McLaren will support Lando Norris in the World Championship battle against Max Verstappen, but not at all costs.
McLaren driver Lando Norris said that teammate Oscar Piastri wouldn’t have to give up his Formula 1 race wins to support his championship bid.
While McLaren is supporting Norris in his aim to overtake Max Verstappen’s 62-point lead in the Drivers’ Championship, Red Bull’s dip in form offers the British driver a realistic chance to snatch the world championship from the Dutch driver in the remaining eight races.
However, McLaren has so far been keen to support both drivers equally and give Piastri a fair chance to race against Norris, which led to the Australian driver making a bold overtake to take the lead from Norris on the first lap of the Italian Grand Prix.
As a result of this overtake, Norris dropped to third behind eventual winner Charles Leclerc. This situation prompted McLaren to review its “Papaya rules” and its approach of allowing its drivers to race freely against each other.
The team later allowed Piastri to finish second ahead of Norris, who finished third.
McLaren confirmed on Thursday morning in Baku that from now on, in a similar situation, it would throw its weight behind Norris. However, according to Norris, this doesn’t mean that Piastri will have to give up race wins.
When asked if he expected Piastri to let him pass for the race lead, he responded: “No.”
“In general, it could be done for lower positions, but if he’s fighting for the win and deserves to win, then he deserves to win.”
Norris, who needs to overturn a 62-point deficit to Verstappen, admitted that prioritizing him only for lower positions could cost him the championship by the season’s final race in Abu Dhabi, but insisted that he wanted to win the world championship on merit, not at any cost.
When asked how he would feel if he missed out by a few points, he said, “I’m sure it would hurt, but I’m here to race.”
“And if a driver performs better than me, then I need to do a better job. So, I don’t want to take that away from anyone.”
“I also don’t want a championship to be handed to me. Yes, winning a championship would be great, and you’d feel great in the short term, but I don’t think you’d feel proud of it in the long term.”
“That’s not what I want; I don’t want to win the championship that way. I want to win by fighting against Max, beating Max, beating my rivals, and proving that I’m the best on the track. That’s how I want to win,” he said.
Norris explained that McLaren revised its “Papaya rules” following Piastri’s aggressive overtake, which opened the door for Leclerc to lay the foundation for Ferrari’s victory, but insisted that he and Piastri were still free to fight at the start of a race.
“I think there will be times when it’s not wise to fight, but if you’re thinking about that when you’re going into the first lap, that’s the wrong approach.”
“I think you should both approach the first lap with the right mindset, which is to attack and try to move forward. Once you start thinking about other things, things usually start to go wrong.”
“Monza was a bit of a different situation. We looked back and resolved it. The important thing was that we came out of Turn 4 in first and third, and we had the biggest gap in the world going into the corner.”
