Yahoo Autos McLaren F1 Team Will Prioritize Lando Norris in Championship Bid
McLaren F1 team officials have declared that the F1 Drivers’ Championship is now a realistic ambition.
Defending champion Max Verstappen leads the standings with eight events—including three Sprint races—remaining in 2024.
Norris is second in the championship, 62 points behind Verstappen.
McLaren will prioritize Lando Norris over teammate Oscar Piastri in their bid to snatch both world championships in Formula 1.
McLaren’s resurgence in Formula 1 means the squad has slashed Red Bull Racing’s advantage in the Constructors’ Championship from 115 points at its peak to just eight.
The team accepted after the last event in Italy that the Drivers’ Championship is now also a realistic ambition. Reigning World Champion Max Verstappen still leads the standings with eight events—including three Sprint races—remaining in 2024. Norris is second in the championship, 62 points behind Verstappen, with fourth-placed Piastri 106 back.
“We [will] bias our support to Lando but we want to do it without too much compromise on our principles,” McLaren team principal Andrea Stella told BBC Sport. “Our principles are that the team interest always comes first. Sportsmanship for us is important in the overall way we go racing. And then we want to be fair to both drivers."
McLaren has so far been reluctant to issue team orders, applying them only on occasion when one driver was unfairly strategically advantaged, most prominently in Hungary, when Norris was instructed to cede track position he gained through the pit stop cycle to Piastri.
In Italy, Piastri passed Norris on the opening lap in a situation which allowed Charles Leclerc to also slip past Norris.
Leclerc went on to use a one-stop strategy to beat the McLaren pair, with Piastri second, and Norris third, while Verstappen was an uncompetitive sixth as he sounded the alarm bells about his and Red Bull’s title prospects.
Stella said McLaren had held “very collaborative” conversations with both drivers since the last race, outlining that Norris will be prioritized, but cautioning that the Briton is not expecting to be given overtly preferential treatment.
"Even when I said to Oscar: 'Would you be available to give up a victory?' He said: 'It's painful, but if it's the right thing to do now, I will do it’,” Stella said. "Every driver is hard-wired to go for a victory. So I am always very impressed by the level of team spirit and maturity and collaboration that we found in this period.
"Lando wants to win because he deserved the victory on track. It's okay to be occasionally supported by your teammate, but you don't want to use, systematically, ways of adjusting the race just for the sake of the points when your teammate is scoring in a way that he deserves. This is not the way McLaren wants to win, or the way Lando wants to win. If I ask Lando, he would say: 'I am comfortable if in Abu Dhabi I miss a few points that I could have got with some actions, but if those actions were not right at the time, then, you know what? We keep strong as a team, the team is stable and cohesive, we will give it a go next year'."
Speaking on Thursday, Piastri told broadcasters: “Naturally as a driver it’s never I guess an easy thing or a simple thing to agree to, but there’s a much bigger picture at play than just myself.
“I’m still coming out here to try and achieve the best results I can, to put myself in a good position to score a lot of points for first myself and also the team but I know that if there’s some ways of helping the points for Lando then I will do that.”
Bearman in for Suspended Magnussen
Elsewhere, Oliver Bearman will contest this weekend’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix with Haas, in place of the suspended Kevin Magnussen.
Magnussen reached the threshold of 12 penalty points in Italy and under the regulations is not permitted to compete in Baku.
Bearman joined Haas in late 2023 and has already conducted several test and practice sessions for the squad, and will race for it fulltime from 2025, replacing Magnussen.
It will be the Briton’s second stand-in appearance of the season after his late call-up to race for backers Ferrari in Saudi Arabia in March, where he finished seventh.
“Of course it’s not the circumstances I’d hope, but it’s a great opportunity to build up my experience and get a full weekend under my belt with notice,” Bearman said.
Fortunately for Bearman, he has experience of the Baku City Circuit from Formula 2; last year he claimed pole position, despite having a bent steering wheel after clipping the wall, and he went on to win both races.
“If I’d have picked two races it probably wouldn’t have been these ones [Saudi Arabia and Baku] but I went well here last year,” Bearman said. “I’ll leave a bit more safety margin, especially in the practice sessions.”
