McLaren say they won’t choose Lando Norris over Piastri despite F1 title race | McLaren

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella has insisted they will not give Lando Norris preferential treatment over team-mate Oscar Piastri, even as the British driver battles Max Verstappen for the Formula 1 world championship.

Norris beat Verstappen with a dominant drive at Zandvoort to win the Dutch Grand Prix on Sunday, reclaiming the lead after the Dutchman beat him to the starting line. In doing so, he showed that the McLaren is now the fastest car in the field, outpacing Verstappen’s Red Bull, which had been virtually untouchable earlier in the season.

Verstappen’s opening run of seven wins from 10 races allowed him to open up a huge lead over Norris, but the 24-year-old has since bounced back and now trails his rival by 70 points with nine races remaining. Overcoming the deficit will be a serious challenge, but McLaren have been emphatic that they will not be nominating Norris as their number one driver at the expense of his team-mate, despite Piastri being out of contention for the title.

In Hungary, Norris took the lead from Piastri due to the team’s pit stop strategy and was ordered to give it back, despite it costing him points against Verstappen. Norris eventually did so and Stella insisted that McLaren maintain a level playing field for their drivers in the Netherlands.

“We have been having conversations about team orders since race one, because you always want to go into a race with clarity on how we are going to manage the internal competition,” Stella said. “This happens all season, so you have to put this conversation in the context of the classification of the drivers.

“We have nine races ahead of us and if we create a number 1 driver, what do we do? All favours to one driver? This is not a healthy way to run a team. For every race we analyse the situations and in the 50-50 situations, in this case if Lando needs some extra support, we give it to him. But the team includes Oscar, the team should not do things that are not fair to Oscar. We are in this together.”

Norris said he believes the McLaren is now the fastest car in the field, beating Verstappen by almost 23 seconds at Zandvoort. But to close the gap to the championship leader, he will need every point he can score and potentially the help of his team-mate. How his team now manages their relationship will be under intense scrutiny.

McLaren brought a number of new upgrades to Zandvoort, the first major development since the Miami GP. Stella believes Red Bull still has the edge at some circuits, especially the ones with fast corners, but that McLaren is on course to outpace them at all of them.

“Thanks to the upgrades we will now be more competitive, even in the places where Red Bull was faster than us,” he said. “We think that the car in its current configuration may not be sufficient in terms of the performance needed to be the best car in every event. That is why we plan to deliver more upgrades before the end of the season.”

Norris’ victory in Zandvoort was telling, because the first time Verstappen had been denied victory in his home race, but also because of the margin by which he was beaten, which the Dutchman described as “alarming”.

It was no small moment for McLaren either. It is the team’s first victory at Zandvoort since Niki Lauda took over in 1985, when the race was last held before returning to the calendar in 2021. The team now sits just 30 points behind Red Bull in the standings, a margin that looks within reach as they attempt to secure their first constructors’ championship since 1998.