Zak Brown insists Oscar Piastri has helped Lando Norris ‘a lot’ amidst number 1 driver dilemma

Zak Brown iterated that Oscar Piastri helped Lando Norris a lot in terms of better results over the past two seasons.

Zak Brown insists Oscar Piastri has helped Lando Norris ‘a lot’ amidst number 1 driver dilemma

Lando Norris with Oscar Piastri and Zak Brown(all images via IMAGO)

McLaren has risen up a lot in terms of performance since the beginning of the 2024 season. Woking has come up as the most dominant team on the grid after Red Bull’s struggle. However, this rise in performance came at the cost of controversial team orders. Amidst this, Zak Brown noted that Oscar Piastri helped Lando Norris a lot over the Driver 1 dilemma.

The Italian GP saw some drama in the team after Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri were asked to fight within ‘papaya rules‘. Zak Brown was questioned if they should prioritize Norris’ world championship over Piastri’s better finish. The McLaren CEO claimed that a lot of racing was pending in the season. Additionally, Brown pointed out that Piastri had helped a lot to his teammate over the year.

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There’s some logic behind that. There’s also a lot of racing to go, Oscar [Piastri] has helped Lando [Norris] a lot over the course of the year in different ways. 
Zak Brown said on the Speed City Broadcasting.

Apart from this, Zak Brown accepted the fact that this help from Oscar Piastri wasn’t always visible to the general public. Regardless, the team was working well with each other and trying their best to score great results. Further, Brown mentioned that Andrea Stella and he took one race at a time and made the two drivers work well with one another.

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Sometimes that’s visible, sometimes that’s not. But Andrea [Stella] and I just take it one race at a time.
Zak Brown added
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Andrea Stella claimed McLaren ‘taking their time’ to release further upgrades in the MCL38

McLaren has implemented regular upgrades on the chassis to further improve in performance. However, Andrea Stella revealed that there were multiple reasons to not bring the updates so quickly. Stella believed that there were ‘doubts’ while testing the upgrades on the full-scale car. Hence, this was the reason for the team taking their time to implement further upgrades.

Andrea Stella with Norris and Piastri
Oscar Piastri, Andrea Stella, and Lando Norris (Via: Imago)
There’s a reason why we haven’t brought some upgrades. Because we see that, had we pressed the go button, we might have had some doubts when these parts were tested full-scale on the real car. So we are taking our time to convince ourself that the development is mature [enough] to be taken trackside.
Andrea Stella told motorsport.com.

The 2024 season has witnessed McLaren come extremely close to ousting Red Bull from the top spot. The two teams are currently in a fierce battle to acquire the top spot. Both the championships in the 2024 season are all to win as Woking has set its eyes on the prize.

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