Both challenges and advancements have characterized Zak Brown‘s time at McLaren. The team is doing better on the track as a result of his efforts to revitalize the historic racing brand, which has shown encouraging results. The emergence of Lando Norris, who has regularly manifested his brilliance and tenacity, has been crucial to this turnaround. Lando Norris‘ podium finishes and extraordinary consistency have raised the expectations of the team from the 23-year-old. And now the American is trying to cover up his own failure by raising the pressure on the British person to lead the Papaya army to victory.

Lando Norris’ subconscious, which had previously pushed him to switch teams, must have felt at ease with the improvements McLaren brought before the summer break. With these adjustments, the squad has moved up to second-best team status, only behind Red Bull, who leads the runway, but victory is still lacking. The Woking-based team has elevated its expectations by providing its driver with a capable vehicle. Though the ultimate objective of the team still seems away, the summer break gave Zak Brown the best opportunity to mask his own failure.

Setting ambitious goals for Lando Norris, Zak Brown serves as a cover for his own inadequacies

Brown made it clear that the team had missed some of its crucial development phases shortly before the 2023 season was about to begin. And as a result, the team’s miserable period began. However, the team upgraded its sluggish MCL60 and handed it to the experienced driver of the team, Lando Norris, who in turn managed the team to recuperate with consecutive second places and earn a few crucial points before summer.

This gave Zak Brown and the rest of the team some time to contemplate a justification for covering up their own failure to provide Norris with a championship-winning car.
Brown praised Norris and saddled him with the enhanced team expectations while speaking to ESPN F1 about the driver. He said, “ He [Lando] loves #McLaren, it’s been his family, so there’s no doubt in my mind is his number one choice is to win a world championship with McLaren.”

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Despite his excellent work for the team, Norris is still behind Max Verstappen by a wide margin. Furthermore, Norris noted that the vehicle’s handling had been terrible, which prompted the British driver to criticize his team, and similar to masking his personal failure with sweet talks, Zak Brown takes the shots from Norris in a positive way.

After Norris’ harsh critique, Zak Brown holds the saying “We are a happy family together”

In terms of both on-track and off-track issues, Lando Norris has never shied away from expressing his views. The Bristol native said, “We do have a poor car – and I say poor, I would say pretty terrible in the slow-speed corners, extremely difficult to drive,” after McLaren gave him a difficult-to-drive car, prompting him to publicly criticize the team.

Brown has finally reacted to this. The McLaren’s CEO made it clear in his interview with Motorsports.com how Norris’ words had inspired the squad like never before. He said, “No, we’re all motivated. We kind of get happy together, we get grumpy together. So, if he’s made a comment, it’s consistent, it’s motivating. We don’t get down, we fight hard. I mean, if you look at how poor start the season was, that was hard.”

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Following Norris’ criticism, McLaren focused on revamping the side, which in some way produced positive results but left a difficult-to-handle vehicle. With mixed emotions, Norris and his crew will return to the track in an effort to challenge Max Verstappen.