Speaking to The Race, Brown acknowledged the parallels to the bitter title battle between Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton that year — a fight which ultimately handed Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen the crown by a single point.
“We recognise the consequences of that could be 2007,” Brown said.
“You got two drivers that tie and lose to Kimi by a point. We could have won that drivers’ championship, but who do you pick? And then you run the risk of the guy you don’t pick, he’s out of here.”
The McLaren boss stressed both drivers continue to be treated equally, with “nothing in their contract that gives one priority over the other” and no appetite for team orders unless absolutely necessary.
“We know the risk of that, if you’d like, from a driver point of view, is 2007,” he said.
“But I think the downside of favouring one or the other is that one then wants to leave, which is exactly what happened at the end of ’07.”
Unlike 2007, when rookie Hamilton shocked double world champion Alonso in his first F1 season, Norris and Piastri are now in their third year as teammates.
Between them, they have won 11 of 14 races this season and are separated by just nine points heading into the summer break, leaving McLaren dominant in the constructors’ standings and well clear of Ferrari.
Their fight has been largely respectful, although Norris’ collision with Piastri in Canada — which he immediately owned as a mistake — remains the only on-track flashpoint so far.
Brown believes that incident actually strengthened their relationship.
“I don’t think they’ll properly fall out,” he said. “Because of the communication, trust and respect we all have, and they have for each other.
“We love the challenge — like, I’m looking forward to them racing each other. So we like it. It’s not the elephant in the room. We talk about it.”
Brown is realistic that more wheel-to-wheel contact is inevitable, but confident it will never boil over into the kind of animosity that defined 2007.
“They will have racing incidents in their further time here at McLaren. We know that. They know that. So we’re not afraid of that.
“I’m positive they’re never going to run each other off the track, and that’s where you get into bad blood,” he said.
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