Racing bosses need to loosen up and stop making things so complicated, says McLaren chief Zak Brown. And he thinks Max Verstappen has figured out exactly how to work the system.
“Max has done a great job of absolutely understanding what the rules say,” Brown explained on the James Allen on F1 podcast.
The McLaren CEO has been pushing hard for changes in how F1 handles race decisions. His big idea? Pay the stewards and make it their full-time job.
But there’s more to it than that.
Brown wants to see experienced racers making the calls – people who’ve actually been behind the wheel and understand what’s really going on out there. He thinks they should have more freedom to use their judgment about what’s right and wrong.
“I’d like us to take a step back, loosen it up,” he says. “We need full-time stewards who have actually raced cars.”
The current system is causing headaches for everyone. Take what happened in Austin, Texas, for example. McLaren’s Lando Norris got penalized for going off track while racing Verstappen, even though he crossed the finish line first. The ruling pushed him behind Verstappen in the final standings.
“At turn one in Austin, the apex is actually around the corner, and so then you start getting into that debate,” Brown explains. It’s exactly the kind of technical nitpicking he thinks is hurting the sport.
Here’s the real problem, according to Brown: “If we have too many rules, no one’s actually sure what the rules are.”
His solution? “We just need to go back to kind of what worked in the good old days.”
It’s a call for common sense in a sport that’s getting tangled up in its own rulebook.
