McLaren not prioritising Norris over Piastri in championship fight yet

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella insists his team will act with “integrity and fairness” as they consider whether to prioritise Lando Norris’ championship bid over the rest of the season.

Norris is the closest driver to championship leader Max Verstappen entering the final ten rounds of the 2024 season.

With McLaren having scored more points than any team over the last five rounds, including a one-two victory in Hungary, the team have brought their biggest upgrade package since Miami to this weekend’s Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort.

Before the summer break began, McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown said the team would discuss whether they should prioritise their leading driver in the championship. However Stella said the team will continue to treat Norris and Piastri equally for now.

“When it comes to this conversation about being the number one, I don’t think that’s a good way of approaching racing,” Stella explained. “For us, we’d rather approach racing from fairness, integrity and then see what comes from this kind of approach.

“It’s 10 races to go. I think Lando, to realistically be in condition to chase the world championship, needs to keep performing at a very high level, he needs to keep being fast, and then you gain your ranks on track.

“If you gain your ranks, if you gain your merits on track by being fast, by being competitive, then we will evaluate – always led by integrity and fairness – whether in some occasions we need the team to take a certain direction in a 50-50 decision, or if we want to have a conversation with Oscar and say ‘Oscar, would you be available to do this to support Lando chasing the world championship?’.”

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Norris was told to allow Piastri to pass him to win the Hungarian Grand Prix last month, after McLaren unintentionally swapped the running order of their drivers during their final pit stops. Stella said any decision to impose a running order on their drivers would be clarified beforehand.

“It always has to be a conversation before the race,” he said. “Nobody should be surprised. We all should be in agreement, because ultimately we chase and we are in the quest for a drivers’ world championship as a team. There’s nobody that goes his own way and then the others will have to follow. So that’s our style.

“I don’t think it can be necessarily and simply summarised in ‘we elect a number one and then we work accordingly’. I would like to keep this more articulated as a team and then be more on a case-by-case situation.”

Although Norris said before the summer break he does not believe he has earned the right to have number one status in the team, after failing to maximise results despite starting from pole position in Spain and Hungary, Stella says his driver has the capability to fight for world championships.

“Lando is definitely world championship material,” Stella said. “He performs already at levels that I’ve seen in the past in some of the great champions who I’ve had the luck to work with. He is on a journey, like the entire team is and if we compare against perfections, then we do see some opportunities.

“Some of those opportunities come on the first lap, for instance, and trying to find the balance between being aggressive or simply staying away from situational accidents. We definitely have something to clean up on the start itself, which is not only a driver’s responsibility, it is also the team’s responsibility.

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“And then I think he had a couple of situations in the races in which he might have taken some of the responsibility, but I think it was the team’s responsibility. If I think of Canada, a case in which we didn’t pit Lando for the late Safety Car before the pit entry, or if I think about Silverstone and the final stint, that’s the team’s responsibility. If the team had operated at a higher standard, then Lando would have more points in the championship.

“As a team, we kind of appreciate that he puts some of the pressure on himself, or he raises his hand and says ‘it was on me’. But I think I have enough experience to say ‘mate, don’t worry. That’s on the team. Keep doing a good job, keep working to improve on your own opportunities.’ But definitely we as a team have quite a lot of work to do as well.”