McLaren take Toto Wolff’s advice into consideration as it finally happened: Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri collided. Well, it was rather more Norris misjudging a gap and hitting Piastri than the McLaren duo coming to blows in battle.
It was bound to happen at some point, given it is realistically a two-horse race for the Formula 1 drivers’ title between the pair, and Norris even said as much ahead of the 2025 Canadian Grand Prix.
These types of incidents seem to always happen when team-mates are battling for world championships: Lewis Hamilton versus Nico Rosberg at Mercedes, Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber at Red Bull, Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost, etcetera…
And with all signs pointing to a similar scenario between Norris and Piastri, McLaren has come under fire for its handling of the situation. This stems from some debatable team order decisions last season when the squad was chasing a first title of any kind since Hamilton’s 2008 drivers’ title.
Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff has given his advice following the collision in Montreal having dealt with Hamilton and Rosberg, revealing the “trick” that McLaren should now use.
“I’ve seen the movie and I was right in there as an actor,” said Wolff. “It’s difficult because it’s what drivers are calibrated to and conditioned to: win championships, particularly when you’re coming to Formula 1. I think the trick is here to establish the rules – establish how we want to go about it.”
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The argument made by McLaren team principal Andrea Stella last term, when fingers were pointed at how the team handled its drivers, was essentially that he wanted to ensure no morale was lost unnecessarily on either side of the garage, despite Norris having an outside chance of beating Max Verstappen to the drivers’ title.
Question marks were raised at the Hungarian Grand Prix in particular when a messy situation ultimately saw Norris hand the lead to Piastri after the final set of pitstops, having jumped ahead with an undercut, a scenario only made possible by the strategy employed by the team.
McLaren’s philosophy ultimately paid off as it collected the constructors’ championship but this season’s outlook is much different given its dominance in the opening quarter of the season. Yet the Woking-based outfit has kept its culture the same, which has allowed both drivers to race freely.
And the hierarchy should be applauded for that, not just because of the racing action we are able to witness from the outside, but because that culture has ensured that this incident has not descended into a crisis.
Think of the aforementioned examples of high-profile team-mate collisions in title fights – all of them have resulted in team divisions and vitriol. However, the reaction from the three key pillars of McLaren’s operation in the immediate aftermath of the incident was extremely mature and displays just how good the working environment is.
Norris – “Stupid from me”
Norris had lunged to the inside of Piastri for fourth at the hairpin but going so deep allowed the Australian to cut back and take the inside down the back straight and into the final chicane.
That left Piastri in front and then Norris went for a gap that was non-existent across the start-finish line, resulting in the contact that left the Briton out of the race.
After the contact, Norris immediately owned up to his misjudgement over team radio: “I’m sorry, all my bad. All my fault. Stupid from me.”
Speaking to media afterwards, he explained: “I thought he was starting to drift a little bit to the right, so I thought I had a small opportunity to go to the left. But it was way too much risk, especially on my team-mate. So, happy nothing happened to him and I paid the price for my mistake.”
He added: “Our rule number one is to not make contact with your team-mate and it’s what I did. McLaren is my family. I race for them, every single weekend,” Norris added.
“I try and do well for them, more than I often try and do well for myself. So when I let them down like this and when I make a fool of myself in a moment like today, I have a lot of regret.
“That’s, for me, always the worst feeling. So, of course, I only really need to apologise to all of them and Oscar as well.”
Piastri – “Lando is a good guy”
There was no hard feeling directed towards Norris from Piastri, albeit the situation under the caveat that he was able to extend his championship advantage.
“Lando’s apologised to me, so I guess that says a little bit, but I honestly haven’t seen much,” he said.
“Lando is a very good guy. I think it’s in his character and in his personality to say exactly what he thinks. And if that’s detrimental to himself, or if it’s about himself, then it doesn’t matter for him.
“I think that’s a great quality of Lando. I think it’s good for the whole team going forward that we can have these conversations and go racing like this and have things not go the way we want and get through them. So, yeah, that’s all.”
The reaction from both drivers is key because it shows the healthy relationship existing in the team. Should McLaren take advice from Wolff? Maybe there should be some boundaries put into the ‘Papaya rules’ because the good feeling won’t last forever.
But McLaren has rebuilt itself over the last decade very much by doing its own thing, why change now?
