Formula 1 Q&A: Coverage of Norris, Piastri, McLaren and Red Bull

Oscar Piastri has not been the same driver since Monza, when he had to let Lando Norris back after his slow stop. Did it occur to Oscar to assume that McLaren preferred Lando over him? McLaren has sponsored Landau throughout its junior formula period. – Rob

It’s worth answering this question more broadly, because it’s an important topic that seems to have gained traction in the minds of some fans.

Piastri has already dealt with this issue of nepotism. In Austin, he was asked directly if he was happy no one was on the team. “I am very happy because there is no favoritism or bias,” he replied.

Zak Brown, CEO of McLaren Racing, also spoke about this. “Nonsense,” he said in an interview with BBC Sport in Austin.

Brown then expanded on the details of the two races that seem to have given rise to this problem – Hungary and Italy.

“You’re right, it seems the two recent incidents have fallen Lando’s way,” he admitted.

But it also explained why those races were not examples of intentional favoritism.

The Hungarian Grand Prix, where Norris beat Piastri by switching to a one-stop strategy after falling to fifth on the first lap, was a “free kick, because of the way the race was going,” Brown said.

On the pit wall at the time, neither he nor team manager Andrea Stella thought it would work.

“I hope it’s Netflix [Drive to Survive] “He was here now, because you would hear the pit wall conversation,” Brown said.

“Andrea and I were like, ‘This isn’t going to work.’ But Lando drove brilliantly. If it had been another track where passing was a little easier, I don’t think it would have worked, would it? It was just a track you couldn’t get over.”

For Monza, where McLaren ordered Piastri to cede second place to Norris, who lost it after a combination of deliberately reversing the pit order and then a slow pit stop late in the race, Brown said it was “just like in Hungary the previous year”, where Norris ceded the win to Piastri.

“If the leading car is willing to sacrifice its rights at the first call to help its teammate, who is actually its first competitor in the championship, that is great teamwork,” he said.

“And we did it to protect Oscar, which was actually at the expense of Lando in an all-out race. Then we had the pit stop problem.

“Everyone thinks we reversed it because of the pit stop. It actually had nothing to do with it. So the challenge is that you can’t explain almost everything all the time, and people jump to conclusions.

“So I understand what it looks like from the outside, but not what’s going on inside, and we try hard to give them equal opportunities and let them compete hard.

“I wish everyone would realize more of that. But I’ve definitely come to the conclusion that there are a lot of fans who have a lot of opinions, (and) we have to be comfortable with the way we go about racing within McLaren, and that’s what’s most important to us.”

As for what happens with Piastri’s performance, it’s not as simple as the question suggests. Yes, he had a bad weekend in Baku, crashing three times and jumping at the start. Both McLaren drivers struggled there, and while Piastri looked less comfortable than Norris, he was not significantly slower.

In Singapore, Piastri qualified two places ahead, before the accident at the first corner, for which Norris received unspecified consequences in Austin.

But it is true that Piastri was off the pace in Austin and Mexico. Piastri and the team say this is because the car needs to drive differently in the specific conditions there.

Stella said that in the post-qualifying review in Mexico “they extracted some important information in terms of how the car drives in these special low-grip conditions that we have here in Mexico, similar to Austin.”

He added: “It seems that in this system you have to drive the car in a way that adapts to the fact that the car slips a lot and can slide and produces a longer lap time. And that’s not necessarily the way Oscar naturally feels he records the lap time.”

“So, we identified some things we could do in the car and some things he could do while driving.”

“It was definitely a learning experience, that’s for sure,” Piastri said. “For some reason, the last few weekends have required a completely different way of driving.

“I needed something completely different the last two weekends from what had worked well for me the last 19 races. It was a bit of a struggle trying to understand why.”