With 8 races to go in 2024, McLaren looks set to win the constructors’ championship comfortably. The tricky bit is their hunt for the driver’s title, which is currently led by Lando Norris, is not getting any help from his team to close the gap to Max Verstappen.
Many believe that this is because McLaren has the problem of having two number 1 drivers on the team. It is common in Formula 1 to make use of team orders to help the driver who is more likely to win the championship. However, it seems like no matter how close the driver’s championship gets, McLaren will just not use team orders to favor Norris over Oscar Piastri.
Former GP2 champion Davide Valsecchi believes that to be the case because Piastri is just too good to be a number 2 driver. In a recent conversation on the ‘F1 Nation’ podcast, host Tom Clarkson asked Valsecchi if he thinks McLaren is making things difficult for itself by not prioritizing Norris or is Piastri just too good to play a supporting role.
Overtake #298:
Oscar Piastri on Lando Norris (2024 Italian Grand Prix) pic.twitter.com/T1Vb4xghhc— OvertakeCentral (@OvertakeCentral) September 3, 2024
“Yeah, sometimes the move and the attitude of Oscar Piastri is too strong and too good to say you are the number two,” Valsecchi responded.
“It’s not so easy to consider Piastri a second driver because he’s bloody quick in some of the races… how you can say that Oscar Piastri is not going to be our champion in the future? I mean, he has all the quality, if he puts together all the 25 races with the right car next season, he can be one of the top contenders.”
For McLaren, it’s all about employing the papaya rules, which as elaborated by Zak Brown, suggests that the two drivers are free to race each other as long as they can bring both cars home at the end of the race without compromising each other.
Many have even speculated that it is Piastri’s manager, Mark Webber, who is keeping McLaren honest about not using his driver as a helping hand for Lando Norris.
Webber is protecting Piastri from what he suffered at Red Bull
During the post-race show on F1TV, Will Buxton explained how McLaren is throwing the championship away by allowing the two drivers to fight even at this stage of the season.
However, he also speculated that there must be a clause somewhere in Piastri’s contract to never use him as a number two driver. Buxton said that Webber never liked that status himself when his teammate Sebastian Vettel was dominating between 2010 and 2013.
“They’re going to throw it away”
McLaren is just straight up a disapointment, Lando gave up his win for Oscar after being guilt tripped, saying he was gonna need the team and now where tf is the team when he needs it?? Will Buxton just said what we all wanted pic.twitter.com/1oApGXKG1G— Belli (@TheIzziWay) September 1, 2024
Even Harry Benjamin, a BBC journalist, said the same thing about Webber being the reason behind Piastri’s assertiveness in pushing for victories. “I wonder just how much, Webber has imparted onto Piastri his knowledge, his experience… sort of, laying down the marker for Piastri to go, ‘Well, you need to start asserting yourself within this team’,” Benjamin noted.
After how Red Bull clearly favored Sebastian Vettel over himself during their first championship years, it’s no surprise that Webber would never want something similar to happen to one of his drivers.
