As the title battle between Lando Norris and Max Verstappen intensifies, McLaren CEO Zak Brown has raged a war of words with Red Bull team advisor Helmut Marko for his “inappropriate” comments about Norris’ mental health. In the buildup to the US GP, Marko was quoted as labeling the Briton ‘mentally weak’ to challenge Verstappen.
“[Max] Verstappen, he’s the best, he’s the fastest and has the mental strength to theoretically fight for the championship more than Leclerc and Norris. We know Norris has some mental weaknesses. I’ve read of the rituals he needs to do to perform well on race day,” said the 81-year-old former racing driver.
As it turns out, Brown was not pleased by Marko’s assessment and dig at his driver. Per GP Blog, the American was pretty riled up about Marko’s comments, deeming them to be inappropriate and in poor taste.
Brown said, “To choose poking at that situation, I think is pretty inappropriate and kind of sets us back 10-20 years. It’s all fun and games in how some people go racing and what tactics they use from a sporting perspective but I thought that one was in pretty poor taste.”
️ “That one was in poor taste.”
Zak Brown was deeply unimpressed with Helmut Marko’s recent comments that called into question Lando Norris’s mental strength: pic.twitter.com/CAT0bH1HXp
— The Race (@wearetherace) October 18, 2024
Norris himself has been a pretty stout advocate of mental health in the past. He has spoken very candidly about his own struggles with self-doubt when he started his F1 career back in 2019. Moreover, the#4 driver has attached himself to many initiatives in the sphere of mental health to create awareness and foster support.
Marko, on the other hand, is notorious for being very straightforward and brutal with his comments. The Red Bull advisor has often caught a lot of flak for his stances — most notably against his own driver, Sergio Perez who he deemed unable to sustain levels of confidence and concentration on account of being a Mexican, last year.
The rivalry between McLaren and Red Bull has surely spilled outside the track at this point. The Woking-based team leads the Bulls by 41 points in the Constructors’ championship. However, the drivers’ standings see Verstappen still hold a pretty solid lead of 52 points over Norris.
Going into the final six races, Norris needs to be on his A-game if he wants to win his maiden F1 title by denying Verstappen his fourth consecutive F1 world championship.
