Yahoo Autos McLaren expects its drivers to offer to help each other in title fights
McLaren team principal Andrea Stella expects Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri to offer to help each other if one of them is involved in a close title fight in future.
Norris was told to move over for Piastri in the final stint of the Hungarian Grand Prix, having inherited the lead by virtue of being allowed to make his second pit stop before his teammate. The powerful undercut ensured Norris didn’t come under threat in second place, but also jumped Piastri before giving the place back for the Australian’s first win.
After Norris — who is now 76 points behind Max Verstappen — admitted he was thinking about his title chances when debating whether to hold position or not, Stella says McLaren won’t allocate a number one or number two driver, but hopes the environment will lead both to offer to help the other if a serious championship fight develops.
“When you have Oscar and Lando, we are in the lucky enough position that we don’t really need to decide who is a number one driver,” Stella said. “Which is a way of simplifying things… and it’s a way to frustrate the entire team, the ambition and the way we go racing, which is deep in our ethos. We race fair and if one of the two drivers gains a result on merit, this is protected.
“Maybe if it’s the last couple of races and there’s a strong championship interest for one of the two drivers, we may revise this. But what I’m expecting is that the other driver is coming to me and saying, ‘If you need my help with the other driver because he is in the championship competition, I’m available.’ And I think you build this ethos if you manage days like [Sunday] in a fair way — like I think we have done.
“This may give a lot of material for rumors and media [focus]. That’s fair enough — that’s racing. To be honest, I enjoyed this week as a spectator, as a fan, when these things were happening even when I was not in Formula 1. But please acknowledge that we just did what was fair [in Budapest]. This is what I want the entire team of McLaren to realize, and hopefully our fans as well.”
Despite Stella being confident in the way McLaren handled its approach to the one-two in the Hungaroring, he also says the result won’t stop the team trying to identify what it could have done better.
“I think that it would be arrogant that we take this very positive outcome and we don’t look at the opportunities to do better. But I would be a little careful in thinking, ‘Oh, we should have stopped in a different sequence, we should have stopped earlier,’ because there are some potential risks in doing so that we definitely wanted to exclude.
“At no point should the car — for instance, due to a pit stop problem — fall behind the traffic of [Lewis] Hamilton and Ferrari. So we needed to manage some of the problems and I didn’t want to put too much pressure on the pit crew. I’d rather take the pressure and resolve these things with the driver. We are the people that are most responsible in this team and I’d rather deal with that.
“Like we said after Silverstone, like we said after very positive outcomes, we do have to take every opportunity to improve. But in terms of the timing, we need to look back at the race and we do it like we always do, in a very calm way, applying our culture, and we’ll see where we could have done better.”
