F1 News
Brown surprised by McLaren's huge lead over Verstappen
Zak Brown was very pleased after qualifying in Australia, seeing his team lock out the front row for the first race of the season, defying the pressure that they were put under throughout the session.
For the first time since before the coronavirus pandemic, Formula 1 returned to Melbourne for the opening race of the season, and it was the McLarens of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri that showed they were the team with the early pace, although it was a lot tighter than the McLaren CEO would have wanted.
"Yeah, that was a little bit of pressure. I said to Andrea [Stella] when there were three minutes to go 'I'm not sure if this is that much fun', but it turned out to be a lot of fun. They did a great job, the pressure was on, so we sent them out early," Brown stated at Viaplay.
McLaren deliver when the pressure was on
Both Norris and Piastri made things very difficult for themselves in Q3, with hometown favourite Piastri making a mistake in his first run, while Norris exceeded the track limits. There was a lot of pressure on the second run, but both delivered a strong lap.
"I'm a little bit surprised by the margin [compared to the rest of the grid, ed.] given how the session went. But now we turn our attention to what is probably a wet race tomorrow.
"The car seems to kind of almost get stronger over the lap, our sector three is really strong. But let's see what happens tomorrow. It's going to be a wild one," concluded the American.
This article was created in collaboration with Tim Kraaij