Will Piastri prove kingmaker or spoiler in Norris’s F1 title bid?

Obfuscation is an innate part of the F1 game. Teams are, utterly understandably, unwilling to allow any more insight into their designs or decisions than is strictly necessary into the public realm. Lest rival squads use any of that information for their own gain.

At McLaren, preserving the squad’s ‘intellectual property’ is a hot topic for team principal Andrea Stella. This makes his erudite media appearances all the more impressive in that he explains things in so much depth, all while guarding those precious secrets. It doesn’t hurt that he’s unafraid to call less sensitive things exactly as he sees them too, such as a fastest lap-chasing pitstop from one team benefitting its senior squad, or Max Verstappen’s 2021-like driving against new title rival Lando Norris in Austria.

The necessary clouding of the picture is a key part of McLaren’s controversial approach to team orders in 2024. It must be characterised as such because of how this has divided fans and F1 observers, but more significantly because of the strain it has wrought on the team itself. Indeed, there is a very real chance that points lost to a laissez-faire team orders strategy means McLaren misses out on the world title double it could yet claim this term.

The specifics of F1’s fastest-lap bonus point – heavily scrutinised after now former RB driver Daniel Ricciardo stopped Norris claiming it in that crushing Singapore win – and the fluctuating form of Ferrari, plus Mercedes, can’t be discounted as factors in where the drivers’ title ultimately goes. But McLaren argues it is currently in pole position to beat Red Bull to the constructors’ championship (it now leads by 41 points heading into the season run-in) precisely because it has allowed Oscar Piastri so much free rein in racing against Norris. 

The team comes first

In fact, in all the media frenzy that followed Charles Leclerc stunning the McLaren pair to win at Monza, it was reinforced how – to McLaren – the biggest issue with Piastri’s mighty pass on his team-mate in that race’s opening corners was how it gave Ferrari a chance to win the race against either McLaren driver.

“Lando, myself and Oscar,” Stella said at the next round in Baku, “we all agreed that entering a chicane in P1-P2 and exiting P1-P3 is just not acceptable. Because it’s infringing our first principle, which is the team interest comes first.”

McLaren boss Stella was unhappy with how Piastri and Norris handled their Italian GP fight for position

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

The focus on McLaren’s team orders goes back much further. To Hungary, and Piastri’s first F1 victory scored amid the awkwardness of him passing polesitter Norris at Turn 1 (with an unhealthy dose of Verstappen on the outside) and then needing to have that position handed back when McLaren’s final pitstop sequencing put Lando unexpectedly into the lead again.

Immediately, memories stirred of what other teams of past eras might have done in this scenario. It’s not hard to imagine Rubens Barrichello just being expected to accept Michael Schumacher remaining ahead if the early 2000s Ferrari superteam found itself in that position. Such thoughts would have been more vivid for Stella – Schumacher’s performance engineer, and later race engineer for Kimi Raikkonen and Fernando Alonso at the Scuderia.

He’d made an interesting point post-Monza – how in the early 2000s or 2010s Ferrari team orders cases the “successful driver was successful because he was gaining the success on track”. This highlights the difference between these and today’s case. That Norris just isn’t far enough ahead of Piastri both in terms of points and pure performance to lead McLaren into a position where it has a natural number 1 and number 2 pecking order.

Hamilton joining Leclerc will probably give Ferrari the slight edge in 2025, but that’s based on historic achievement more than anything else. Norris-Piastri can take on the raw speed of Leclerc and Verstappen and are now a match for Max and Lewis in the vitally important discipline of tyre management

Not that the squad of Ayrton Senna versus Alain Prost would ever use such terms, but there is a strong case that Norris would be significantly better off if it had.

Swing when you’re not winning

Leaving aside the points lost to strategy calls in Montréal and at Silverstone, and the Spain start – plus his own part in the Austria shunt and his misfortune to be wiped in the Miami sprint – we can calculate an 18-point swing in Norris’s favour with favourable team orders from much earlier in 2024. This is if Piastri had remained behind in that final Budapest stint and not challenged Norris at the Monza start – and assumes Norris would have gone on to win there.

Suddenly, a 34-point advantage for Verstappen to defend over the upcoming events in Texas, Mexico, Brazil, Las Vegas, Qatar and Abu Dhabi – with sprints at Austin, Interlagos and Losail too – looks much trickier.

But, as ever in F1 and as much as hyper-partisan fans and click-chasing columnists may struggle to grasp, complex situations such as these cannot just have simple outcomes. McLaren would have a big problem if it had tried to force Piastri into a supporting role much earlier in the season.

At times this season it has looked like McLaren has had two number one drivers

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

First, we’re discovering the extent to which the team is re-learning the art of winning regularly at the front of the F1 pack after over a decade in the midfield doldrums. This includes, as Stella revealed in Singapore, how McLaren has now been “discussing that we should adjust our weekend schedule because we need to have many more conversations, even with the drivers, in terms of internal competition”.

“Something that in the past wasn’t part of the going racing,” he added.

And, as part of such delicate discussions, McLaren must also to look to the long-term. It has worked very hard – to the point of going to court to secure Piastri’s services, having pried him away from Alpine – to install what is among the best-balanced driver line-ups on the current grid.

Lewis Hamilton joining Leclerc will probably give Ferrari the slight edge on this front in 2025, but that’s based on historic achievement more than anything else. Norris-Piastri can take on the raw speed of Leclerc and Verstappen and, based on those Zandvoort and Singapore performances, are now a match for Max and Lewis in the vitally important discipline of tyre management. That only one Red Bull driver is being mentioned to this point highlights the massive problem the world champion squad has been unable to solve for years now.

The contract still intact

Both Norris and Piastri are contracted until the end of 2026 – although the deal Norris inked in early 2024 likely contains provisions to go on beyond that. Piastri’s, however, explicitly expires at the end of a 2026 campaign that really isn’t all that far away. And, while the wild churn of the driver market has cooled ahead of next year, it’s a fragile peace. There could yet be major change on the driving front at Red Bull and Mercedes, while Aston Martin – with a view to taking a leap in competitiveness now Adrian Newey is coming on board – will surely be on the lookout for a long-term solution to its own driver line-up imbalance.

All would snap up Piastri if the chance arose – something his management, former F1 ace Mark Webber and his wife, Ann, know all too well. There has been much speculation that it is from these quarters that Piastri has been forcefully prepared to show he’s “not bad for a number two driver”, to quote Webber himself. But that nothing has publicly seeped out on
this front (Webber helps front Channel 4’s coverage in the UK and has made regular appearances on other platforms) speaks volumes too. There is a united front in the Piastri camp and, after such an impressive second F1 win in Baku, his stock is only rising.

The Azerbaijan weekend is another critical part of this whole tale. McLaren had arrived there finally confirming that it would show “bias” – in Stella’s words – towards Norris’s title tilt. But when the drivers faced the media, they confirmed that Piastri wouldn’t be pulling over to cede victories.

McLaren knows it needs to maintain a healthy partnership between its drivers giving the rising star of Piastri

Photo by: Dom Romney / Motorsport Images

Again, the need for simplicity elsewhere clashed with the complexity within McLaren. The team’s strict “principles”, again per Stella, meant that while it wants Norris to earn maximum points, it’s still not prepared to offer Piastri up as sacrifice. Norris also doesn’t want that – insisting “I also don’t want to be given a championship”. What this all boils down to is that the pair will leave more margin in terms of intra-team overtaking – and a della Roggia wrestle from Piastri wouldn’t now be repeated – in updated ‘papaya rules’. And if they run line-astern in places away from 1-2, then Norris would be moved ahead.

This contrasts with Red Bull’s focus on Verstappen. Team boss Christian Horner’s “Checo knows 100% what his role and job is” made that clear. But both McLaren drivers are buying into the new arrangement – as evidenced by Norris in Baku, delaying Sergio Perez enough to prevent a critical undercut on Piastri. That alone could make a difference in Abu Dhabi given Verstappen was so weak in Baku, Norris beat him home from nine places behind on the grid.

But whatever happens when the fireworks are flying at the end of the season finale, McLaren is adamant it will have no regrets. so long as the constructors’ championship is sealed, it feels it has done right by both its drivers.

While it might seem like the points Piastri has theoretically removed from Norris’s total could thwart Lando’s 2024 ambitions, given how much better McLaren’s driver line-up is compared with Red Bull, he could yet be the critical kingmaker

“We’ve reflected so much as a team around our mindset,” Stella says. “This has penetrated very deeply and means that the mindset is genuinely onto the future.

“I’m pretty sure we will not fall into this temptation of looking back at the points that we don’t have, but we will focus on to the points that are available in the future.”

That bodes very well for McLaren in 2025. In terms of the here-and-now, while it might seem like the points Piastri has theoretically removed from Norris’s total could thwart Lando’s 2024 ambitions, given how much better McLaren’s driver line-up is compared with Red Bull, he could yet be the critical kingmaker.

Given that Verstappen now needs only to score second places to win title number four, McLaren and Norris need someone to prevent him doing that. Whether Oscar chooses to do this or requires orders is what remains to be seen… 

Will Piastri be a help or a hinderance to Norris in the F1 title battle against Verstappen?

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

When team-mates go bad

Italy 1956
With title contender Juan Manuel Fangio marooned in the pits, Luigi Musso was called in to hand his Ferrari over to the team leader. He refused and drove off.

Brazil 1981
Carlos Reutemann won from Williams team-mate Alan Jones in contentious circumstances, ignoring increasingly insistent signals from the pitwall including a sign reading ‘JONES-REUT’.

San Marino 1982
With its cars safely running 1-2 in the final laps, Ferrari signalled both drivers to slow down. Gilles Villeneuve obeyed, team-mate Didier Pironi didn’t – and overtook him.

France 1982
Rene Arnoux ignored Renault team orders to allow Alain Prost through to win. To add insult to proverbial injury, in a case of mistaken identity that evening a petrol station attendant congratulated Prost on beating “that little prick Prost”.

Portugal 1985
Jean Alesi took exception to being ordered to let team-mate Gerhard Berger past; in retribution Ferrari engineered Berger ahead by giving Alesi a deliberately slow pitstop. Afterwards Alesi raged to Italian TV that team boss Jean Todt “is breaking my balls”.

Hungary 2007
McLaren team policy was to give drivers priority on track position during the ‘fuel burn’ phase of qualifying on alternate GP weekends; here Lewis Hamilton disobeyed and wouldn’t let Fernando Alonso past. Alonso riposted by blocking him in the pitlane before the final runs.

Malaysia 2013
A scenario that will be etched in the mind of Oscar Piastri’s manager Mark Webber. With Webber leading a Red Bull 1-2 the team gave its coded ‘Multi-21’ radio signal to stay in that order. Sebastian Vettel overtook him anyway.

Webber and Vettel were none too happy with each other after the Multi-21 incident

Photo by: Sutton Images