Piastri's brilliance is both saving and causing problems for McLaren

What a problem to have. In Oscar Piastri, McLaren has a driver capable of winning the hardest, best races of the current Formula 1 era – as took place at last weekend’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

But its other driver remains its best hope of winning this season’s drivers’ title – with all the glory and emotion that accolade evokes.

Piastri’s Baku victory will surely go down, one day in the far future when he has many more, as one of his best F1 wins. It stamped down the memory of that hot, awkward Sunday in Budapest where he clinched his first grand prix victory around Lando Norris’s angst over ceding back the lead.

Charles Leclerc is basically unbeatable in Baku qualifying, so to split the Ferraris and start second was job one achieved for Piastri last Saturday. The 0.321s gap to pole says far more about Leclerc’s affinity with this course.

But the winning pass, having looked firmly second best in stint one on the mediums, was as hard as nails and encapsulated everything F1 has come to learn about Piastri in less than two years on the grid.

He came from so far back that McLaren team boss Andrea Stella felt “he's gonna go long”. But having not only made the apex, Piastri was pretty much on the perfect racing line out of it too. Then Piastri had to soak up 25 laps of constant, boiling pressure from Leclerc – including five attacks for the lead after the long DRS zone leading into Turn 1.

Piastri's perfectly measured pass on Leclerc sent him on his way to an impressive victory

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

Time and again he calmly placed his car perfectly – occupying the inside line and then, generally, making a good enough exit so that Leclerc had no sniff at Turn 2 following the orthodox cutback on the outside line. Nor at Turn 3 after another long blast of DRS.

Stella said this was “90% Oscar's judgment... the 10% [was] the car came to Oscar's advantage [as it] has good traction”. But Stella reckoned Piastri had only realised it was possible to take such a line through Turn 1 and get good traction “after the first one” when he “found some references”. This shows how instinctively excellent his overtaking is.

PLUS: The radio message Piastri “ignored” to win Baku’s three-way fight thriller

For the Australian’s part, he reckoned “hanging on in sector two” made the critical difference in defying Leclerc for so long that the Ferrari eventually cooked its tyres sliding in the dirty air, as Piastri had done in stint one.

Piastri’s name comes up ever more often in regards to uncertain driver line-ups at other teams – think Aston Martin and Red Bull – these days. McLaren wouldn’t want to lose a clear asset by disillusioning him

Ultimately Piastri, who of course might’ve won in any case, was on hand to save McLaren when Norris was dumped out in Q1 through no fault of driver or team. The decision of a Baku marshal – backed by the FIA – to activate a yellow flag that impacted Norris for all of an instant on his final lap in Q1 passing the crash damage-hobbled Esteban Ocon blew the Briton’s weekend apart.

Having been both McLaren’s hero in Baku, Piastri nevertheless continues to be a specific problem for McLaren’s season.

Some may well scoff at the comparison, but it’s just how evocative this current McLaren era is of Ayrton Senna vs Alan Prost in the late 1980s. Nowhere near the acrimony, of course, nor the achievements – yet. But the complexities of fielding two evenly matched ‘number one’ drivers is deeply ingrained in this team’s history.

Stella revealed after McLaren’s fourth win of the season that he and his drivers had agreed the outcome of Piastri’s Monza lap one attack on Norris had been declared “not acceptable”. This highlights the challenge in not holding back one driver in support of another, plus McLaren obviously doesn’t want to upset a star surely destined to fully challenge for future championships.

Piastri and Norris has all the makings of a classic F1 team-mate rivalry

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

Plus, Piastri’s name comes up ever more often in regards to uncertain driver line-ups at other teams – think Aston Martin and Red Bull – these days. McLaren wouldn’t want to lose a clear asset by disillusioning him.

Therefore, it's trying to enact a complex team orders approach to show “bias”, per both Stella and Norris, into the latter’s attempt to close what is now a 59-point gap to Max Verstappen after the Dutchman’s Baku struggles and Norris’s race day save of his own. Making things more complex is how the team wants to stop rivals from gaining insight into its race strategies when its drivers run near each other again, as they did at Monza.

McLaren will review this ahead of Singapore and set a specific plan for that event, but it was always set to do so, Autosport understands.

It is hard to agree with this approach overall but that’s purely because in a pragmatic sense, it would be brilliant to see the title go down to the wire against a driver with full team support and his own ruthless brilliance at play. Fighting fire with fire would be a cliché of choice.

But this writer doesn’t have two charging drivers to keep happy, nor thousands of staff depending on my judgements.

Having achieved what Stella called the “huge milestone” of shifting Red Bull off the top spot in the constructors’ for the first time since Miami 2022, McLaren is now the clear favourite to win that title this year. At most F1 squads, such an achievement often comes with bonuses for team staff, not the drivers’ version.

McLaren insiders insisted in Baku, in regards to the fine balancing act of its complex team orders approach, that while it badly wants to fight for both championships it doesn’t want to compromise its deeply held principles in doing so. And that’s even though it risks Norris’s chances - an attitude that deserves immense respect.

Now on top of the constructors' championship for the first time over a decade, McLaren has a golden opportunity to seal at least one title in 2024

Photo by: Dom Romney / Motorsport Images

It really worked in Baku, with Norris helping Piastri by holding off Sergio Perez after the Red Bull driver’s pitstop.

And so, to Singapore, where these engaging narratives will rumble on.

McLaren nearly won on Red Bull's weakest ground in 2023 and Ferrari is expected to again be in the mix. How F1 is looking forward to seeing how much more exciting this brilliant championship can get on Sunday.

Can McLaren keep up its form in Singapore?

Photo by: Dom Romney / Motorsport Images