Lando Norris issues response to Zak Brown’s repeated attacks on Red Bull

McLaren’s Lando Norris has said he understands Zak Brown’s critical position on Red Bull, with the team CEO at odds with Christian Horner.

Brown has been quite critical of Red Bull and team boss Christian Horner recently, with tensions threatening to overflow following the recent clash between Lando Norris and Max Verstappen.

Zak Brown: Christian Horner says and does stuff I think is wrong

The tensions between Brown and Horner stem back as far as 2021, when the McLaren CEO criticised Red Bull after being found guilty of a minor overspend breach of the newly introduced financial regulations – leading to a financial punishment and aero testing restriction handed down by the FIA.

But, with McLaren stepping up into the ring to challenge Red Bull on track this year, tensions have escalated as Brown was one of the most prominent voices calling for Red Bull and the FIA to be transparent regarding the findings of Red Bull GmbH’s internal investigation into Horner.

The situation was exacerbated by Norris and Verstappen colliding in Austria, which led Norris and McLaren team boss Andrea Stella to lash out at Red Bull and Verstappen – although Norris’ position had softened by the time of the British Grand Prix.

At Silverstone, Brown accused Red Bull of racing “without respect” for the regulations – a position Horner had no interest in addressing when asked by PlanetF1.com as the Red Bull team boss said he wouldn’t “dignify it with an answer”.

Heading into the Hungarian Grand Prix weekend, Brown gave an interview to the UK’s Independent, in which he also said Red Bull is “afraid” of Verstappen and spoke out on why he’s so critical of Horner.

“I only respond to things when I think they’re not right. I speak up on issues,” he said.

“It just seems I have more issues with [Christian], more than others, because he says and does stuff I think is wrong.”

As for Norris, who backed off on his calls for an apology from Verstappen by the time F1 reached Silverstone, the British driver was asked whether he’s starting to view Red Bull as an enemy – given the position his team CEO appears to have adopted.

“No,” he said.

“We’re competitors and competitors with every team. But you give and you take and, when other teams give it to you, you’ve got to give it back sometimes.”

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Lando Norris: McLaren hasn’t been the outright best team

McLaren’s MCL38 has been in contention for regular victories in 2024, with Norris having secured his first win at the Miami Grand Prix. But, despite the apparent speed of the MCL38 not translating into multiple victories due to strategic errors and their rivals outfoxing them, Norris said he doesn’t believe McLaren has had the outright fastest car outside of one or two weekends.

“I think we’ve definitely been the most consistent team, but I don’t think we’ve been the outright best team,” he said.

“Like maybe one or two races, I would put my money on saying we were probably potentially the best car. But from A to B through a whole weekend, I don’t think we’ve had a dominant weekend.

“When you look at other teams, they have. When you look at Canada, Mercedes should have been 1-2 quite easily, and they messed it up – a lot more than we did at Silverstone.

“So I think these other situations where we’ve just not been the best car but we’ve just been there every single time, we’ve been there, we’ve made opportunities, and we’ve not made mistakes.

“Reliability has been strong. There are so many other things to think about that people don’t talk about. I’m very happy and proud of what the team are doing.

“So yes, I want to believe so but I think we’ve seen, for two races now, that Mercedes could potentially look like one of the strongest teams – you’re still gonna have tracks where Red Bull is one of the strongest.

“But I don’t think we’ve had that one where it’s been, from A to B, ‘McLaren is the strongest this weekend’.

“So I think we definitely have a bit more work on just doing that a little bit. Even Silverstone, I came out one lap after Lewis, we degraded the tyres within five laps and then went on to win the race.

“Whether or not we made the wrong decision at the time, we were nowhere near quick enough. Even if I came out ahead of Lewis, I still wouldn’t have won the race because our tyre degradation was too high. So I think you still have to look at those other things.

“People just picked up the fact we didn’t win but, even if we came out in the lead, we wouldn’t have won anyway. So we have a lot more work to do on certain situations, certain tyres that we need to work on.

“At certain high-speed tracks, I think now we’ve been drifting away a little bit from being the strongest, or one of the strongest.”

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