Zach Brown: We love Piastri pushing his teammate

At Silverstone, McLaren drivers surprised many: Lando Norris finished 2nd and Oscar Piastri 4th, and he was just unlucky – the safety car appeared on track for him at an unfortunate moment. Without this, the debutant of the season could have been on the podium for the first time.

McLaren Racing CEO Zach Brown emphasizes that such results are explained by the fact that the British circuit was well suited to the MCL60 car, and it is far from certain that the team will be able to repeat the success in Hungary, but it is hoped that the new products presented two weeks ago will be effective at the Hungaroring.

Zach Brown: “The Hungaroring is a different type of circuit than Silverstone, but we hope that the technical innovations presented at the previous stage will also work well here. At the same time, we have to be realistic and not expect every weekend to be as successful as the British one.

But the result we achieved then was very important for the whole team, although it is linked to Lando’s good performance in Austria. At the beginning of the year we understood that we were not in the best position and that did not come as a bad surprise to us, although we were upset.

But before Austria, our calculations said we could perform with more confidence there – and we did. We made sure the calculations didn’t lie, and at our home round in the UK both riders showed excellent results.

We know our car can handle fast tracks, which explains our results at the Red Bull Ring and Silverstone, but here in Hungary we are more cautious about our chances. Admittedly for the track, where we may have more difficulties.

Of course we are very happy that Oscar was able to perform at the same level as Lando, after receiving the upgraded car. I think he is a very good driver. Throughout the year he literally stepped on Lando’s heels, and it seems that already in his debut season he can perform at the level of a more experienced partner.

We like him riding Lando and we would like to see Oscar ahead of him in some qualifiers. So far he has fully lived up to our expectations, making almost no mistakes and showing impressive progress over the weekend. He is not at all characterized by panicky moods: even if something goes wrong in training, he approaches qualifying already well prepared and shows quite normal results on Saturday.

At the same time, you should not look at the score of qualifying matches between partners, which Lando leads 9-1. If we compare their actual results, it turns out that the difference between them is quite small. And in the races they sometimes have quite sharp battles with each other, but they always do it very correctly. Overall, at this stage of the season, the Oscars have hit just the level we want to see him at.