McLaren will back Lando Norris over Oscar Piastri in an attempt to win the drivers’ championship, but Norris says he wouldn’t be proud to take the title with excessive help.
Piastri beat Norris to second place in the Italian Grand Prix after overtaking his teammate — who had started on pole position — on the opening lap. The result limited the amount of points Norris took out of Max Verstappen’s championship lead, and prompted a discussion at McLaren of how it would approach future races with Red Bull struggling. Team boss Zak Brown has now acknowledged that Norris will get the team’s backing.
“Max is a pretty awesome racing driver,” Brown told the Dale Jr. Podcast. “We’ll let the debate continue between Kyle [Larson] and Max! So we’ve got eight races to go, plus three Sprints — which is the equivalent of nine races. He’s 60+ points behind — it’s a pretty tall order. There’s only three drivers that have come from this far back at this time of the year to do it, but we’re going to give it everything we’ve got.
“Oscar’s going to do everything he can to help. I’m fortunate that I’ve got two number 1 drivers, they’re both awesome, but Lando’s now in a position where he can mathematically see it, smell it, so we’re going to work as a team to see what we can do to help Lando and we’re going to kind of do it a race at a time.
“If in two races we’ve closed the gap, we’ll keep working as a team. If in a couple of races Max has won a couple, Lando’s got a DNF and it’s kind of mathematically out, then we’ll go back to ‘let them go.’ Because we let them go in Monza, that didn’t work out great for us as a team — we entered Turn 4 first and second, we came out first and third, and that’s not what you want as a team in the constructors.’”
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While Norris says he’s grateful for the public statement of support for his title bid, he is willing to lose out on the championship in Abu Dhabi due to some races where Piastri beat him, because it’s a sign of his teammate doing a better job.
“I’m sure it will hurt [to lose a close title fight] but I’m also here to race, and if a driver’s doing better than me and outperforming it’s because they’re doing a better job,” Norris said. “So I wouldn’t want to take that away from someone. And I also wouldn’t want to be given a championship.
“Yes, it would be great to have a championship, and short term you feel amazing, but I don’t think you’d be proud of that in the long run. And that’s not something I want. That’s not how I want to win a championship. I want to win it by fighting against Max, by beating Max, beating my competitors, and proving that I’m the best on track, and that’s how I want to win.”
Norris also says Piastri’s role is not to hand him positions in every circumstance, and he doesn’t expect the Australian to give up a victory even if the pair are running one-two.
“We’ve had decisions before, and we’ve had things that we’ve run to, we’ve just not publicly said it, so it’s more that we just told you what you want to hear finally than anything else! But we’ve always worked well as a team,” Norris said. “I think now there’s a bit more of a structure to it and an understanding that we have internally on what positions will change, for what scenarios will change, how we can help one another, and obviously how he [Piastri] can help me.
“But it’s definitely not where he goes out every session now and that’s his only job. If he goes out and he’s better than me and performs better than me or outqualifies me and he wins a race, that’s because he’s done a better job. Simple as that.”