Zak Brown made the trip to the TV pen to apologise to Oscar Piastri after the Qatar Grand Prix, later conceding that McLaren made a "huge mistake" and "gave away his win". The Australian was primed to complete a weekend sweep, but an ill-fated team strategy car scuppered both cars' Sundays.

Piastri arrived in Qatar with his title dreams hanging by a thread. He responded in style, scoring pole in the sprint shootout, winning the sprint race, and then putting his MCL39 machine in P1 for the Grand Prix. When he emerged from Turn One ahead of Lando Norris and Max Verstappen on the opening lap, he looked set to eat into his team-mate's World Championship advantage.

However, when Nico Hulkenberg and Pierre Gasly crashed on lap seven, bringing out the safety car, the race took a turn. McLaren kept both cars out, while the rest of the field pitted for fresh Pirelli rubber. This meant that Verstappen took the restart in third with one of his stops already out of the way.

From there, McLaren were on the back foot and despite some impressive pace from Piastri, the reigning world champion went unchallenged at the head of the field. Norris, meanwhile, needed some fortune to recover fourth place from Kimi Antonelli on the penultimate lap.

In the media pen afterwards, Brown was filmed embracing Piastri and sharing some hushed words. Asked about the conversation directly afterwards, Piastri explained: "It was just an apology. So, I can't ask for more than that."

In his post-race interviews, McLaren Racing CEO Brown fessed up to his team's mistake, ruing a missed opportunity at the Lusail International Circuit. Norris had the opportunity to wrap up the title in Qatar, but now Verstappen heads to Abu Dhabi, just 12 points behind the Brit, while Piastri remains in contention, but 16 points back.

"We clearly made a huge mistake," Brown told Sky Germany. "I think Oscar was absolutely impeccable all weekend. We gave his win away. I think it's the reality. There's no other way to look at it. And we gave Lando's podium away. Very frustrating.

"We clearly made the wrong call. Nothing we can do about it now other than learn from it. This is two weekends in a row with some big learnings. But we need to come back in Abu Dhabi and fight hard.

"We're leading the championship. Gave away some points for Oscar. So we need to not make these mistakes. It's obviously all a bit raw at the moment."