McLaren hit out at ‘uninformed and uneducated’ politician's claims

McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown has responded to claims of ‘bias’ against Oscar Piastri made by one of Australia’s leading politicians.

Matt Canavan raised a conspiracy theory about McLaren favouring Lando Norris over Piastri during their F1 title battle at a recent Regional Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee at the Australian Senate Rural.

Canavan asked fellow senators whether they thought McLaren “is biased” against Piastri and “costing him the world championship”.

McLaren boss Brown swiftly dismissed his comments as rubbish.

“I think we’ve done the best we can and I think Oscar himself has talked about fair and equitable, we make mistakes, but I think Oscar has been our number one spokesperson,” Brown told Sky Sports F1 at the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

“He’s never said a single word that anything’s ever not felt right. I saw what the Australian senator said and clearly he’s very uninformed and uneducated about our sport.

“But that’s the cool thing about our sport. People get very supportive of their heroes of their countries. I’m not surprised to see people waving the flag for their drivers.

“What’s most important to us is that our team knows and there’s a lot of uneducated people out there with their views. I’d spend all day trying to correct them. So it is what it is.”

McLaren reject team orders ‘U-turn’

McLaren have confirmed they will use team orders to secure the drivers’ championship in Sunday’s three-way title showdown, if required.

Norris heads into the final round with a 12-point lead over Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, while Piastri is 16 points back.

Brown denied suggestions McLaren have made a “U-turn” with their approach to allow their drivers to race freely.

“I don’t think it’s a U-turn,” he insisted. “We’re going to start the weekend like we have the other 23, which is going in, giving both drivers equal opportunity.

“Last year, once it became clear that Lando had the best chance to catch Max, and Oscar was almost statistically out of it in Baku, we then asked Oscar to support Lando. It ended up being Lando supported Oscar in that particular race and Oscar won the race.”

Brown added: “We’re going to use common sense. We’re not going to throw away a drivers’ championship over a sixth and seventh place, a third and a fourth place, a fifth and a sixth place, if one of our drivers doesn’t have the opportunity.

“I think everything we do, we do with the drivers, so they know what the game plan is for this weekend. Outside of our racing team, you’re a bit ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’.

“We’re going to just stay true to our racing principles: we want to win the constructors’ [championship], which we’ve done, we want to win the drivers’ [championship], and so we’ll see how the race plays out.”