Brown: McLaren have got a variety of driver options

McLaren played an unexpected hand when it became obvious they were ousting underperforming Daniel Ricciardo for another driver, that Piastri was the guy they were chasing came as a shock to everyone outside of McLaren and the 21-year-inner circle.

Of course, the move on Piastri by Brown upset Alpine who took the matter to arbitration, with team boss Otmar Szafnauer totally ambushed by Oscar's rebuff adamant that they will hang on to the highly rated but increasingly overhyped Australian.

Should Alpine get their way, it might actually take a load off Brown's shoulders as he has a queue of drivers with the F1 carrot hanging in front of several, and Indycar drivers too, including Colton Herta.

During an interview with SpeedCity Broadcasting, Brown said of the driver situation at McLaren for 2023 now that Ricciardo has accepted to take a golden handshake and cut his contract a year short: “We have multiple plans.

“We’ve got a variety of options and of course that’s clearly one of them or we wouldn’t be in that meeting! Let’s just see how it plays out and then we will go from there. There is a CRB meeting which has been reported on, I think we’ll be better placed to comment on it post the meeting."

Should the Piastri poach fail, McLaren will still be spoilt for choice, even Brown joked about the situation: “I tried to put myself in the seat but Andreas shot that down, so that’s the only driver that we’ve ruled out so far!

In the McLaren organisation or in a connected programme are America's most likely next big F1 star, if the hype is believed, would be Colton Herta who is their test driver and has tested the team's last generation F1 car.

In July, Mclaren confirmed their Indycar trio with an eye on F1, signing Alex Palou to race for McLaren starting in 2023. With Piastri it means four eager blokes watching their mobile phone for Zak's avatar to show and bring news.

Brown explained: "We have our testing program, Colton did an excellent job, Pato was in the car at the end of last year, he did an excellent job. Off course, we’ve got our situation with Alex going on in the States, we’ll see how that plays out but we certainly intend to put him in our Formula 1 car.

All those drivers have won a lot of races in a very competitive championship. I hold IndyCar at the very highest level of motorsport, so I think we’ve got a handful of different options and we’ll just take one day at a time," concluded Brown.

His counterpart at Alpine expects the FIA's CRB to deliver its verdict this week: “I think the CRB will take some time to deliberate – not a lot but a couple of days – and probably by the end of the week when we get to Zandvoort we’ll know."

As for driver options should Piastri go to McLaren, Alpine has a seat for a driver to partner Esteban Ocon which also means they have a long list to consider, with Pierre Gasly recently mentioned by French media as a possibility and Ricciardo also aa option..

Szafnauer said: "If Piastri isn’t in the car – and I believe he will be – I got about 14 calls from drivers who are interested because Alonso’s seat is the most valuable thing left on the 2023 F1 grid.""