Why McLaren won’t let Piastri and Norris “do whatever they want” in title fight

Mercedes’ Toto Wolff has suggested McLaren should “let it roll” as Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri fight for the drivers’ title, but team principal Andrea Stella has set out the difference between equal opportunities and unregulated freedom.

McLaren delivered its second front row lockout in three race weekends in the Netherlands, with Piastri getting the better of title rival Norris by just 0.012s as he defends a slender nine-point lead. With McLaren’s 2025 car clearly the class of the field again on Zandvoort’s technical layout, Piastri and Norris will likely get their own way again on Sunday, presenting the latest stress test of McLaren’s resolve to let its two title protagonists race fair and square right until Abu Dhabi’s season finale.

The last team to end up in that situation was Mercedes, which saw an initially friendly partnership between Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg gradually escalate into an acrimonious 2016 title fight, going all the way down to the wire in Abu Dhabi. Victorious Rosberg promptly announced his retirement at the end of the season, while Mercedes chief Toto Wolff had to mend his relationship with Hamilton in the aftermath.

When musing over the lessons from that showdown, Wolff said that with the constructors’ title guaranteed, he would have let Hamilton and Rosberg just fight their own corner until the end of the year, rather than interfering in the Yas Marina title finale by asking Hamilton to stop backing Rosberg into the chasing pack and jeopardise an easy Mercedes 1-2 win.

“Where it got more difficult was when Lewis had an engine failure in the lead in Malaysia and that was very difficult for him to take,” Wolff told select media, including Motorsport.com. “And from then on, the mistake we made was that we tried to finish the season with as little controversy as possible rather than to say: ‘We’ve won the championship anyway, constructors and drivers. Let it roll.’

“That is something I would maybe do differently today, if we were ever to be in a luxurious position like it is. Sometimes if you fight another car, you need to be brutal and maximise the points. But if you’re McLaren today, just let it roll.”

But while McLaren is keen on letting Norris and Piastri race freely as long as they do it in a fair manner and don’t make contact, letting the pair fully do what they want with disregard for the team’s overall result is not something team principal Andrea Stella is willing to entertain.
 
“The way we go racing at McLaren is based on being respectful of principles and values that we have defined for some time with not only the team but also the drivers involved,” Stella said. “They don’t mean that the drivers are free to do what they want. They are free to race in the sense that we want to give them the opportunity to express their talent, their abilities, their aspirations, but this should always be made within the boundaries of the team interest coming first.

“A condition that you could summarise as ‘they are free to race, they can do whatever they want’, I would say is not the present of how we go racing at McLaren, and will not be the future of how we go racing – even when we win the constructors’ championship. This cannot be done in a way that is completely unregulated. This is also in their own interest, I would say, not only in the interest of the team.”

Norris and Piastri earned the trust of McLaren with how they approached their rivalry thus far, and with the pair on long-term deals the team is keen to preserve that harmony rather than either driver feeling stitched up by the other, leading to a downward spiral that could damage team cohesion and result in one of its stars looking for the exit.

Could a repeat of Hungary be on the cards?

Let’s apply that to Sunday’s Dutch Grand Prix, where Norris will be desperate to find a way past Piastri despite being at a disadvantage as McLaren’s second car in the train.

Stella says he is wary of the threat from behind in the shape of third-placed Max Verstappen, who has saved a set of soft tyres that could make him a wildcard if there is a scenario that involves a two-stop race instead of a predicted one-stopper. With track position king in Zandvoort, whatever decision McLaren will make will have to take into account covering Verstappen and protecting McLaren’s chances of a 1-2 finish.

“Based on the difficulties in overtaking and the fact that there could be also some weather, first of all we have to make sure that we get the best result for the team with Lando and Oscar,” Stella said. “We have to make sure that we beat Max, who is not very far, he is two tenths away from us.”

Photo by: Jayce Illman / Getty Images

At the recent Hungarian Grand Prix Norris was allowed to switch from an expected two-stopper to a one-stop strategy after losing ground in the opening stages, a way of rolling the dice instead of copying the cars in front of him and guaranteeing a disappointing result. The decision ended up yielding him the race win, with Piastri unable to find a way past after his second stop despite easily leading the race until that point.

As Stella pointed out, the situation is quite different if both drivers are running line astern. While the Italian didn’t want to divulge what McLaren’s exact rules are in that situation, it stands to reason that the second car in the queue – in theory Norris – won’t simply be allowed to undercut the lead car.

“When it comes to the options from a strategic point of view in between our two drivers, we do have some rules for that,” he added. “I’m not going to share what rules they are, but whatever you have seen so far in terms of how the strategy has been utilised, it’s always been within our rules.”

That includes Budapest, where McLaren didn’t expect Norris’ one-stop to allow him to threaten Piastri. That’s why Norris and Piastri are both on board with McLaren continuing its policy of letting its drivers split strategies if the circumstances call for it.

“It’s perfectly right that there are deviations in terms of strategy and not necessarily this is gambling, like in Hungary the one stop wasn’t completely off the cards,” he explained. “But this didn’t create any sort of concern with our two drivers, because this was all fair and within the principles that we have set out. They accepted that there’s a degree of variability in racing, there’s a level of variation of scenarios that are not necessarily under your control.

“And even here the strategy is not far between a one and a two-stop, so I think it will be once again interesting; not only between the two McLaren drivers, but also with the other drivers. Max for instance, has a new soft that he saved from qualifying and it could be a pretty powerful weapon if you can deploy it strategically at the right time.”