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The McLaren drivers have been locked in what had appeared to be a two-horse race for the drivers’ championship in 2025, until Verstappen surged back into contention. Fox Sports, available on Kayo Sports, is the only place to watch every practice, qualifying session and race in the 2025 FIA Formula One World Championship™ LIVE in 4K. New to Kayo? Join now and get your first month for just $1. Last weekend, Norris’ triumph in Mexico City saw him gain the title lead for the first time in 15 rounds. He leads Piastri by one point, with Verstappen just 36 points back with four rounds remaining. It means Verstappen is well and truly in the hunt for another F1 title, but even with the Red Bull rival close, Brown said the team’s controversial ‘papaya rules’ - which allows each of Piastri and Noprris to race hard against each other as long as it remains clean– will remain for the remainder of the 2025 season, even if it costs both their drivers a title. “I’d rather go, ‘We did the best we can and our drivers tied on points and the other guy beat us by one’ than the alternative, which is telling one of our drivers right now, when they’re one point away from each other, ‘I know you have a dream to win the world championship, but we flipped a coin and you don’t get to do it this year’” Brown said on F1’s Beyond the Grid podcast ahead of this weekends Brazil Grand Prix. “Forget it. That’s not how we go racing. “The best way to win the constructors is to finish first and second in the [drivers] championship, and the best way to win the drivers’ championship is to have two drivers going for the drivers’ championship. “In the event 2007 happens again (when McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso’s battle cost them a title), I’d rather have that outcome than all the other outcomes by playing favourites. We won’t do it. We’re racers. We’re going racing.” However, after several questionable team calls in 2025, many fans believe McLaren is already favouring the British driver. But that is a notion Brown again dismissed this week. “We’re transparent. We’re fair. We communicate. We’re not perfect, but we’re racers, and they know that,” he continued. “There’s all this noise around, but we don’t let that noise come inside the (McLaren Technology Centre).” Meanwhile McLaren team principal Andrea Stella labelled accusations of bias as misinformed. “When you are in my role, it’s like when you have two sons and somebody says, ‘Which one is your preferred son?’ They are my two sons, how can you say which one is the preferred one?” he said. “Sometimes when I hear or read some comments of this kind, I find them really very superficial. “I think that sometimes people don’t really understand what it means to have two drivers that are with you together on this journey in Formula 1. I just feel very grateful to both.” Watch every session of the Brazil F1 Grand Prix on Fox Sports via Kayo this weekend.
