After weeks of refusing to intervene in an intra-team battle, McLaren has finally decided to prioritize Lando Norris in the Drivers’ championship. It has asked Oscar Piastri to help his teammate in any way he can. Norris, however, continued to insist that he wanted to win on merit, an approach that Adam Wylde of the Nailing the Apex podcast disagreed with.
Ahead of the Azerbaijan GP weekend, Norris emphasized that he wanted a fair fight for the World title. Wylde, however, during a session with Tim Hauraney, could not get his head around it.
“Why are we looking for a fight here?” he asked. “That doesn’t seem to make any sense to me.”
“how important is it for you to keep the fairness and sportsmanship?”
Lando: very important [..] you want to win it fair. in any sport as soon as you know you’ve done something that’s not fair, that stays in your mind forever but that’s not how I work pic.twitter.com/8G3LE9NGvb
— Ray (@ln4norris) September 12, 2024
Meanwhile, his co-host Tim Hauraney added, “Yeah, you have to be ruthless as a driver.”
So far, Norris has seemed comfortable with McLaren’s approach of allowing Piastri to challenge him. However, after the Italian GP, it became clear that this strategy could hurt both McLaren and Norris in the championship standings. The Woking-based team realized that having two ‘lead’ drivers could cause major issues.
Hauraney referenced the rivalry between Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna in the late 1980s—a bitter feud that got so ugly, that they eventually preferred crashing into each other rather than letting the other win.
Taking the same into consideration, Piastri‘s approach would be a welcome sight for McLaren.
Piastri pained but on board with the team’s orders
Consistently fighting for race wins, the Australian driver was certainly not happy to back off from the challenge. Calling it a painful decision, Piastri detailed how he understood that for the greater good of the team, he had to help Norris finish in places higher than him.
Max Verstappen on McLaren’s team orders and making Oscar Piastri 2nd driver:
“If you look at it from Oscar’s POV, he is closer to Lando than Lando is to me. But they have to deal with that. It’s not my problem”
“Oscar came in as a number 1 driver; they both are. I… pic.twitter.com/7qbxRdivUE
— Marc (@433_marc) September 12, 2024
Max Verstappen, meanwhile, doesn’t believe Piastri is the type of driver who can be labeled as a ‘number 2’. According to him, both McLaren drivers are so talented that it’s difficult to pick an outright lead. However, he added that this was McLaren’s problem, not his.
