Stella: McLaren "not naive" but doesn't expect Norris-Piastri F1 title fight to escalate

McLaren Formula 1 team principal Andrea Stella believes the intra-team title battle between Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri won't escalate as the pair head into the final four race weekends separated by a single point.

Norris heads into the Brazilian Grand Prix weekend as the new championship leader after demoting team-mate Piastri in Mexico, with defending champion Max Verstappen 36 points behind the Briton.

McLaren's almost unprecedented insistence on letting its drivers free to fight has helped keep the 2025 drivers' championship alive, even though its hands-on approach to balancing the concept of fairness has required significant buy-in from its two drivers.

That process hasn't entirely gone without a hitch, given Piastri's unease at being asked to swap positions with Norris in Monza, which prompted in-depth discussions. Piastri and Norris then clashed in Singapore, which triggered "repercussions" against Norris that were cancelled out when the pair made contact again in Austin, for which Piastri was predominantly held responsible. The pair have been back on a clean slate since Mexico.

By and large Norris and Piastri have cooperated as normal, however, and team boss Stella doesn't see any reason for that to change after all the work the Italian has done in the background to foster the team's equal treatment culture.

When asked if there's a possibility Norris and Piastri will derail their relationship during the 2025 title run-in, Stella replied: "I don't think that's the case.

"Obviously, both drivers have known for a long time that the car was competitive, so they knew that there was a possibility to fight for the championship. But I don't see that this is escalating in anything more than focusing each of them on their own weekend and try to extract the maximum.

Norris and Piastri last tangled during Austin's sprint race

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / LAT Images via Getty Images

"This requires a high level of dialogue, but this is something that normally we can do well at McLaren."

F1's rich history books provide plenty of warning signs that McLaren's approach could yet backfire. It was McLaren that lost an almost certain drivers' title in 2007 when Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen mounted an unlikely fightback to defeat McLaren duo Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso at the final race in Brazil.

Referencing the 2007 title finale, when Stella was on the winning side as Raikkonen's performance engineer, he said: "The history of Formula 1 is certainly a source that we've been using on how to approach managing two number one drivers that are in contention for a world drivers' championship.

"I am personally very proud of our two drivers, our engineers. They collaborate in a way I think that we have not seen before in the history of Formula 1.

"We are not naive. We know that the pressure is high. We know that the stakes are big, but we will continue leaning on our framework, on our principles, on the good conversations.

"And so far, what I've seen is that Lando and Oscar have always been very supportive. Yesterday Oscar talked very clearly about the mutual respect, the mutual support that is happening between himself and the team and likewise is happening with Lando.

"We are not naive, but we will work very hard to make sure that this position stays until the end of the championship."