What Martin Brundle makes of McLaren’s crunch F1 team orders call

Martin Brundle has shared his verdict on McLaren’s willingness to implement team orders at the F1 title-deciding Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

Lando Norris goes into Sunday’s three-way championship showdown at the Yas Marina Circuit with a 12-point lead over Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, while McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri is 16 points behind.

Before the weekend’s track action got underway, McLaren boss Zak Brown said it would be “crazy” for his side not to use team orders if it stopped Verstappen stealing the title from one of his drivers.

“They are dammed if they do, dammed if they don’t in some respects,” Brundle told Sky Sports F1 ahead of first practice in Abu Dhabi.

“I’m pretty sure they’d rather handle the nuclear fallout of moving their cars around. It’s a team. They spend £400m a year running two racing cars representing 1,000 people back at base and they won the constructors’ and they want to win the drivers’.

“What they don’t want to do is let Max Verstappen win the championship. So of course, if it’s in the closing stages and for example, Oscar Piastri, for the sake of dropping down the order because he can’t win the championship, I would certainly be asking the same thing.

“Let’s assume Oscar would actually do that, should he be asked to do so.”

Brundle pointed to a potentially awkward scenario that could unfold if Piastri was running higher than Norris in either second or third with Verstappen leading.

“Let’s imagine it was Max Verstappen winning and Oscar second and George Russell third and Lando fourth, would they ask Oscar to give a podium up and drop back to fourth to allow Lando to win the title? I’m pretty sure they will,” he added.

F1 finale ‘like a movie script’

It marks the first time since 2010 that three or more drivers have gone into the final race of a season with a shot of winning the championship.

Brundle likened the title showdown to being “like a movie script”.

"It has been a horror movie for McLaren with the disqualification in Las Vegas and then the tactical error in Qatar,” he said.

"All the points count for all the whole season, they are equal in status.

"If you look back at some of the spectacular victories we have seen from all three drivers this season, I believe they would all be worthy world champions.

"It's going to be great. It's like a movie script! All to play for. Lando has less to do. We have a standard weekend, no Sprint, no cap on tyres.

"It only needs a bit of contact, reliability, for any of the three of them and it will turn on its head."