McLaren Formula 1 boss Zak Brown expects Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri to collide at some point this season and the team has already discussed how it will handle such an eventuality.
The two McLaren drivers are fighting for the world championship this year, with Piastri leading Norris by 10 points after winning the most recent race in Saudi Arabia.
Although it is not completely a two-horse race thanks to Max Verstappen's victory in the Japanese Grand Prix and strong form early in the year, plus Mercedes driver George Russell being a consistent podium challenger, Norris and Piastri have been the favourites going into each race weekend.
So far, they are yet to fight each other wheel-to-wheel. Qualifying mistakes from Norris meant he qualified out of position in the last two races, but the two were very close together for the lead in the season opener in Australia before it rained and then in China before a brake problem set in for Norris. They also ran nose to tail in Japan, behind Verstappen.
Brown, Norris and his engineer Will Joseph all joined Edd Straw on the The Race F1 Podcast this week for a special episode filmed at McLaren’s headquarters.
In it Brown calls Norris and Piastri "two unbelievably competitive drivers" and admits the team won’t be surprised when that competitiveness goes awry on track.
"I know everyone's kind of waiting for the moment [and] I think that moment will come when they're racing each other very hard and somebody gets it a little bit wrong," he said.
"But I'm not worried about the outcome. Because we've discussed it, we know it's more of a when than an if.
"Drivers can race each other very hard and very clean, and every once in a while, someone's going to get it wrong. If you have two cars next to each other 24 times a year, it's going to happen.
"But I think we have a relationship with our drivers, and the drivers with each other, that they can have an epic battle on track and shake hands at the end of it, even if it means there's a little tangle in between.
"I wouldn't have a different driver line-up as I look up and down the grid. They're great guys, they're team players, they're great in the garage, they get along well, they push each other very well."
McLaren's policy with its drivers is to interfere as little as possible, although this year it has ordered Piastri not to attack Norris in Australia at a phase of the race Piastri was quicker because it wanted to clear some potentially awkward traffic then was willing to let its drivers continue racing.
Brown's admission that the two will collide at some point is a reflection of the competitive reality this season but also of that desire not to intervene.
In addition, McLaren is not only anticipating this, but some inside the team actually want it to happen sooner rather than later to get it out of the way, hence it has been proactively discussed internally.
"Everyone's quite relaxed about it, because everyone's kind of [of the understanding that] it's racing, it's going to happen," said Brown.
"What I'm very confident of [is that] they're not going to run each other off the track. So any incident, when that happens, is going to be a racing incident.
"And maybe it'll be they were just both fighting for a corner, maybe it'll be someone locked their brakes and went a little bit long, it was a mistake by one or the other but we'll talk about it, we'll analyse it, we'll learn from it.
"But I don't see any [1989/1990] Suzuka repeats going on with our two drivers [running into each other on purpose]."
Last year, McLaren flirted with team orders when it felt that Norris had an outside shot of the drivers’ championship against Verstappen and Piastri was too far back to be a factor.
However, the tactic proved a mixed bag, as it went against what the team wanted to do and also was not perfectly managed.
While there were occasions where the two drivers respected team orders and assisted one another, there were also grey areas and stress points.
The most significant example was in Italy, when Norris thought he was safe in the lead going into the second chicane but Piastri interpreted an agreement to race fairly and not take any unnecessary risks differently, so he attacked Norris with a well judged and clean but aggressive move, took the lead and cost Norris a position.
McLaren wants to avoid that kind of scenario, which hurts the overall team result. A collision between the two runs a high risk of exactly that but McLaren’s intention is obviously not to encourage a clash, just to be realistic about it happening so it can manage it more effectively.
By discussing it, McLaren feels it has the best chance of handling any fallout, rather than pretend it can keep a lid on the two drivers entirely by naively claiming that a clash will never happen or trying to prevent it by imposing specific rules.
If Brown is correct, the McLaren method will be tested sooner rather than later.
