Zak Brown thinks Lando Norris should think about whether he is "too open" about his emotions.
Auto Motor und Sport journalist Michael Schmidt asked the McLaren CEO about the perception that while Max Verstappen "solves problems", Norris "talks about them".
Norris and Verstappen, although friends off-track, have contested an increasingly tense battle for the drivers’ world championship in 2024, which the Red Bull driver appears poised to win.
When asked about Norris’ openness with the media, including regularly chastising himself for mistakes and opening up about his mental health, Brown answered: "The world has changed. More transparent.
"Today, admitting weaknesses is a strength. We all have them. But maybe Lando is too open sometimes and he would be better off holding back on certain things. But I don’t think that translates into a weakness on the racetrack."
According to former F1 driver Ralf Schumacher, Norris was simply outclassed this season.
"Max is a driver like (Ayrton) Senna, or Michael (Schumacher)," Ralf, seven time world champion Michael’s younger brother, told f1-insider.com. "They could win even when the car wasn’t the best.
"Others have to have a perfect car to be at the top of the podium."
Brown, though, insists that Norris drove "brilliantly" at times this year. "The only thing he could have done differently in Austin would have been to drive into Max’s car," he said. "But that’s not our style, and not Lando’s either."
Many pundits and experts think that while Norris made mistakes in 2024 due to his inexperience in fighting for an F1 title, the same is true of McLaren in the post-Ron Dennis era.
"Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes make mistakes too," Brown insists, "but everyone forgets that because they won so much in between. We could have won Silverstone, and maybe Montreal and Monza too. But we learn from our mistakes and today we are a better team than we were at the start of the season."
While the drivers’ title now appears extremely unlikely for Norris, McLaren is still ahead in the constructors’ championship with three races to go.
Would McLaren’s 2024 campaign be a total failure if it missed out on both titles?
"I don’t see it that way," Brown said. "We didn’t have the car we have now until Miami. We lost a lot of points to Max and Red Bull.
"Of course I want to win at least one of the two titles, but the constructors’ title will be tough too. Ferrari look very strong. They’re giving me more headaches than Red Bull.
"Things are not looking good in the drivers’ championship," the American admitted. "If we lose it, it will have happened at the beginning and not in Silverstone or Monza. And also not because we swapped places between Lando and Oscar (Piastri) in Hungary."