come when they’re racing each other very hard and somebody gets it a little bit wrong,” he told the Race.

“But I’m not worried about the outcome. Because we’ve discussed it, we know it’s more of a when than an if.

“Drivers can race each other very hard and very clean, and every once in a while, someone’s going to get it wrong. If you have two cars next to each other 24 times a year, it’s going to happen.

“But I think we have a relationship with our drivers, and the drivers with each other, that they can have an epic battle on track and shake hands at the end of it, even if it means there’s a little tangle in between.

“I wouldn’t have a different driver line-up as I look up and down the grid. They’re great guys, they’re team players, they’re great in the garage, they get along well, they push each other very well.”

Expanding on his point, Brown referenced the intra-McLaren battle between Alain Prost and Aryton Senna at Suzuka where the drivers collided.

“Everyone’s quite relaxed about it, because everyone’s kind of [of the understanding that] it’s racing, it’s going to happen,” the 53-year-old American said.

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“What I’m very confident of [is that] they’re not going to run each other off the track. So any incident, when that happens, is going to be a racing incident.

“And maybe it’ll be they were just both fighting for a corner, maybe it’ll be someone locked their brakes and went a little bit long, it was a mistake by one or the other but we’ll talk about it, we’ll analyse it, we’ll learn from it.

“But I don’t see any Suzuka repeats going on with our two drivers.”

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